Keys appeared on course for a first fourth-round appearance at her home slam since 2023 after taking a commanding third set lead against Olympic champion Zheng. <\/p>\n
But the 2025 Australian Open winner would miss a match point and lose each of the final seven games in a 1-6 7-6 (7-3) 7-5 loss that stunned the crowd.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old Keys said she felt as though she “couldn’t play tennis anymore” in the final set.<\/p>\n
“I obviously got off to a really good lead, and then I got really scared, like I couldn’t swing [the racquet],” Keys said.<\/p>\n
“I felt like I couldn’t play tennis anymore. It just felt like it was a much bigger deal than just playing a tennis match all of a sudden.”<\/p>\n
Keys, who lost the 2017 US Open final to fellow American Sloane Stephens, went out in the fourth round at the other three majors in 2026.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I’ve been struggling for a while now. I’m going to have to make some sort of changes,” Keys said.<\/p>\n
“I just kind of keep putting it off because that’s how the tennis world works. It’s just to the point where I actually need to do something about it.”<\/p>\n
Anisimova, beaten by world number one Aryna Sabalenka in last year’s US Open final, lost in straight sets to Russian-born Austrian 24th seed Anastasia Potapova.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old was visibly frustrated with herself throughout the contest, losing her serve twice in the first set and four times in a topsy-turvy second.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, two-time champion Naomi Osaka fought back from a break down in the decider to see off Belgian 23rd seed Elise Mertens.<\/p>\n
Osaka, seeded 13th, won 6-3 3-6 7-5 to set up a last-16 match against second seed Elena Rybakina.<\/p>\n
Kazakhstan’s Rybakina, who knows she will be guaranteed to become the new world number one if she reaches the semi-finals, demonstrated her quality in a 7-6 (8-6) 6-3 victory over Ukraine’s Yuliia Starodubtseva. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keys appeared on course for a first fourth-round appearance at her home slam since 2023 after taking a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1696],"class_list":["post-66779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-amanda-anisimova","tag-amanda-anisimova"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}