The 5 women aged 30+ with a 15-match win streak as Madison Keys joins list
The Madison Keys juggernaut rolled on at the Indian Wells Open as she secured her 15th consecutive WTA Tour win with a battling three-set victory over Donna Vekic.
The reigning Australian Open champion hasn’t tasted defeat since losing in the quarter-final of the ASB Classic on 3 January as she followed up that defeat with a title run at the Adelaide International before going on to lift her maiden Grand Slam trophy at Melbourne Park.
After missing the Middle East swing due to a hamstring injury, Keys made her comeback at the WTA 1000 tournament on home soil and kicked off her campaign with wins over Anastasia Potapova and Elise Mertens to set up an encounter against 19th seed Vekic.
She was staring down the barrel as she lost the opening and was an early mini-break down in the second-set tie-breaker, but fought back for a 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-3.
The American’s three Indian Wells wins comes nearly a month after she celebrated her 30th birthday and she is now one of only five women to win 15 matches in a row after turning 30 years old.
She joins an incredibly unique list of greats with Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams the others to achieve the milestone.
Keys, though, still has some way to go in terms of longest-ever win streaks at Tour level with Navratilova holding the record as she won 74 consecutive matches during the 1984 season.
Steffi Graf’s 66 wins from 1989 to 1990 puts her second while Navratilova is also third with a 58-match winning run from 1986 to 1987.
Five-time Grand Slam winner Iga Swiatek has the longest run in recent history as she won 37 matches in a row in 2022, which is the 12th longest in Open Era history.
But for now Keys is the form player on the WTA Tour and she next faces Belinda Bencic, who stunned third seed Coco Gauff, in the quarter-final.
The pair are 2-2 in terms of head-to-head matches with their most recent outing taking place in Charleston in 2022 with Bencic winning in straight sets.
Madison Keys News
Madison Keys’ ranking, prize money, sponsors and her next tournament
Keys certainly has the confidence of a Grand Slam winner on court these days.
“I’m really enjoying myself out there. Obviously just kind of riding the wave of momentum,” she said.
The world No 5 added: “I don’t know if they feel different. It’s obviously, like, a tournament in the States and being an American.
“Obviously I think there is probably a few more eyes on me, but I feel like at the same time, given winning the first Slam of the year, eyes probably would have been on me anyway no matter where I was.
“I just felt like it was more important to be really ready to be back on the court instead of trying to rush things, just to get the first tournament post-Australia out of the way.”
With the three-set win over Vekic, Keys also became the first woman after Serena Williams in 2015 to win her first 10 three-set matches in a season.
She won three three-setters at Adelaide, five at the Australian Open and now two at Indian Wells.
