Keys & Stephens back with a bump in Wuhan

Sloane Stephens did not get the chance to shout her friend Madison Keys the promised commiseratory drink, or three, on the night of their US Open final, so has now promised to buy her a designer handbag instead.

“A fair trade”, as Keys calls it, is mere loose change for Stephens, whose winner’s cheque was a record US$3.7 million, while the tearful runner-up received almost half that much. Yet both Americans will have ample shopping time, matching first-round exits having prematurely ended their first tournament since that star-spangled Saturday in New York.

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The pair planned to share a pizza in Wuhan on Monday night, and if tennis made it into the dinner-table chatter, Keys’ troublesome left wrist – which required a second round of surgery in June – would also have been part of the conversation. The 22-year-old was set to review her Asian schedule after needing treatment several times during her straight sets loss loss to qualifier Varvara Lepchenko at the Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open.

What could be managed during a Grand Slam, when matches are scheduled only for every second day, has flared without sufficient time for strengthening a joint that is still weak and sometimes painful. But along with the physical rehabilitation comes the need for an emotional recovery from events in New York, after the pre-finals favourite failed to handle the occasion and won just three games in the biggest match of her life.

Her reflections now are of a “bitter-sweet” day, which becomes easier to think about the more time passes. Keys knows she will be happy about her Open effort eventually, but for now there is still a ‘Yeah it was good, but…’ feeling, as her joy at getting there could not mask the disappointment of what happened when she did. Perhaps even losing in a third set tiebreak would have been better, because then she would have given herself a chance.

Kim Clijsters was among those who later shared empathetic tales of finals lost, the Belgian pointing out she failed in four major finals before winning one. “She’s like, ‘every ball that you missed, I completely understood’,” says Keys, whose coach Lindsay Davenport recounted moments during one of her own opportunities lost.

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“She just wanted to start crying because she knew it just wasn’t going to happen,” says Keys. “I mean, I think those are the experiences you learn from and when you’re in a similar situation again, you may be have a better coping mechanism.

“Even Mary Joe (Fernandez) came up after the match and she was like ‘I’m so proud of you’. I was just like ‘I just got bageled, what are you talking about?’ And she was like ‘no, like, you could have totally lost your mind, and broke a racquet, and I’m sure you felt like you wanted to’, but you completely kept it together’.

“So hearing her say that, it was also one of those moments where it was one of the toughest moments in my life to have to go stand in front of everyone with cameras on you and have to talk and all of that, and the fact that I did it, and I would say did it fairly OK, that was another moment where I just had to remind myself to be proud.”

Stephens is an entirely different character – at least publicly – and yet such contrasting personalities, and competitors, are genuinely close pals.

Their performances in the interview room are also sharply contrasting, as it was on Monday. While Keys needed time to compose herself, but then with great openness and candour, Stephens arrived promptly after her 6-2, 6-2 loss to Qiang Wang but offered little insight into what it felt to be a Slam winner.

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She was clearly irked by questions about her endorsement potential, even directing the reporter’s very reasonable queries to her agent (complete with email address) before eventually departing with a breezy “toodle-oo” that left no-one particularly charmed.

But at least, having wandered into the end of Keys’ far more enlightening session a few minutes earlier, Stephens promised the handbag would be the real deal, not some fake from a Beijing market. Which is fitting, for a friendly rival who already appeals as admirably authentic.