Barty party underway as Ashleigh triumphs in Paris
Ashleigh Barty, the Australian who ditched tennis to play professional cricket for a year, smashed Marketa Vondrousova for six on Saturday to lift the French Open crown at Roland Garros. Boasting a bewildering array of shots and spins, the eighth seed crushed her Czech teenage opponent 6-1 6-3 to win her first Grand Slam title, and Australias first French womens singles crown in more than four decades.
Its unbelievable... I played the perfect match today. I am so proud of myself and my whole team... it has been a crazy two weeks, said Barty, the ninth different female champion in the last 10 grand slams. This is a special place for Australian players... it has been a magical two weeks. Not since Margaret Courts triumph in Paris in 1973 has an Australian won the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen but this victory was in very little doubt from the moment the final began. In a match-up where guile and artistry always trumped power, Barty was simply smarter throughout.
Producing angles so sharp they might have come with a health warning, the 23-yearold carved apart Vondrousova in the opening set, clinching it in half an hour.
While the match was no classic, those fans who had taken a break after the conclusion of the Dominic Thiem-novak Djokovic mens semi-final which had caused the womens final to run more than an hour late, missed some of the more thoughtful tennis played on the Roland Garros clay this past fortnight.