Women’s world number one tennis sensation Ashleigh Barty has stunned the sport by announcing her immediate retirement.
The 25-year-old admitted that “physically” she is “absolutely spent” from her gruelling training and tournament regime and has “nothing more to give” to the game. Barty has helped take women’s tennis to new heights, becoming the new pin-up for the WTA Tour.
Tennis in general continues to thrive as a spectator sport, with the leading online bookmakers also ramping up their coverage of all WTA and ATP events. According to oddscheckers recent online review of Betfred, tennis ranks as one of the leading sports betting markets out of the 25+ sports it covers.
Yet despite all the hype and bettor interest surrounding Barty, it seems that the physical demands to stay at the top of her game have proved too much. The writing was perhaps on the wall just four years into her professional tennis career, when Barty opted to take a ‘hiatus’ from tennis and switch her attentions towards cricket after the 2014 US Open.
Barty eventually featured in the Brisbane Women’s Premier Cricket Twenty20 League, playing 13 times for the Western Suburbs. She also featured for the Brisbane Heat in the inaugural Women’s Big Bash League Twenty20 campaign.
It wasn’t until 2016 when Barty opted to return to tennis. However, six years later, her meteoric rise up the world rankings would culminate in winning her country’s biggest prize.
The Australian, born in Ipswich, Queensland, became only the second Indigenous Australian to reach the summit of the women’s world rankings after Evonne Goolagong-Cawley.
Barty has held the top spot for 120 weeks in total, racking up three Grand Slam titles at the peak of her career. The most notable being her 2022 Australian Open victory, which ended the long wait for an Australian winner. It was somewhat fitting that four-time Australian Open winner and fellow Indigenous Australian, Goolagong-Cawley, would be on hand to present Barty with her richly deserved trophy.
Barty’s other major achievements in her tennis career
Having initially started out in professional tennis as a doubles player, 2017 was something of a breakthrough year for Barty in both forms of the game. She gate-crashed the top 20 of the world rankings in both singles and doubles. She would land her first WTA Tour title in that year too, winning the Malaysia Open.
She would end that year reaching the WTA Finals with her double partner Casey Dellacqua.
She then claimed the biggest singles title of her career in 2018, winning the WTA Elite Trophy, whilst winning her first Grand Slam doubles championship at the US Open with Coco Vandeweghe.
In 2019, Barty reached the peak of her powers. She reached her first Grand Slam quarter-final in the singles at her native Australian Open before winning the French Open at Roland Garros as the eighth seed.
Barty overcame Marketa Vondrousova in the final, becoming the first Aussie Grand Slam singles winner since Sam Stosur’s US Open triumph in 2011.
Barty continued to make big waves on the doubles scene in 2019, winning a Premier 5 event at the Italian Open with Victoria Azarenka. She paired up with Azarenka again for the US Open and came within a whisker of defending her doubles title with a defeat to Mertens and Sabalenka in the final.
2020 would have been another impressive year for Barty, given her impressive form and levels of consistency. She won the Adelaide International and reached the semi-finals in the Australian Open, mere days before the global pandemic took hold. Although WTA events resumed in August 2020, Barty opted to take a self-induced hiatus for her own protection.
After almost 11 months away from competitive tennis, Barty returned to the WTA Tour in 2021. She entered the 2021 Australian Open as the number-one seed, with a palpable weight of expectancy on her shoulders from the Australian crowds.
However, Barty was somewhat rusty and fell to Karolina Muchova in the last eight. Injuries kept Barty out of most of the clay court swing, before making a bold return at Wimbledon. Despite a lack of match practice, Barty battled her way into the final to meet Karolina Pliskova. She became the first Australian winner at SW19 since Goolagong-Cawley in 1980 and finished the year as the WTA Player of the Year.
Barty’s last Grand Slam would be at the 2022 Australian Open. Everything went right for her as she breezed into the final against American Danielle Collins with only one break of serve against her name.
She comprehensively defeated Collins to become the first Aussie since Chris O’Neil to win the women’s Australian Open title.
Some might say that Barty’s commitment to play so many doubles events may have cost her singles career dearly. Upon her retirement announcement, Barty said she lacked the “physical drive” to “challenge [herself]” and in hindsight she may have curbed her doubles appearances to prolong her singles career. Nevertheless, Barty retires having amassed $23.8m in WTA prize money and has little to prove to anyone in the sport.
What next for Ashleigh Barty?
Barty insisted she has “so many dreams to chase” outside of the tennis bubble. This has already led to intense speculation as to what her next move will be. One theory is that Barty will look to embark on a golf career, having been a self-confessed golf fanatic.
Both her parents are keen golfers and Tiger Woods even commented on how solid Barty’s swing was when meeting at the 2019 President’s Cup event in Australia.
She may also look to doing more work in her local community, having become something of a role model for fellow Indigenous Australians. Either way, parallels can be drawn between Barty’s retirement and Justine Henin’s surprise exit in 2008.
Henin, who was also holding the world number-one spot at the time of her retirement, admitted she had given all she could to the sport like Barty. Nevertheless, Henin did return to try and emulate the great Roger Federer by winning all four of tennis’ Grand Slams.
Whether Barty will follow suit and make an emotional return remains to be seen, but for now at least she is keen to focus on “Ash Barty the person” rather than “Ash Barty the athlete”.