Ash faces the unknown
ASH Barty’s second-round opponent has already doubled her earnings at the Australian Open.
Italian qualifier Lucia Bronzetti did it on Monday when she won her first grand slam match – it is the first time she has made a main draw – which guaranteed her $154,000.
To give an insight into the David v Goliath scenario that confronts her, the WTA website doesn’t know much about Bronzetti. All her profile says is that she’s right-handed. There is no information for height, weight, age or birthplace.
For the record, Bronzetti is aged 23 and has a career-high ranking of 142, but in this day and age the true reflection of status is your Instagram account. She has 5726 followers compared to Barty’s 381,000.
While Barty, who has won more than $30m in prizemoney, had some knowledge about first-round opponent Lesia Tsurenko, it’s likely she’s never heard of Bronzetti, let alone seen her play.
Tsurenko, a former US Open quarter-finalist, had beaten the world No.1 before but it didn’t work out well for the Ukrainian.
Barty conceded only one game in a 6-0 6-1 blitz on Rod Laver Arena, while earlier in the day on an outside court Bronzetti produced the biggest win of her career by defeating Russia’s Varvara Gracheva 3-6 6-2 6-3.
The most glaring statistic to come out of Barty’s ruthless start to the tournament centred around her new improved power serve.
She has gone four consecutive matches without dropping serve, which includes 41 consecutive service holds.
“I’m not one for stats at the best of times,” Barty said. ”But I think the last five or six matches I felt like I found a really good rhythm on my service games.
“I’ve been able to get out of some tricky ones and kind of serve my way out of some tricky spots.
“I think being able to manage service games has been really good, but also not trying to overemphasise the fact that if I do get behind in games it’s a bad thing.
“You have to just try and do the best you can in that given point. That’s worked pretty well so far this year.”
Should Barty take down Bronzetti as expected, her likely third-round opponent is Italy’s 30th seed Camila Gorgi before a possible showdown against defending champion Naomi Osaka in the fourth round.