Barty a sports prodigy who has taken her unique path to the top of the game
Between media commitments yesterday, Ashleigh Barty was busy checking the cricket score. For all that the prospect of playing a first Wimbledon as the world No 1 excited her, she seemed more animated by the fact that Australia had fallen to 46 for three against New Zealand. Such are the divided sporting loyalties of one with athletic brilliance in her genes.
This is a young woman, after all, who segued seamlessly from tennis to cricket, excelling for six months with the Brisbane Heat in the women’s Big Bash, and the love of the longer game has stayed with her. Last week, the day after withdrawing from Eastbourne with a shoulder strain, she was at Lord’s to watch Australia sweep England aside, chatting with the players in the dressing room afterwards. “That was a bucket-list item,” she smiled. “Standing on the balcony was incredible.”
In Australia, who have not had the top-ranked female player since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1976, there is a clamour to celebrate Barty and all she represents. As with Goolagong, her childhood idol, she has indigenous ancestry, and conducts herself in a way that forms the starkest contrast with her compatriots Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic, two wastrels apparently hell-bent on squandering their talents.
She is conscientious, amiable, with not a trace of selfishness, using that sports psychologists’ trick of depicting everything she does in terms of “we”. “We just keep trying to grow and be better every day,” she said, earnestly, a piece of wisdom that sounded borrowed from a self-help manual.
The rise of Barty, still just 23, has been so rapid that Serena Williams did not even realise she had taken over the No 1 ranking, instead making a vague reference to “the sweetest, cutest girl on tour”. But Barty evidently has far more to her armoury than just her kind nature. Andy Murray lauded her versatility yesterday, in light of her maiden Grand Slam title at Roland Garros, and her exceptional hand-eye co-ordination. If there is a ball involved, the chances are that she will hit in the sweet spot. Her way of toasting her French Open triumph was to enjoy golf, which she plays off a handicap of 10, hoping one day to reduce it to scratch. Her boyfriend, Garry Kissick, is a trainee professional in Queensland.
For the moment, Barty says the sole focus is her first-round Wimbledon opponent, China’s Saisai Zheng. She is in the toughest quarter of the draw, former champions Williams and Garbine Muguruza lying in wait, but promises to stay true to her rhythm of analysing her adversary the night before.
“There’s more attention, more of that outside noise,” she conceded. “But when it comes to what we’re trying to do on the court, it hasn’t changed much.”
Barty is cut from a different cloth to many of her peers, who have been hothoused in Florida academies from the second they learn how to hold a racket. After winning junior Wimbledon in 2015 – she still talks of her pride at seeing her name on the honours board beside the Aorangi practice courts – she stepped away from tennis entirely, later revealing a battle with mental health throughout her late teens. Murray has acclaimed her as an example of how there is more than one route to the top.
“Every person is unique,” she said. “It’s about finding your own journey. It’s hard for me to tell anyone they need a break, but it worked for me. It was something I needed to do. Now that we have had a fresh start, it has been the best thing that ever happened to me.”