“I would mostly say maybe don’t take those losses so hard,” she said. “Things eventually work out a little bit better.”

She has had plenty of disappointments and many tears. I recall interviewing Keys in Paris at the French Open in 2013 after she lost to Monica Puig in the second round in damp, heavy conditions that blunted her phenomenal power and left her spraying ground strokes to all the wrong places.

Overcome with emotion and fighting unsuccessfully to keep her composure, Keys, then 18, was succinct when we spoke about her implosion.

“It must be hard to be patient when you know you have it in you,” I suggested.

“Yes,” she acknowledged, her broad face full of a perfectionist’s pain.

But the stars of tennis — with its nearly year-round tour and global grind — are clearly onto something at this stage. Less can eventually lead to more, particularly if you’ve already put in your 10,000 hours to achieve mastery.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have prospered this season after returning reinvigorated from extended injury breaks. Now Keys and Stephens have reached their first major finals after having had time to reassess their sport and its vagaries from a distance. Watch out for Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, both dealing with injuries, in January.

“I think you take a lot of pressure off of yourself. I know for me last year, my only focus was to get to Singapore,” Keys said, referring to the elite eight-women WTA finals. “I kind of lost sight of how much I actually loved the game because it was just every week, it was just chasing points. That’s all I could focus on.”