Really? We're all fans of Simona here, but let's not kid ourselves, Simona was plain awful the entire match. During those 4 games that she won in the 2nd set, Keys was just hitting one UE after the other. The stats don't lie, Simona only managed 6 winners in 17 games, 32 UE's and only held serve twice in the match, mindblowing numbers. I think there was a combination of reasons that lead to this, it was her first match of the season, she couldn't immediately adjust to the extremely fast surface in Australia or to the high temperatures there etc. But we can't use those things as excuses for her lose, she played really badly and she lost, that's it. She just needs to play a lot better at the AO, if she manages that, the result will be a deep run there.
I think CheddarChomper has a point, not only Simona's game was way off, also her on court behaviour was completely different compared to her matches from last year. To me, that just shows something was wrong with her psyche, she just wasn't in the zone. I'm pretty sure she will look much better in her next match. I like the fact she is also playing doubles here, she needs as many matches under her belt as possible before the AO.
I am surprised to see people here unware of the fact that Adrian Marcu was unable to travel anymore with Simona at tournaments, therefore he was no longer an appropriate coach for her. And, tbh, he wasn't all that great anyway, his past results as a coach were extremely unimpressive. But Simona should have hired a new coach, one with a very good CV that would help her to improve her game and her ranking even more. But still, being coachless couldn't have possibly caused such a big fall in her game.