section_path: Early life and background
section_name: Early life and background
paragraph_text: Early life and background
  
  Keys was born on February 17, 1995, in Rock Island, one of the Quad Cities in northwestern Illinois. Her parents Rick and Christine are both attorneys, and her father was a Division III All-American college basketball player at Augustana College. She has an older sister named Sydney and two younger sisters named Montana and Hunter, none of whom play tennis. Keys' passion for tennis started at a young age. Her interest in the sport arose from watching Wimbledon on television when she was four years old. Keys asked her parents for a white tennis dress like the one Venus Williams was wearing, and they offered to get her one if she started playing tennis. Her father said that after this bargain, "All did was try to hit balls into the next yard — home runs."
  
  Keys started playing tennis at the Quad-City Tennis Club in Moline. She began taking lessons regularly at seven and began competing in tournaments at the age of nine. When she was ten years old, she moved to Florida with her mother and younger sisters so that she could train at the Evert Tennis Academy founded by John Evert and also partly run by his sister, International Tennis Hall of Famer Chris Evert. At first, John said that he "thought she was very athletic, a raw talent physically. She definitely needed to be cleaned up with her strokes." Keys noted that her game was very different when she was starting out at the academy compared to how it is as a pro, saying, "I didn't like groundstrokes, I didn't like long points that much, so I would just run into the net and try and volley." Nonetheless, Keys's coaches had high hopes for her. Chris said, "At 12 years old, she's pretty much an all-court player; she's not one-dimensional, which is pretty rare in this day and age."
  
  Keys was born on February 17, 1995, in Rock Island, one of the Quad Cities in northwestern Illinois. Her parents Rick and Christine are both attorneys, and her father was a Division III All-American college basketball player at Augustana College. She has an older sister named Sydney and two younger sisters named Montana and Hunter, none of whom play tennis. Keys' passion for tennis started at a young age. Her interest in the sport arose from watching Wimbledon on television when she was four years old. Keys asked her parents for a white tennis dress like the one Venus Williams was wearing, and they offered to get her one if she started playing tennis. Her father said that after this bargain, "All did was try to hit balls into the next yard — home runs."
  
  Keys started playing tennis at the Quad-City Tennis Club in Moline. She began taking lessons regularly at seven and began competing in tournaments at the age of nine. When she was ten years old, she moved to Florida with her mother and younger sisters so that she could train at the Evert Tennis Academy founded by John Evert and also partly run by his sister, International Tennis Hall of Famer Chris Evert. At first, John said that he "thought she was very athletic, a raw talent physically. She definitely needed to be cleaned up with her strokes." Keys noted that her game was very different when she was starting out at the academy compared to how it is as a pro, saying, "I didn't like groundstrokes, I didn't like long points that much, so I would just run into the net and try and volley." Nonetheless, Keys's coaches had high hopes for her. Chris said, "At 12 years old, she's pretty much an all-court player; she's not one-dimensional, which is pretty rare in this day and age."