How Ash Barty won by walking away
Tennis has a cruel tradition of devouring its young. Ash Barty was almost a victim.
Tennis is a sport with a cruel tradition of devouring its young. Players turn pro at fragile ages, when they should be studying algebra, begging to get driver’s permits, or attending awkward dances in gymnasiums.
Sometimes, they’re launched even earlier than that — and the results are ragged, at best. The occasional prodigy like Serena or Venus Williams will metamorphose into a champion, but the grind of tennis life prematurely wears down much more talent than it elevates.
There was a moment when it appeared Ashleigh “Ash” Barty might be another one of tennis’s early casualties. She was canny enough to realise this herself. A junior dynamo from Australia, the winner of a Wimbledon junior title in 2011 at age 15, Barty fully walked away from the sport in 2014 on her own accord, citing a desire to refresh herself mentally and live as a “normal teenage girl.”
It was a transformative choice, with a Bo Jackson-style twist. Barty would leave tennis for more than a year, during which she did normal teenage things, but also threw her talents into playing professional cricket — and was more than pretty good at it.
Barty eventually found her way back to tennis in 2016, but 2019 has proven to be her breakthrough. On Saturday, the 23-year-old — who possess the sort of well-rounded game that delights the old school pros — beat Marketa Vondrousova 6-1, 6-3 to win the women’s singles title at the French Open, fulfilling her early promise with the first major tournament victory of her career, but doing it as a better-balanced young adult.
It was a powerful statement about not only where she was, but where she’d been. Barty said there was no chance she’d have reached this tennis pinnacle without leaving the sport a few years ago.
“I needed time to step away, live a normal life, because this tennis life certainly isn’t normal,” she said. “I think I needed time to grow as a person.”
Barty, the tournament’s eighth seed, is the first Australian woman to triumph at Roland Garros since Margaret Court won here in 1973. Her victory is a fresh milestone for tennis in Australia, a nation that has a wildly rich history of tennis greats, but has been without a major singles title winner since Samantha Stosur took the US Open in 2011.
Barty also serves as Tennis Australia’s Indigenous Ambassador — her father, Robert, is a Ngarigo Indigenous Australian. After winning, Barty scanned her new hardware, the Suzanne Lenglen Trophy, for the name of Evonne Goolagong Cawley, the Indigenous Australian tennis legend who won this title in 1971.
“I spotted her name,” said Barty, adding that she’d texted with Goolagong Cawley earlier in the tournament. “I’ll give her a call a little bit later on.”
Meanwhile, Barty had also heard from old cricket teammates, some of whom remain her closest friends.
“It truly was an amazing period of my life,” she said of her cricket sabbatical. “I met an amazing group of people who couldn’t care less whether I could hit a tennis ball or not. They accepted me, and they got to know Ash Barty. They got to know me. I still have those relationships to this very day.”
Barty’s win over Vondrousova — in a match delayed slightly by Dominic Thiem’s marathon semifinal victory over Novak Djokovic — came much easier than her chaotic semifinal win Friday against American teenager Amanda Anisimova, in which Barty needed three sets after blowing a 5-0 lead in the first.
Barty acknowledged her “love-hate” relationship with clay court tennis — “I was just worried about falling over,” she said — but over the past two weeks, she reached a truce with the fickle red dirt and windy conditions at Roland Garros.
Versus Vondrousova, an unseeded 19-year-old from the Czech Republic, Barty stayed composed and in control. She used her potent return to nullify Vondrousova’s serve and was never put into any kind of trouble. She stayed confident — “I know when I play my best tennis, I can match it against the world’s best” — but aware of what was before her.
“I just kept saying to myself, ‘I may never get this opportunity ever again,’ so [I tried to] grab it with both hands,” Barty said.
She was still a little speechless. There was a time, not long ago, when Barty didn’t think this sort of magical tennis afternoon would happen.
“Tennis is a very unique sport — you can play professionally when you’re 13 or 14,” she said. “It’s about creating your own path, creating your own journey, and embracing it. There’s no formula how to become a professional tennis player. It’s your own journey, your own path, your own experience.”
Now Ash Barty’s journey included a French Open title. Because of a wise choice to walk away and reboot, she may now just be getting started.
- The Wall Street Journal