THERE was a common theme across both singles finals at the Adelaide International, with both winners being the player seeded lower out of the two combatants.

In the women’s final, Madison Keys overcame an injury scare and good friend Jessica Pegula to win 6-3 4-6 6-1 and claim her ninth career singles title.

Keys took a medical time out part way through the match, but came back to win the match and win her second Adelaide International title after also winning in 2022.  

“It was just one of those things that kind of appeared and luckily, with the magic of tape, things felt a little bit better and I was able to get through the match,” Keys said, speaking about the injury time out.

“Once the immediate kind of panic of ‘oh no, something is happening’ (ended), I think I finally relaxed and was able to refocus on the match.

“And in some ways it just made me go for it a little bit more and go after things a little bit quicker – luckily they were going in.

“In some ways it helped me be a little bit more aggressive.”

The victorious Keys smashed a whopping 10 aces past Pegula, and also finished with a better first serve in percentage and percentage of points won off her first serve.

Meanwhile in the men’s final, Felix Auger-Aliassime prevailed over second seed Sebastian Korda 6-3 3-6 6-1.

Auger-Aliassime was really made to work for his sixth career singles title, after not making the most of break point chances in the second and Korda ultimately took the set. However, Auger-Aliassime regrouped in the final set, and broke Korda early and never looked back.

The Canadian got the upper hand in the aces department as both players served the same number of double faults.

Although Korda had the better first serve in percentage, crucially Auger-Aliassime won a higher percentage of points off both first serve and second serve.