Even in a sport with an impossibly high threshold for dramatic flourish, tennis outdid itself Tuesday night with the announcement that the WTA Tour’s No. 1 player, Australia’s Ash Barty, was retiring at 25. As far as athletes conforming to the cliché and “going out on top,” you’re unlikely to find a more stark example. Barty not only sits atop the WTA rankings, but she is also weeks removed from winning the most recent major, the 2022 Australian Open. She did so without dropping a set, and she has won 25 of her last 26 matches. And at 25, she was—and still is—in the meaty prime of her career in a sport where Serena and Venus Williams are still active in their 40s.
But here’s the truth: While the Australian media has already described this as a “shock announcement,” it is anything but. Even as Barty was dominating the Australian Open in January, rumors whipped through the players’ lounge that she might gather the trophy and mic-drop retire. Here was a player who had already previously retired as a teenager, mostly for the simple reason that tennis no longer held joy for her. (After a year that, famously, included a stint playing cricket, Barty returned to tennis rejuvenated.) Here was a player who spoke openly about both the hardship that COVID-19 travel restrictions had placed on her mental health and her desire to start a family. If you were scripting endings, what would be more climactic than a prototype fair dinkum Aussie winning her country’s major—the first homegrown champ in more than 40 years to do so—and exiting gracefully?
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Barty’s career will be recalled for her three major titles—2019 French Open; ’21 Wimbledon; ’21 Australian Open. For the 114 consecutive weeks she spent at No. 1, the fourth-highest streak in WTA history. For the 15 overall titles in singles. The dozen titles in doubles. Those are just the Wikipedia-style entries.
But within tennis and among her peers, Barty stood for more: something resembling a blazing authenticity. Last year, a GIF made the rounds of Barty cheering like mad at an Aussie rules football game. For all the jokes about her fist-bumping and drinking beer and being an archetypal Aussie, here’s what was lost: She was sitting in the crowd. Not in the suites.
Even at the peak of her powers, Barty wanted nothing to do with the celebrity trappings of tennis. She would rather be home than filming a commercial or attending a premiere. So she went home. She would rather not put her life on display to the world on Instagram or lend her name to a product she would never use. So she didn’t. She wearied of the travel that, even outside of pandemic times, usually entailed crossing an ocean to play. So she scheduled accordingly.
She is a few weeks from turning 26, and, inevitably, this announcement will trigger speculation about the odds of her reversing this decision and “unretiring,” much as she did as a teenager. She might return. She might not. But she leaves tennis at No. 1. She leaves as a universally well-regarded player. She leaves with Hall of Fame credentials. What better time to take inventory of yourself, your priorities, and say, G’Day?
