Madison Keys back with Juan Todero

As undeniably talented as American Madison Keys is, one big struggle over the last few years has been finding one coach, and sticking with him (or her).

And as the 24-year-old arrives in Charleston for the Volvo Open, what was once old is new again.

Tennis.Life’s intel on the ground in Charleston reports that Keys has reunited with Juan Todero.

The Argentine worked with her (along with Jay Gooding) in 2013 and 2014 when he was with the USTA, and got her into the top 40.

The coaching carousel began before the 2015 season.

Keys began working with former world No. 1 Lindsay Davenport and her husband Jon Leach.

It seemed to work beautifully. But Davenport, who has a number of things on her plate – not the least of which is four kids – could not commit to being a full-time coach.

Coaching merry-go-round begins

Keys began 2016 with Jesse Levine. But, suddenly, before the clay-court season, Levine was replaced by Thomas Hogstedt. She reached the year-end finals in Singapore that year.

In 2017, Davenport was back, as Keys returned after having wrist surgery. Then, later on, she added Dieter Kindlmann, who lasted about a year.

That year, she reached the US Open singles final.

The 2018 season was, for the most part, coachless.

There was a brief period during which the Aussie David Taylor was on board. But Keys used the resources of the USTA, including Fed Cup captain Kathy Rinaldi and head of women’s tennis Ola Malmqvist.

At the start of this season, Keys was working with Jim Madrigal, who had been on board the previous year when Keys’s countryman Tennys Sandgren made his big breakthrough.

Keys beat Elise Mertens in the third round of the Australian Open before falling to Elina Svitolina in three sets in the round of 16.

She lost her first match at Indian Wells to Mona Barthel.

By Miami, it was Rinaldi who was out for the coaching consults. But Keys lost her opening match to Samantha Stosur, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in a see-saw match that saw her come back from the brink in the second set – only to fall in three.

Coaching merry-go-round for Todero

Todero had been on board Team Keys in 2014, when the (then) 19-year-old won her first Premier-level title at Eastbourne.

He left the USTA to join Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig at the start of 2015, and was with her when she won the Olympic gold medal in Rio in 2016.

But the man they call “Nacho” found himself without a player when Puig, with whom he had worked for four years, went in another direction for 2019.

Puig took on the team formerly known as “Team Sloane”, after Stephens kind of lit her support group on fire at the end of the 2019 season.

https://opencourt.ca/wordpress/2019/01/29/kamau-murray-joins-team-puig/

Puig now has former Stephens coach Kamau Murray and associate coach Othmane Garma on board.

Stephens is still coachless.

Got that straight?

And we’re still in March.

The No. 8 seed, Keys has a first-round bye in Charleston. She will play the winner of Natalia Vikhlyantseva and Tatjana Maria in the second round, and is on track to perhaps face Stephens in the quarterfinals.

It would be a rematch of their 2017 US Open final, and their 2018 French Open semifinal.