Talented, well-liked: Can Barty also emulate Goolagong’s finals win?

Nineteen-eighty was a wonderful year to be young and living in London. I saw The Who live at the Rainbow Theatre, The Clash at the Hammersmith Palais, Evonne Goolagong play Chris Evert in the ladies’ singles final at Wimbledon.

It was Our Evonne up against the metronomic Miss America, although to the stuffy custodians of the Centre Court scoreboard it was Mrs R Cawley v Mrs J.M.Lloyd. The latter was the favourite: the reigning French Open champion and Wimbledon finalist the previous two years. Besides, nine years had passed since Goolagong’s first and only victory at the All England Club.

Elation for the new women’s singles champion in 1980, Evonne Cawley.Credit: Syndication International

But that afternoon Goolagong flowed around the court like a burbling brook, conjuring delicate drop-shots and deftly angled passing shots. She pulled off backhand overhead winners as if she were flicking away flies. Almost 29, she became the first mother to win at Wimbledon in 66 years.

No Australian female has won at Wimbledon, or even made the final, since then. It’s so long ago that even Roger Federer, now considered a veteran, hadn’t been born then. So how fitting it is that another proud Indigenous woman who plays a similar game, with flair and finesse, now has a chance to break the drought. Our Evonne has morphed into Our Ash – though on Saturday’s scoreboard she will be Ashleigh. They are mates, and Barty has paid tribute to her mentor by wearing a similar white dress: a nice touch, though sportswriters feel squeamish discussing scalloped hems.

They have something else in common: they enjoy the game. Not everyone does. Andre Agassi declared he hated tennis “with a dark and secret passion”. Rafael Nadal scowls. Andy Murray grimaces. Naomi Osaka has taken time-out to deal with her demons. Barty, meanwhile, has been saying how much fun she’s having and how lucky she is to be playing, especially with the world as it is. Midway through her tense semi-final against Angie Kerber she gave a sheepish grin after a wayward forehand nearly clocked a ball-boy.

Barty (right) is looking to emulate Evonne Goolagong Cawley’s Wimbledon heroics.Credit: Getty Images

Like Evonne, Ash is popular with her peers. Again, it doesn’t always happen that way. Maria Sharapova was infamously icy. But players past and present line up to offer character references. After their fourth-round tussle, French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova said: “Ash is amazing. She knows how to play. She’s Number One. She’s there for a reason... Also, Ash is a really good person.”

Serena Williams, as competitive as they come, has called her “the sweetest, cutest girl on tour. She’s so nice.” And, oh yes, ”she has a great game.” One that is very different to her own. Serena swings her racquet like a Hemsworth hammer, Barty like an artist’s brush.

She is the antithesis of the Ugly Aussie (yes, Bernard Tomic, I’m looking at you). And after wretched reports of abuse in swimming and gymnastics, this is a positive women’s sports story.

But only half a dozen years ago the idea of Ash Barty contesting a Wimbledon final would have seemed improbable, even though she won the junior title in 2011 when just 15. Despite some subsequent success – runner-up in three Grand Slam doubles tournaments while still a teenager – she lost her way and her love of the game. And so, aged 18 in 2014, she just walked away. “If I’m being 100 per cent honest,” she said later, “it happened way too soon. I wasn’t ready. I just wanted to go back to Queensland, refresh, be a normal chick.”

Barty has paid tribute to her mentor Evonne Goolagong by wearing a dress similar in design to the one Goolagong wore at Wimbledon in 1980.Credit: Twi

It took both courage and an impressive degree of maturity for Barty to take time-out from top-level tennis. She played cricket; played golf (Tiger Woods admired her swing); went fishing; chilled. An extended break probably saved her from the emotional and physical burnout that truncated the careers of so many talented young women – including Jennifer Capriati, Jelena Dokic and Martina

Hingis – youngest-ever Grand Slam champion at 16; retired at 22. Hingis is another Barty fan: “I just love the variety of her game – it’s not just boom boom and full power.”

By 2016 Barty was back on the tour. In 2019 she won the French Open and claimed the top ranking she still holds. Now she stands on the brink of her greatest triumph. An interested spectator during her semi-final was a former Number One, Billie Jean King, who once said of a rival: “She was so

elegant when she played – so interesting; so versatile. And such a good person. Everybody wanted her as a friend.”

She was talking about Evonne. But it might have been Ash. Forty-one years on from a final quickly eclipsed by the Borg-McEnroe classic on the same court a day later, there’s a sense of history repeating. Things have changed, though. Back then, nobody used the term ‘Indigenous’. And it’s no longer cool to liken a lapse in concentration to “going walkabout”. Still, Evonne of 1980 is Ash today. London is calling.

Alan Attwood won a Walkley Award for coverage of sport in 1998.