Thanks to cricket, Australian Ashleigh Barty has found peace on the tennis court
Thanks to cricket, Australian Ashleigh Barty has found peace on the tennis court
For over a year, quitting tennis and playing professional cricket proved to be the key to Ashleigh Barty's current No. 1 position in women's tennis almost seven years ago.
It was 2014, and nothing was working for the Australian tennis player. Barty had chosen to go pro four years earlier, at the age of 14, and in 2011 received confirmation that a successful tennis career was possible. She won Wimbledon at the junior level. After that, Barty's rise was slow. Too slow, she thought to herself. By 2014 she had had enough of always flying out in the first round, sometimes in the second, at every grandslam tournament she entered. Her Wimbledon junior title created extra pressure. By the way, even before she changed sports, she was the main star of cricket betting sites.
After another unsuccessful US Open, the 18-year-old Barty said goodbye to tennis indefinitely and joined the newly formed Brisbane Heat women's cricket team in 2015. It was a revelation, Barty said of it, "I met a unique group of people who didn't care if I could hit a tennis ball. Barty had occasionally hit a cricket ball recreationally beforehand but turned her new profession into a success. Her cricket coaches praised her ball sense, ability to pick up techniques quickly, and her genuine modesty.
In 2016, a 'reset' Barty returned to her great love. 'I never slammed the door and said I'm never playing tennis again,' she said. During her short cricket career, she continued with her tennis training. She picked up where she left off as the world number 623.
Not that Barty went on to her cricket break as a raging success, but with each grandslam tournament, elimination took a little longer. In 2017 she entered the top 100, and in 2018 she made it to the fourth round of the US Open. In 2019, she reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, followed by her first grand slam title: Roland Garros. It made her the No. 2 ranked player in the world. One word kept coming up in all the interviews Barthy gave after her win on the French gravel: cricket.
Barty made it clear that her experience in a completely different world made her better able to handle the pressure. That was necessary because the expectations of her compatriots were sky-high. Last year, in the run-up to the Australian Open, Melbourne was filled with the face of "Ash": advertisements for tennis clothes, sunblock, watches, and the Australian version of Marmite. So Barty was pretty much given the national mission of becoming the first Australian since Chris O'Neil in 1978 to win the grandslam tournament at home. Or at least to reach the final for the first time since Wendy Turnbull in 1980.
Barty, however, fell in the semifinals against the later winner Sofia Kenin and showed in the press conference afterward that even as a loser, she likes to be a role model. She appeared with a baby on her arm, her niece Olivia. So what does she want to say with it? 'There are more important things in life than tennis.' After which, Barthy analyzed matter-of-factly and honestly why she had lost. It wasn't her exceptionally varied playing style that had let her down, but her killer instinct on the Big Points.
What Barty could not have known at the time: she would not play serious tennis for almost a year after that. Despite the corona pandemic, although some tennis tournaments were still going on, including the French Open, where Barty was expected to defend her title, she imposed a travel restriction. She felt it was inappropriate for an Australian role model to leave the country for a game of tennis while her countrymen were undergoing one of the world's toughest corona regimes.
Shortly before the Australian Open, which did go ahead this year despite suspicions among the Australians, Barty was spotted without a mouth mask in a Melbourne supermarket. 'I have to be better than that,' declared an exhausted Barty in apology.
Before the tournament, Barty was unsure of how 'rusty' a year of not playing tennis had made her. Still, she defeated her first opponent, Montenegrin Danka Kovinic, with a 'double bagel,' or 6-0, 6-0, that has been referred to in the Australian press as historic.
On Saturday, Barty will take on Russia's Ekaterina Alexandrova, ranked 29th in the world, for the first time in the third round. Australian expectations, summed up with the year 1978, are not as high. Mainly after Friday when Barty withdrew from the doubles as a precaution, reported https://cricket360.bet/. On Thursday, she played with an impressively taped upper left leg but assured Australia that she feels top-notch. What about the huge bandage? 'I haven't played for almost 12 months, and then a little support can't hurt.'
