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?
Robert Deutsch/USA TODAY Sports
