The indicators had perhaps been there for anyone who was properly listening and yet, 24 hours on, Ash Barty’s retirement remains a seismic shock for tennis.
Covid had already helped pave the way for her to walk away for a second time in her relatively brief career from a sport in which she was the world’s best player.
Ahead of her Wimbledon title last summer, she had told me across a computer screen that the Covid lockdown and her initial decision not to travel to tennis tournaments had given her a wider perspective on life.
Her prevailing thought was that there was more to life than simply hitting a ball over a net, as she put it. Now she has merely taken that statement to the next level.
Asked earlier today what comes next she said, “You have to wait and see. I’m not giving you everything right now,” suggesting she already knows where her future lies. For an athlete as methodical as Barty, that is no real surprise.
But what is that? The last time she hung up her racket, she moved to cricket and the Big Bash League. There are whispers that golf or else Aussie Rules Football. Or perhaps it is starting a family with her fiancé, or something altogether different. As she put it, “I’m excited for my next chapter as Ash Barty, the person and not the athlete.”
The game, if the myriad of tributes is anything to go by, seems genuinely bereft at having lost its No1 and perhaps its greatest ambassador. In a sport so driven by rivalries, it is telling that no one has a bad word to say about Barty.
There were tears as she announced her decision, while adamant she is at peace with it, although it is hard to know quite how painful a mental and emotional process it has been to get to this point of walking away. Amid it all, she said she had “no regrets”.
Others have said the same and come back. She has done so before and, at 25, there is plenty of time to return – the lure of the one Grand Slam to have eluded her, the US Open, could prove cause enough in the future.
But the game has lost a star and there should be some introspection. Early tennis retirement is not a new phenomenon – Bjorn Borg and Martina Hingis were among those to walk away seemingly with years still to give.
But it is telling that the biggest names in the women’s game should have been struggling – Barty quietly behind the scenes and former world No1 Naomi Osaka, who has been refreshingly frank about her own mental health issues.
Often, those at the top of a sport set the benchmark, and there will be other players looking at Barty and perhaps thinking what next themselves.
Will it be the start of a string of early retirements? Not perhaps in the case of Emma Raducanu, who when asked about it in Miami yesterday, said she planned to play well into her thirties.
And yet Barty is gone at 25, and the game’s authorities should take note beyond the mere tributes.
