Ash Barty and the sublime lightness of being

On court, the former World No. 1 appeared unaffected by the transient feelings of joy and woe that are common in sport. She walked away in similar fashion — captive neither to the past nor the future but fully present in a Goldilocks Zone all her own

The manner of ending a sports career is an art in itself. It’s the search for a Goldilocks Zone, where the acceptance of sporting mortality can go hand-in-hand with the all consuming desire to write the perfect epilogue that encapsulates all that was achieved earlier.

Sunil Gavaskar managed that across 264 balls on a minefield of a pitch in Bengaluru in 1987, scoring a masterful 96 in an awe-inspiring last stand. Pete Sampras raged against the dying of light over 14 days at New York in 2002, winning the US Open for his 14th Major.

Ash Barty’s curtain call took all of six minutes and six seconds, on Instagram, in the company of good friend and former doubles partner Casey Dellacqua, on an autumnal morning in Australia. As she said: “There is no right way, there is no wrong way, it is just my way. This is perfect for me.”

It was probably the fitting end to a career that indeed resembled a glorious but short fall sunburst, the foliage and flowers painted in myriad colours, leaving a sense of visual opulence that is sure to last a lifetime.

It appears — in hindsight — that Barty, 25, had prepared well for this moment. Just that it was encrypted in plain sight. Part of the rising wave of Australian prodigies along with Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic, she won the junior Wimbledon title in 2011, only to walk away from the sport after the 2014 season, burnt out, and try her hand at Women’s Big Bash League cricket.

On her return in 2016 after having rediscovered her hunger, and after winning each of her three Grand Slam singles titles — 2019 French Open, 2021 Wimbledon and 2022 Australian Open — she spoke of joy and fulfilment. The triumph at Roland-Garros was the first for an Australian woman in 46 years after Margaret Court; Wimbledon the first since Evonne Goolagong Cawley won in 1980; Australian Open the first since Chris O'Neil’s victory in 1978.

But each of these successes was treated as an end in itself. “I wanted to walk away regardless of whether I won a title. The titles, the money and the fame are so irrelevant in terms of success,” she said. Relentless pursuit of sporting excellence was not for her. As Emma Kemp wrote in the Guardian, “Barty redefined what sporting success looks like — as quality, not quantity.”