There's no uniform key to success on the WTA Tour, but the one Angelique Kerber hit upon at this Australian Open might be about as close as you can get.
"I'm not looking too far ahead," the No. 21 seed told Tennis Channel in a postmatch interview following her 6-1, 6-2 demolition of No. 17 seed Madison Keys. "But also, I am not looking back."
What Kerber is really saying is that she's "living in the present."
It's an easy phrase to say, a cliché. But it's difficult to live by those words. Players are haunted by losses to certain rivals, tormented by missed opportunities. They get stressed out over defending points in upcoming tournaments.
Kerber has re-fired that marvelous, jackrabbit-quick game. That aggressive element that carried her to the peak of the game in 2016? It went into remission last year, when she began compulsively looking over her shoulder or anxiously trying to imagine the future. But now it's back.
Once again, Kerber is playing with the rare clarity and confidence of a Grand Slam champion. It has been that way from the start of this tournament. Keys also was learning to live in the present again, after a dispiriting loss to her good friend Sloane Stephens in the 2017 US Open final. Keys and Kerber were the two dominant players through the first four rounds of play in Melbourne.
But Keys faltered in this critical quarterfinal. Kerber did not.
"I knew what to expect," Kerber told reporters after the blowout. "Madison is a hard hitter. She served good. So I was trying to playing from the first point aggressive and moving good and also bringing a lot of balls back. I think this is always my game."
Keys might have used identical words to describe her game plan, but she was unable to come anywhere near implementing it. Keys' serve was the most fearsome weapon on the court -- at least coming into the match -- but she had no aces and four double faults. Keys won just 43 percent of her first serves, and that was as much a tribute to the return of Kerber as any failure on Keys' part.
With Keys' serve effectively neutralized, consistency became paramount. From the start, Kerber established her superiority in that department as well. Even on those occasions when Keys seemed like she might claw her way into a rally, and a game, Kerber came up with a spectacular shot to extend the rally or force an error. She made just seven unforced errors to Keys' 25. It was a masterful performance by Kerber.
"I think in the first set I played really passive," Keys told reporters afterward. "And because of that, I feel like I wasn't moving as well, wasn't accelerating. I wasn't very happy with how I played today. But still, I was fighting and trying to stay in the match. Sometimes you just don't play very well out there."
This is a significant blow to Keys' campaign. She made her Grand Slam breakthrough here in 2015, blasting her way to the semifinals with wins over, among others, Petra Kvitova and Venus Williams. Keys loved how fast the courts in Melbourne are this year. More importantly, she was thrilled to be fully healthy again (she was plagued by a nagging wrist injury for parts of last year) and felt fit and well-rested after taking off almost the entire fall.
But she was overmatched Wednesday, which begs this question: Just when, if ever, will her "learning experience" end and the big-time winning begin?
"I feel like being more consistent about making second weeks [at majors] and having runs has helped me manage the moment," Keys said the other day. "But more than anything, it's just focusing on the match in front of me and not thinking about, 'Oh, I could make the final.' It's more, 'I have a quarterfinal,' and that's what I need to focus on and not look past that."
Keys added that she has gotten better at managing her emotions and "not getting too far ahead of myself."
There's that idea again. Getting ahead of yourself. Looking back. Being anywhere but the present. It's tempting to be impatient with Keys, at least until you stop to realize that she is 22. Kerber was 28 when she won her first major.
Sometimes, it takes a lot of past to teach you how to live in the present.