Kindred spirits Barty and Payne plan a get together
Plans are afoot for Ash Barty to meet Michelle Payne before her Australian Open semi-final against Sofia Kenin on Thursday.
You can imagine Ash Barty as Michelle Payne. You can imagine Payne as Barty. You can imagine Barty putting on some silks and winning the Melbourne Cup and telling the knockers in her male-dominated industry to get stuffed.
You can imagine Payne whacking on some tennis gear and conquering the world and uttering Barty’s most memorable words: “Fear doesn’t get you anywhere, mate.” They are: peas in a pod.
Now a couple of kindred spirits are about to get together. Hopefully. Plans are afoot for Barty to meet the history-making Payne, for the first time, before her Australian Open semi-final against Sofia Kenin on Thursday.
They are two fiercely independent souls. They have needed courageousness before they have found their famousness. Payne is preparing horses for trials next week, with her trainer’s hat on, and she has to be in Perth on Friday, but she’s trying to juggle a hectic schedule to accept an invitation from Tennis Australia to travel from her Miners Rest farm to Melbourne Park. A seat inside Rod Laver Arena has her name on it.
Barty will get her wish of another daytime match, and this time she won’t even have to ask for it. The Nine Network was desperate for her quarter-final against Petra Kvitova to be staged in the ratings-friendly 7pm timeslot on Tuesday, but Barty wanted to face the Czech in the heat of the day.
Again to the liking of Barty after her 7-6 (8-6) 6-2 win, and again to the chagrin of the host broadcaster, the women’s semi-finals will be daytime fixtures. They always are. She will again receive her preference of a sunlit rather than a floodlit court.
In the players’ tunnel before the Kvitova match, Barty stood back as the towering Czech strode through. “After you,” Barty grinned before following her onto Rod Laver Arena. The toss of the coin was not a choice between heads and tails. Barty was told to choose between ANZ and Evonne. The bank and her mate. “Evonne, definitely, for me, please!” she grinned. The umpire told her: “Evonne it is.” She said: “Thanks. I’ll serve.”
Three more victories were needed to win the Australian Open. You would not have her at Prince Of Penzance odds.
Barty’s first service game against Kvitova sent us to 40-0, and then back to deuce, and then ad out, and then ad in, and then up, and then down, and then all around, and we had confirmation that a rollercoaster had whirred into action. Multiple break points came and went, both ways, centimetres between death and glory in a first set that was one hour and nine minutes of parry and thrust.
Barty scrambled like she was Rafael Nadal against Nick Kyrgios, sprinting right and left, just getting her racquet on the ball, making the Czech shot-maker make more shots than she wanted to. It was a streaky, error-strewn match that lacked rhyme or reason or rhythm. There was a sense the match hung on the tie-breaker, and so it did.
Payne was thrust into nationwide fame in the space of three minutes. The loss of privacy was immediate and took some getting used to. Barty has had more time to get used to her public notoriety. Payne grew into it, and so has Barty, evermore so.
There was still a deer-in-the-headlights quality to her after she won the French Open and then became the world No 1. Six months later, the ease of her on-court interview on Tuesday showed a 23-year old woman who was growing increasingly comfortable in her role as the face of her sport.
About to be interviewed by Jim Courier, she pointed at her mate, Casey Dellacqua, who was shying away from doing the Q and A herself. “Come on, come on,” Barty told her, ordering her to take the microphone from Courier.
“She’s got no choice,” Barty told the crowd. “Get your butt out here, girl.”
It was an insight into the real Barty, the piss-taking, wisecracking Barty, the Barty not always seen in formal interviews. Her mantra might be this: work hard, play hard. Dellacqua tried to get away. “You’ve got to do it,” Barty told her, embarrassing her, gloriously so. “You’ve got to.”
Dellacqua was shaking. Great match, she said, trying to do a proper interview, telling Barty she must be stoked to have reached the quarter-finals.
“I love putting you on the spot. That’s even better,” Barty said. The crowd was lapping it up. When Dellacqua mentioned Barty’s coach, Craig Tyzzer, who won last year’s WTA Coach of the Year award, Barty said: “He carries his trophy around in his backpack just because he loves to look at it. Don’t you, Tyz!”
He looked embarrassed, too, so mission accomplished. She was looking and sounding like someone comfortable at being the world No 1, the top seed, the bookmakers’ favourite. Giddy-up.
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