“Diana Schneider Was Stealing All…,” Madison Keys Reveals How Her Madrid Blackout Experience Took an Adventurous Turn

Madison Keys came into the Madrid Open looking for a reset. After a red-hot start to the season where she stunned both Iga Swiatek and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open, her form dipped. A semifinal loss at the BNP Paribas Open was followed by early exits in Miami and Charleston. But at the Caja Mágica, she seemed to have found her rhythm again. That rhythm, however, was interrupted literally when the lights went out.

On Monday, a sweeping power outage hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. Millions were left without electricity, and chaos followed. In Madrid, the outage didn’t spare the tennis tournament. The electronic line-calling system failed. Scoreboards went dark. Players and umpires had to rely on their eyes and instincts. Only three singles and two doubles matches were completed before play was suspended for the rest of the day.

Madison Keys’ match against Donna Vekic in the Round of 16 was also suspended. So what did Madison Keys do when the lights went out?” I knew the moment the lights went out and didn’t immediately come back on, I was like, ‘This is a thing. This isn’t, like, going to be good,'” she told Tennis Channel. “Just, you know, tried to just kind of chill, laid on the gym floor, took a nap. I saw Diana Schneider was stealing all of the cushions and everything and made herself a nice little bed. There were multiple of us that were like, ‘If she moves, we’re taking it.’ 100%.”

She added, “We were here until about 7:30 last night, but honestly, I, at one point, thought we were going to be sleeping here. So, major props to the tournament staff for getting us out of here and getting us back to the hotels. And I know that food was kind of pretty scarce, so we were lucky. The catering here was phenomenal. They kept bringing out— they were like, ‘We have dessert.’ And Robin Montgomery and I were like, ‘What? Dessert? We’ll be right there.'”

Other players reacted in their own ways. Taylor Fritz kept it light on X. “Have they tried unplugging and plugging it back in?” he wondered. Peyton Stearns added her own twist. Two days after posting, “What’s done in the dark comes to the light,” she followed it up with, “I didn’t mean this literally……”

Australian player Alex de Minaur shared a laugh, too. “Don’t mind this off the grid thing,” he posted on X with three laughing emojis. “On the third walk of the day and finally got some service to check on the rest of the world.” His fiancée Katie Boulter wasn’t buying it. “Imagine blaming a country blackout for not texting me back all day. Elite behavior,” she replied.

Coco Gauff was in the middle of her on-court interview after a 6-4, 6-2 win over Belinda Bencic when everything shut down. “ put this in the history books. In all seriousness, I hope everyone stays safe ,” she commented on X.

Once the tournament resumed, Keys defeated Vekic in straight sets to set up an encounter with a familiar opponent-Iga Swiatek.

Iga Swiatek defeats Madison Keys in one of the “weirdest matches”

The last time they played, at the Australian Open, Madison Keys had stunned the Pole in straight sets. This time, she started strong again, handing Swiatek a rare 6-0 bagel in just 24 minutes.

But the four-time Roland Garros champion found her clay-court instincts just in time. Swiatek stormed back for a 0-6, 6-3, 6-2 win. “It was one of the weirdest matches I’ve ever played,” Swiatek said on court after the match. “Madi was just playing perfectly at the beginning and I wasn’t really proactive with anything. But I didn’t feel like it was that bad; I felt the ball well. It just went super long most of the time. I just tried to play a bit shorter, put it in. I think I let Madi do a little bit more mistakes by putting the ball back.”

Swiatek made 25 unforced errors, while Keys made 35. But the first set result was notable—this was the first time Swiatek had been bagelled since Daria Kasatkina did it in Eastbourne in June 2021. With the win, Swiatek moved on to face the winner of Coco Gauff and Mirra Andreeva in the semifinals.

Meanwhile, the American will head to the Italian Open for one final tune-up before Roland Garros. The 30-year-old’s Madrid run may be over, but she made her presence felt both on and off the court. The lights may have gone out, but the drama didn’t. Can Madison Keys grab another title before the clay-court season reaches its biggest stage?

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