Ashleigh Barty won Saturday’s French Open singles title, beating Marketa Vondrousova 6-1, 6-3, becoming first Australian female to win in 46 years at Roland Garros.
From burnout to Big Bash cricket, no one has had a journey to the podium of a Grand Slam like Ashleigh Barty. Yet there she was, late on Saturday morning, scarcely three years after returning from a self-imposed temporary retirement, during which she took up cricket, named Roland Garros ‘ queen of this year.
Unfortunately, her parents were not there to see her inflict a 6-1, 6-3 beating on Marketa Vondrousova, the same player who broke the heart of Jo Konta just over 24 hours before.
Robert and Josie Barty, a civil servant and radiographer from Ipswich’s northern Queensland city, had booked a flight to London this weekend before the grass court season to meet Barty. They weren’t inclined to change their travel plans on the chance that their daughter could finish in an event she’d never gone past the second round, so they didn’t try to make it over from London.
Barty is an exceptionally famous locker room figure, deemed highly down to earth, and it was easy to see why with her reaction to hitting the simple overhead that clinched the game after just one hour and ten minutes.
Looking over to her coaching box, she placed her hands on her head and, unbelievingly, started murmuring an expletive with the letter ‘ F ‘ that was discernible to any amateur lip reader.
She had become the first Australian female to win a Grand Slam at the 2011 U.S. Open since Sam Stosur and the first in Paris since Margaret Court back in 1973.