With new coach alongside, Stearns embraces red clay and upsets Keys in Rome

ROME -- Peyton Stearns delivered the first major upset of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, rallying past No. 5 seed Madison Keys 2-6, 6-2, 7-6(3) to reach her second consecutive WTA 1000 Round of 16. She’ll next face Naomi Osaka.

Rome: Draws | Scores | Order of play

Stearns also won their only previous meeting, in Toronto last year, though that came by retirement after Keys pulled out with a leg injury while trailing 3-0 in the third set. In the rematch, the 23-year-old finished the job to notch her second career Top 10 win following her defeat of Zheng Qinwen in Dubai three months ago.

Stearns twice led by a break in the third set, only for Keys to peg her back both times and force a tiebreak -- but Stearns came up with a terrific drop shot-pass combination to gain a decisive 5-3 lead.

Currently at a career high of No. 42 in the PIF WTA Rankings, Stearns has historically thrived on red clay. Both of her Hologic WTA Tour finals have come on clay -- a runner-up finish at Bogota 2023 and a maiden title in Rabat last year -- and she is coming off a run to the Madrid fourth round, including an upset of Amanda Anisimova.

That's unusual for an American player -- as Stearns herself points out, red clay courts are rare in the United States. And it's surprising even to her. She grew up on indoor hard courts in Cincinnati, and when she encountered country club green clay courts, she "hated them." They didn't reward her aggressive instincts, and she couldn't wait to get back to hard courts.

Though this suspicion carried over to red clay when she first played on it as a junior, when Stearns rediscovered it as a pro it was love at second sight. She had learned how to slide on the surface and discovered how much it could magnify her heavy topspin forehand.

In recent weeks, Stearns' confidence on the surface has also grown thanks to new coach Blaz Kavcic. She found herself unexpectedly without a coach in April, when Tom Hill left her team to reunite with Maria Sakkari. Stearns took to social media to advertise the vacancy: "Looking for a new coach … DMs are open," she wrote.

"I was going to keep things private, but other people didn't keep things private," she said. "So I went to social media and had some fun with it. I got some DMs that were quite funny."

Kavcic wasn't one of them, though. Stearns was connected to him through a more traditional method -- a mutual friend put them in touch. The Slovenian, a former ATP No.68, was also suddenly available after his player, Max Purcell, was suspended for a doping-related violation. Kavcic and Stearns began working together ahead of Madrid; back-to-back WTA 1000 Rounds of 16 have immediately followed.

"The results, of course, they show," she said. "But also my level of happiness and wanting to be out on court is much greater now. He came with a spark and has really helped me fine-tune some things in my game that needed it ... When you get more confidence in certain shots, you're able to do a lot more. Going into Madrid, I hadn't had a lot of wins this year, but I got that confidence through him."

Madrid was a trial run, but in truth Stearns didn't even need match time to make up her mind.

"Even before my first round, I was like -- 'You're hired, I like you!'" she said. "We mesh really well. He's willing to really, really work and I like to work too."