Madison Keys’ husband and coach went from ‘never butting in’ to ‘telling her what to do’
From “never butting in” and being “very uncomfortable” with telling Madison Keys what to do to becoming the coach to mentor her to a maiden Grand Slam title.
It has been quite a journey for Keys and her husband Bjorn Fratangelo.
Their tennis story has become a major success after Keys won the Australian Open, but it took them a while to get comfortable.
They started dating in 2017 and became engaged in March 2023, but during that period Fratangelo “never said a word about tennis”.
The nature of their relationship changed in June 2023 when Fratangelo took over as her head coach and Keys admitted on Good Morning America that he was “forced” to change his ways.
The world No 7 stated: “He started helping me about a year and a half, two years ago, and he really didn’t want to. He said he was very uncomfortable with telling me what to do and did not want to do it. I basically had to force him to come with me.”
They tied the knot in November 2024 and since then they have gone from strength to strength both on the court and away from the court.
The pair won their first title as a married couple at the Adelaide International at the start of 2025 and Keys followed it up with the season-opening Grand Slam at Melbourne Park a few weeks later.
But Fratangelo admitted that they initially didn’t interfere with each other’s careers during the early stages.
In an interview with the Served With Andy Roddick podcast, he said:”[Typically] you get to know each other and things go like that. [In our case] I’ve actually watched her for the last seven years and never said a word about tennis.
“We stayed out of each other’s careers, pretty much. We did a really good job of never butting in. If we were to talk about tennis, it would just be how we’re feeling emotionally. If we’ve been on the road for five weeks, we want to come home or things like that.”
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The transition was quite uncomfortable initially, but Fratangelo – who was struggling with injury – suddenly had to step up and Keys has taken her game up a few notches.
“I was still having a lot of pain, so I didn’t really want to hit too much. All of sudden, I was behind her and I was like this feels weird. ‘I don’t like telling you what to do, I’m uncomfortable,” he explained.
“It was just like her with a couple of junior boys that were there and then me kind of just feeding them in. Then it slowly turned into her being like, ‘I need help. I need serious help and please help me’ and I was like, okay.
“Once I grappled with the fact that ‘okay, now I actually have to tell her what to do’, it became a little easier for me because it’s coming from her. I could sense that there was a lot of doubt and a lot of just anxiety towards how she was playing through that period.
“It wasn’t like when you have a new coach, you take days to get to know each other, nobody is saying a whole lot, maybe the player says ‘this is where I am messing up, this is where I can do better’ and then you maybe have dinner, get to know each other.”
