Australian Open: Nervous Ash Barty makes a slow start

When the world No 1 dropped the first set in 44 minutes, the unthinkable was on the cards.

Ash Barty stretches out in her match against Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko. Picture: AAP

The masses dived into their hoodies and huddled under their umbrellas. They squealed and shrieked and ran into Rod Laver Arena to watch Ash Barty and get out of the rain. She gave them a tense win before they sprinted back to the tram stops and taxi ranks. No one was complaining about the weather or the result. Manna from heaven.

Barty made a painfully slow start to her 5-7 6-1 6-1 victory over Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko. She was tense. Flat. Error-prone. Nervous. Which made Tsurenko nervous. Which made the crowd so palpably nervous it barely made a peep for a long while there. When the world No 1 dropped the first set in a 44-minute blaze of wild, confusing, energy-sapping mistakes, the unthinkable was on the cards at the Australian Open: Barty might not even make it to stumps on the first night.

BLOG: How the match unfolded

She was agitated, fidgety, telling her box that she could not get it right, gesticulating, grimacing, huffing, puffing, sweating, fretting. A small leak in the RLA roof left droplets on the court that constantly needed to be mopped up by ball kids. When it rains …

She recovered. Match point was followed by a collective phew. One down, half-a-dozen to go in her quest to win the Open. But she would need to improve immeasurably on this stuttering performance.

“I think in the first set, it was still in my control,” Barty said afterwards.

“I was just rushing a little bit, trying to finish off points too early.

“Once I was able to get my physicality into it, I felt a lot more comfortable and I think I was able to look after my service games a little better, and not get behind in the set which was important.

“At the start of the second set, I sharpened up and did what I needed to do.”

The 23-time major champion Serena Williams, by comparison, had already stamped her authority on the electric blue court.

Their form could not be more contrasting. It is Williams whose standard this year has been more compelling than anyone in the women’s draw. Barty’s win at the Adelaide International was testament to her court smarts and ability to think her way through matches, but it also masked the fact she was frustratingly out of sorts.

A laser light show lit up RLA as she walked to the court. She talked non-stop to her entourage in the corridor, stretching, touching her toes, clearly impatient to get started. Things were running late. She looked at the clock on the wall, looked at the TV screens she was meant to be on, looked at her feet, looked at her coach Craig Tyzzer as if to say, what’s the delay?

Her accreditation pass was tied to her racquet bag, just in case nobody knew who she was. When she got to the end of the walkway to RLA, a security guard told her, “Down the stairs.” Just in case she had forgotten where she was. For the first set, she played as if she had.

The toss of the coin was not for heads or tails. “ANZ or Evonne?” asked the umpire. Barty picked Evonne and elected to serve. She lost that game, and the next. You could hear a pin drop. A settling-in period was to be expected. She had been playing in Adelaide 48 hours earlier and even though the courts were similar, they were far from identical. She made 19 unforced errors in an opening set of pokes and prods that gave Tsurenko all the help she needed.

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Barty ran through the second set in just 26 minutes when she reduced the mistakes to just five. What she needed was a fast start to the deciding set and with the crowd so anxious it felt like everyone had their hands over their eyes, she snuck away. There was uncertainty, but no panic. She did enough to advance to round two but the performance provided more questions than answers.