From Ashes, Barty’s rise takes her to French Open title

Ashleigh Barty is the French Open champion and will be the No. 2 player in the world on Monday. You can’t make this stuff up.

You certainly couldn’t make it a up a few years ago, when Barty was playing professional cricket instead of tennis. Burned out following a rapid rise to the top 200 as a 15-year-old, the Aussie put down her racket and picked up a bat following the 2014 U.S. Open.

Two seasons later, in February of 2016, she returned to the sport that was her first love. The rest is history.

Already a top 10 player thanks to impressive results in both 2018 and the earlier stages of 2019 (including a title in Miami), Barty enjoyed the biggest day of her career by triumphing at Roland Garros with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over unseeded Marketa Vondrousova on Saturday afternoon. The 23-year-old needed only one hour and 10 minutes of work before lifting the trophy.

“It’s remarkable,” Barty commented. “At the moment it’s a bit too much and a bit out there, really…. For the last fortnight, the stars have aligned for me. I have been able to play really good tennis when I’ve needed it. This is just incredible. I never dreamt that I’d be sitting here with this trophy here at the French Open.”

As recently as Friday, nobody else thought she would be.

In the semifinals against 17-year-old American Amanda Anisimova, Barty squandered all of a 5-0, double set-point lead and eventually found herself trailing 7-6(4), 3-0. Seemingly down and out, she righted the ship to take the second and also recovered from a break down in the third to beat Anisimova 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-3.

There was no such drama on Sunday. Against the 19-year-old Vondrousova, Barty broke serve five times in eight return games and cracked 27 winners to her opponent’s 10.

“I think she was just too good today,” Vondrousova admitted. “I think she played amazing match. I didn’t have too many chances today. Yeah, I think she just gave me a lesson…. She’s playing too good. She’s mixing things up. And she has a huge serve. So it’s all very tough to play against. I didn’t really feel good today because she didn’t let me play my game. It was really tough.”

As for Barty’s game, it features a wide variety of skills and tactics, with plenty of spin, slice, and net approaches. Most of all, though, her game is tennis.

“I never closed any doors, saying, ‘I’m never playing tennis again,’ she reflected. “For me, I needed time to step away, to live a normal life, because this tennis life certainly isn’t normal. I think I needed time to grow as a person, to mature. I left all of my options open. I think it was just a natural progression for me coming back to tennis…. Overall, it’s just I [missed] the competition. I [missed] the one-on-one battle, the ebbs and the flows, the emotions you get from winning and losing matches.

“I don’t even know if I’d be sitting here talking to you…if I didn’t step away. It’s obviously a part of my life that I needed to deal with. I feel like it was the best decision that I made at the time.

“And it was an even better one coming back.”

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