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It was nearly a decade ago at Indian Wells and Madison Keys – just a few weeks out of adolescence as she turned 20 on Feb. 17 – was prepping for her first tournament since making her first major semifinal at the Austrlaian Open.

It was March 2015, and Keys had moved from No. 35 into the top 20 with a run to the final four in Melbourne that included wins over Petra Kvitova and Venus Williams, before a loss to world No. 1 Serena Williams.

She was training on the courts at Indian Wells, under the tutelage of mentor Lindsay Davenport and her husband Jon Leach.

And tucked away in the corner of the practice court, minding his own business, was their firstborn – seven-year-old Jagger Leach.

Here’s what it looked like.

To say the least, Madison Keys has hardly changed in a decade, by comparison.

Fast-forward a decade, and the 20-year-old “can’t miss prospect” is a Grand Slam champion after winning the women’s singles at the Australian Open.

.@Madison_Keys won her first Grand Slam over the weekend, becoming the Australian Open champion.

Keys shares how therapy helped her get to this moment and play with a freedom she wasn’t able to tap into earlier in her career: “I was so proud of my career already and I didn’t… pic.twitter.com/FU1KK4leME
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) January 28, 2025

And the 7-year-old kid amusing himself in the corner of the practice court is now 17, and the No. 4 junior in the world.

Leach a double semifinalist

Jagger Leach will turn 18 in June. And he verbally committed to playing college tennis at Texas Christian University nearly a year and a half ago. He officially signed with them last November for the incoming class of 2025 along with a couple of other top-15 American kids.

And after his Australian Open junior efforts, he found himself as the No. 4 junior in the world in the ITF rankings on Monday after finishing the 2024 season ranked No. 21.

Leach reached the junior boys’ singles semifinal, and the doubles semifinal as the No. 1 seeded team with Oliver Bonding of Great Britain.

The two won the title together at the tuneup event in Traralgon the previous week.

Here are some moments from Leach’s week.

This was his third-round match against the Swiss player Flynn Thomas, in which he had match point as he tried to serve it out in straight sets – only to finally win it more than an hour later, 10-6 in the third-set match tiebreak.

Fun times on the doubles court

As serious as the juniors are – especially juniors at the Grand Slam level – there is time in the doubles event for kids to … just be kids.

A case in point was the first-round doubles match between Jagger and Golding, and Yannick Theodor Alexandrescou of Romania and Thilo Behrmann of Austria.

This one was good fun for a lot of reasons.

It started with the massive size difference between 17-year-old Alexandrescou (ranked No. 34 Monday, also a career high) and Behrmann, at a career high No. 38).

Behrmann is the taller kid.

And if you get the sense that he’s channeling early 80s Andrea Jaeger, you wouldn’t be wrong.