Australia

Is tennis entering the age of Ash Barty?


If any doubts remained about Ash Barty’s position at the very top of women’s tennis they were thoroughly dispelled during her brilliant Wimbledon campaign.

When Barty won the French Open in 2019, obliterating then-relatively unknown Czech Marketa Vondrousova 6-1, 6-3 in the final, it seemed like Barty got the dream run through the tournament.

In a way she did. Madison Keys was the only seed she beat, but upon reflection there were names like Pegula, Kenin, Keys, Anisimova — not bad wins at all.

But if Roland Garros 2019 was the hors d’oeuvre, Wimbledon 2021 was the main course and perhaps the true beginning of a long-running Barty party.

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Ash Barty’s family watches her Wimbledon grand slam victory from home.

While Barty surely shone under the bright lights of Paris, it was in this somewhat wet and dreary English summer she blossomed, specifically on July 10 under a closed roof, rain teeming outside.

Inside it was steamy.

A full crowd back at The Championships contained celebrities and royalty as well as ticketholders who all wanted to see something rare in the past decade — a competitive ladies’ singles final.

A young woman in tennis whites reacts emotionally on a grass court in front of cheering fans.
Barty is overcome with emotion after clinching victory over Karolina Pliskova.(

Reuters: Toby Melville

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Unsurprisingly, Karolína Plíšková obliged them, but her match was mercurial to the extreme.

And for Barty that must have been so hard to play against.

For the first four games of the match, Plíšková seemed to have forgotten how to even hit a tennis ball let alone at the level required against the world number one.

But sure enough, like the professional Plíšková is, eventually her game came back to her as the crowd cheered her almost exclusively at times, hopeful of a match. Up until midway through the second set they did not have one.

But they sure got one when Plíšková took the second set and forced a third before Barty steeled herself to take out the match in three.

Karolina Pliskova holds her hand to her face to cover tears.
For Karolína Plíšková, her Wimbledon final loss brought out what she said were rare tears.(

Ben Solomon – Pool/Getty Images

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Did Barty serve for it once and falter? Absolutely. But when it comes to closing out a grand slam, she is hardly on her own there. And, in fact it, was her proudest moment that she was able to mentally regroup.

Read the full play by play from our match blog

“I knew I had to bring my very best level and I was really proud of myself the way I was able to reset and just keep going, keep chipping away at the start of that third set and hold my nerve there in the end,” Barty said after the match.

The crowd was just one challenge though and Plíšková another.

For Barty this ran deeper, and she said she barely slept the night before the championship match.

“I was thinking of all the what-ifs,” Barty said.

History was also weighing on her shoulders. 

Forty-one years of it to be precise, and if that dearth of Australian sporting success is hard enough to get over then remember Barty was also trying to emulate fellow inspirational Indigenous hero Evonne Goolagong Cawley, right down to the scalloped hemline of her dress.

“I just hope I made Evonne proud,” she said.

A young female tennis player in whites reacts with joy on a grass court in front of a packed stadium.
The Centre Court crowd rises for Ash Barty’s Wimbledon triumph.(

Reuters: Paul Childs

)

If the reaction is anything to go by, Barty’s performance — during NAIDOC week — has made the nation proud.

She also slew one other demon and that is the notion by some she’s not a worthy world number one.

While modern women’s tennis is littered with world number ones who have either never won a slam or only claimed one — Plíšková, Jelena Jankovic, Dinara Safina, Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki are names that come to mind — Barty now has two.

There are those who will always say she’s yet to beat Serena Williams and she’s yet to beat the currently absent Naomi Osaka at a slam, but at Wimbledon she beat players of real calibre.

Osaka was away fighting mental health issues, an aging Serena injured her ankle and Barty persevered and thrived, despite her own injury.

She fought past adversity not for the first time in her career. Don’t forget she left tennis entirely for a period to play cricket at a high level, before returning to the sport and thriving.

Not too many can come in cold to a grand slam, having retired from their previous tournament with a serious injury, and then get the job done. But Barty did both those things.

And she also did them while dispelling the quality myth. She beat some of the best.

Beating Plíšková (a 16-time winner on tour) in the final was one thing but Barty also beat the crowd in round one and an overwhelming tide of emotion for Spanish player Carla Suarez Navarro, who had just beaten cancer. Barty even led the crowd in a standing ovation.

She also beat the reigning French Open champion and one of the most in-form players in tennis, Barbora Krejčíková, in round four and in the semis a three-time slam champion and one of the best women’s grasscourt players of this era in Angelique Kerber.

It was quite the list and Barty beat them all with a game that is both different and at times beautiful.

Her win at Wimbledon might just have relieved a few weights from her shoulders and now the sky might well be the limit.



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