Humble Barty rides perfect storm to the top as rivals hit the skids

With 27 different winners from 31 tournaments so far this year, little wonder the No 1 ranking is up for grabs.

Ashleigh Barty returns to Czech Republic's Barbora Strycova in their semi-final clash at the Birmingham Classic. Picture: AFP

Ash Barty’s first overseas trip was to Europe. She was 16 years of age. Gone for seven weeks, the dear little thing cried every night. “I remember telling Mum I hated it,” Barty says. “Part of me still does.”

She’s always loved tennis like Juliet loved Romeo. But the travel, time away from home and emphasis on results complicated matters. Suffice it to say, this year’s European jaunt has become more enjoyable. Decent hotels. Work’s going well, Mum. Her pay packets have gone through the roof. Sufficient funds were found on her ATM card to get her parents to England. As she’s said upon winning the French Open, “What the f . . k!”

She’s kind of wishing she chose different words but oh my golly gosh, she’s also understood it’s been an entirely appropriate reaction. The swiftness of her rise has been f...king staggering.

Pending overnight results, she has just become the No 1 tennis player in the world. At worst, she’s No 2. Winning the French Open was one thing. To be busting down the door of the peak ranking — that’s a whole other ball game.

You would normally win a couple of majors and a stack of regular WTA Tours before that even came into the picture. In January, Barty was the world No 15 when her year began at the humble old Sydney International. Unseeded. The world top 10 then was: 1 Simona Halep. 2 Angelique Kerber. 3. Caroline Wozniacki. 4. Elina Svitolina. 5. Naomi Osaka. 6. Sloane Stephens. 7. Petra Kvitova. 8. Karolina Pliskova. 9 Kiki Bertens. 10 Daria Kasatkina.

Osaka was top of the pile when she won the Australian Open. She’d needed two consecutive major triumphs to get there. Since then they’ve all fallen off a cliff, holding hands and doing it together, while Barty marched onwards and upwards.

The WTA’s first 31 tournaments this year had 26 winners. That was an incredible development that threw the rankings race wide open. It’s become the perfect storm for a 23-year-old hitting her straps right when entrenched members of the top 10 began hitting the skids.

It was only in late March, when Barty beat Kvitova at the Miami Open, that she first entered the top 10. That should have triggered a year or so of inching closer to No 1. But Osaka and others kept losing. Barty kept winning. In the end, everyone would get the ranking they deserved.

Her Roland Garros win and deep run at Birmingham last week — coupled with dozens of other results going her way — shot her within reach of joining Evonne Goolagong Cawley, John Newcombe, Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt as the only Australians to have topped the world rankings since their introduction in 1973.

“My first overseas trip … I cried every night,” Barty says in a WTA video called My Story.

“All I was thinking of was getting home to my family.”

Barty’s father, Robert says: “There was one year when I think we saw her for 27 days in a year. Now that’s pretty tough for a 16 or 17-year-old kid, especially coming from a family as close as ours. She just decided that was enough … and then she comes home one day from cricket and says, ‘Hey Dad, I just scored my first century!’ ”

Of quitting tennis for cricket, Barty says: “I was just able to go back, refresh, be a normal chick. It was just finding myself. I met a great group of friends through cricket. I found a way to still get my individual competitiveness out when I was batting but then having the beauty of, if it wasn’t my day it was someone else’s in the team. The coach really helped me with that. With understanding it’s not about you. It doesn’t have to be about you. I think that really struck a chord with me.”

Osaka was too shy to make a big deal of becoming No 1 when she did it at Melbourne Park. But she admitted that when no one else was around, she planned to tell her sister, “Guess who the best tennis player in the world is? Me!”

Barty would be similarly low-key in such a moment. Three years ago, when she returned to tennis, she was outside the top 600. In the quarter-finals at Birmingham, former world No 1 Venus Williams huffed and puffed and did all she could to blow Barty down. She groaned, grunted, screamed and used every weapon of intimidation she had. The death stares. The vocals that became louder as the points grew more important.

Williams lost in straight sets to the quiet-as-a-mouse Australian. The unsung heroes of all this? Her older sisters, Sara and Ali. “Early on, Mum and Dad weren’t overly well off,” Barty says. “For me to be able to get tennis lessons every single week, Ali and Sara had to give up their sport.”