MELBOURNE, Australia — Before Madison Keys performs a match, her new coach Georgi Rumenov likes to remind her that “there is no need to, there is no have to.”

The message is that it isn’t in regards to the implications or the expectations. It is all in regards to the rally, the shot at hand.

That is less complicated stated than achieved for Keys, an American tennis star who regardless of all of the thunder in her serve and groundstrokes, has lengthy struggled to seek out peace within the matches that matter most.

Last yr, she discovered herself obsessing over outcomes and evaluating herself to her friends, tossing and turning at evening and attempting to calm her anxiousness.

“I wasn’t sleeping as well,” she stated. “Felt like there was literally a weight on my chest just because I became so focused and obsessed with it that I wasn’t enjoying really anything, because it’s all that I was thinking about.”

But despite the fact that tennis has one of many shortest off-seasons of any skilled sport, it was lengthy sufficient for Keys to vary her considering and type with Rumenov’s assist.

After successful simply 11 singles matches in 2021, Keys has gained 11 in lower than a month in 2022: taking the title in Adelaide and sweeping again into the semifinals of the Australian Open on Tuesday with a dominant victory, 6-3, 6-2, over Barbora Krejcikova, the No. four seed and reigning French Open champion.

She will meet the highest seed, Ashleigh Barty, within the semifinals. Barty beat the American Jessica Pegula, 6-2, 6-0.

“It means a lot,” stated Keys, 26, who’s unseeded this yr after being ranked as excessive as No. 7 earlier in her profession. “Last year was really hard, and I did everything I could with my team to really reset this off-season and focus on starting fresh and new and really just starting from zero and not worrying about last year. And wow, that’s going well so far.”

Keys has lengthy performed a high-risk recreation and she or he has, to her detriment beneath duress, typically taken an excessive amount of likelihood when accountable for a degree. There have been indicators of progress in that division this yr, as she has hit with extra topspin and web clearance, and opted for putting the ball reasonably than pounding it.

“I’ve been working on it,” Keys stated when requested about her strategy. “As you said, it’s not something that I used to necessarily do in the past. Really just trying to be a lot more measured and just playing within myself a little bit more, not necessarily trying to hit a winner on that ball, just constantly trying to set the point up to get to the net to try to finish off on even the next ball. If it happens to be a winner, then it happens to be a winner.”

The winners hold coming in bunches. Her straightforward energy stays. Keys hit 11 aces towards Krejcikova, one of many world’s premier returners and a doubles champion earlier than she turned a singles champion. Keys dominated the brief exchanges and as an Orlando resident appeared much more comfortable within the humidity and warmth with the temperature on-court surpassing 90 levels.

Krejcikova struggled, placing her ice-filled towel not solely round her neck on changeovers however on high of her head. Down 2-5 within the opening set, she known as for the coach and was additionally attended to by a match physician, who took her blood stress and temperature. Though her coach Ales Kartus was telling her from the stands that she ought to retire from the match, she persevered because the errors piled up.

Krejcikova declined to elucidate what was troubling her.

“I have been struggling with something,” she stated. “Yes, it was happening, and I didn’t feel good. I just don’t want to talk about it, because I think Madison, she really deserves the win, and she really deserves to get the credit.”

Krejcikova additionally struggled with respiratory and dizziness on a muggy evening in New York final yr in a tempestuous fourth-round victory over Garbiñe Muguruza on the U.S. Open.

Krejcikova stated she was not experiencing the identical points on Tuesday. “Today it was the heat that started to bother me after five games,” she stated. “From there on, I just couldn’t put it together. Still, I didn’t want to end it up. I wanted to finish up. I wanted to try to do my best. I wasn’t really able to do that.”

Tuesday’s defeat assured that Krejcikova, a tactically astute Czech participant, can’t displace Barty at No. 1 within the subsequent rankings. But she continues her speedy rise nonetheless. Outside the highest 100 in 2020 in singles, Krejcikova has change into a constant risk in a girls’s recreation stuffed with upsets and sudden plot twists: Consider British qualifier Emma Raducanu’s run to the U.S. Open title final yr.

It is Keys’s flip to be the shock thus far in 2022. After dropping out of the highest 50 by the top of final season, she is again within the ultimate 4 in Australia, the place she reached her first Grand Slam semifinal in 2015 at age 19.

“It mostly feels different because I’m seven years older, and it’s not my first semifinal of a Slam,” she stated. “I think I’m a little bit more prepared this time around than I was all those years ago.”

Her opponent in that 2015 semifinal was No. 1 Serena Williams, the best girls’s participant of this period, who defeated her, 7-6 (5), 6-2, on her technique to the title. Williams, now 40, just isn’t enjoying in Melbourne this yr, however Keys will face one other No. 1 in Barty, who gained two of their three earlier conferences.

Keys, who misplaced within the 2017 U.S. Open final to her shut good friend Sloane Stephens, has lengthy been thought-about a possible Grand Slam champion. She is again in vary once more.

Chris Evert, who has recognized Keys since she educated as a young person on the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Fla., stated it’s obvious that Keys is having fun with herself on the court docket greater than final yr.

“I’m seeing a very calm and focused Madison who is in control and managing her emotions like never before,” Evert wrote in a textual content message. “I’m seeing a fit and healthy Madison who is moving really well in and out of corners and not hitting risky shots because she can’t get back in the court. Her serve is almost unreturnable.”

Evert added: “She had to find this place of calm herself, in her own time, no one could teach her this. I am thrilled for her. No one deserves a crack at a Grand Slam title more than her.”

But Keys has been on tour lengthy sufficient to know that considering forward just isn’t the best strategy for her. As Rumenov retains telling her, “there is no need to, there is no have to.”

Staying within the second is the main target.

“I think that’s really important,” she stated. “I think it’s still something that I don’t think anyone is perfect at. You can kind of lose that even throughout a match, just getting a little bit ahead of yourself. I think I even did that today early in the second set. I think the biggest key is just being able to reel it back in and then refocus very quickly and catch yourself.”