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https://www.wsj.com/articles/ash-barty-tennis-retirement-wta-australia-11648049128

Introducing Ash Barty…as Herself

The Australian women’s tennis star, currently ranked No. 1 in the world, steps away
from the game at age 25

By Jason Gay Follow

March 23, 2022 11 26 am ET

Save 63 Listen (6 min)

Go forever.

That’s the expectation of great athletes now. The money is fabulous, the sponsors
adore longevity, the science is there, the modern accouterments of success make it easier—
the physios, coaches, therapists, nutritionists, private jets and more. 

Go and go and go and go. Until the body quits. Until you’ve chased every record and
possibility. Until the public has had enough. 

Look at ancient Tom Brady, already back at it. Look at Serena and Venus Williams, chasing
greatness into their 40s. Look at LeBron James, pledging to stick around until his own son
is playing in the NBA. 

Why not? It can be done. And again: The money is fabulous. 

Once in a while, however, a great athlete says no more, at an early age, way before they’re
due, and they mean it. 

That’s what the tennis star Ash Barty did this week, announcing her retirement from the
tour at age 25, while still No. 1 in the world, the reigning champion at Wimbledon and her
home country’s Australian Open.

While still No. 1 in the world. Let that linger for a moment. Barty’s playing the best tennis of
her life. She’d be a favorite in every tournament she played. She isn’t quitting because of a
decline in her skill, or any apparent physical injury. 

It’s quite the opposite. Barty says she’s simply ready…for what’s next. 
“The time is right for me to step away and chase other dreams and to put the [rackets]
down,” Barty said in a short, admirably level-headed interview with her friend and former
doubles partner Casey Dellacqua.

As for the why, Barty offered nothing terribly specific. She revealed that the tennis grind
had become wearisome, that atop the summit of the women’s game—a climb that had taken
years of doubt and sacrifice to achieve—she realized she no longer had the desire to keep
pushing. 

“I’ve said it to my team multiple times, I don’t have it in me anymore,” she said. “I don’t
have the physical drive, the emotional want and everything it takes to challenge yourself at
the very top of the level anymore. I just know that I’m spent. I just know that physically I
have nothing more to give, and that, for me, is success. I’ve given absolutely everything I
can to this beautiful sport of tennis, and I’m really happy with that. 

“I know that people may not understand it,” she said. “And that’s OK.”

She sounded utterly rational, but it’s astonishing self-awareness from a young athlete; If
you have a couple minutes to watch Barty’s comments, do it. She doesn’t appear to have
rushed this decision; she’s not second-guessing herself in real time. She is at home and
comfortable in her choice.
It also sounds a lot like, well, Ash Barty. If you follow tennis, you know she’s been a
grounded sort of champion, a multidimensional talent who, in interviews, keeps it low-key.
She’s an enormously consequential athlete in her home country, where her success, her
indigenous Ngaragu heritage, her bond with the Oz tennis legend Evonne Goolagong
Cawley and her one-woman revival of all that great Australian tennis history vaulted her to
superstardom. 

Barty’s victory in Melbourne in January was the first time an Australian singles player had
won the Australian Open since 1978. If this is indeed it, it’s a marvelous exclamation point.

She seemed to shoulder this fame and pressure so well. Barty was a player without a
tactical weakness, who’d proven she could win on any surface. She appeared built for a long
run. 

But tennis is a consuming beast. There’s occasional team competition, and doubles offers
camaraderie, but it’s mostly a business of you, alone, even in this era of entourages
clapping from the box. It is a sport with a brutal history of burnout and rapid physical
decay; It isn’t uncommon to see teenage talents unravel in their 20s or sometimes faster
than that. For every comet that reaches the top 20, there are thousands of capable
players who abandoned along the way. 

For tennis fans, Barty’s walk off recalled Björn Borg’s at age 26, or more recently, the early
departure of Justine Henin, who quit in 2008 while the women’s No. 1, on the verge of the
French Open, where she was the three-time defending champion. 

Ash Barty has also been here before. A prodigious junior champion, she walked away from
the sport in her late teens, citing a want to be a “normal teenage girl.” She dabbled in
professional cricket, a period of her life that she recalls joyfully, because she was part of a
team, and not in the tennis cyclone. 

“I met an amazing group of people who couldn’t care less whether I could hit a tennis ball
or not,” she told me in 2019, after winning her first major at Roland Garros. 

Will she come back? Who knows. Every early retirement is an occasion to predict when the
athlete will return to the sport—Henin came back, and Borg, too, late and regrettably. Tom
Brady barely lasted a month.

But Barty may be different. Not everyone needs to go and go and go. Her career earnings
are well north of $20 million. Playing on would earn her plenty more, but she’s already
experienced a life away from tennis, and she liked what she saw.
“I’ll never, ever stop loving tennis,” she said. “It’ll always be a massive part of my life. But
now I think it’s important that I get to enjoy the next phase of my life as Ash Barty the
person, not Ash Barty the athlete.”

It sounds reasonable, if rare. 

A warm welcome, then, to Ash Barty…the person. 

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com

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