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Ashleigh Barty’s brilliance at Zhuhai zooms her to WTA Top 20

By Gale Moorman

WUHAN, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 30: Ashleigh Barty plays a backhand during the ladies singles final between Ashleigh Barty of Australia and Caroline Garcia of France during Day 7of 2017 Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open at Optics Valley International Tennis Center on September 30, 2017 in Wuhan, China. (Photo by Yifan Ding/Getty Images)
WUHAN, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 30: Ashleigh Barty plays a backhand during the ladies singles final between Ashleigh Barty of Australia and Caroline Garcia of France during Day 7of 2017 Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open at Optics Valley International Tennis Center on September 30, 2017 in Wuhan, China. (Photo by Yifan Ding/Getty Images) /
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The end of the WTA Tour has been successful for Ashleigh Barty in the last six months. She has gained insight to produce wins and elevate her ranking.

This all didn’t happen to Ashleigh Barty right from the start of this 2017. She was making her comeback to a sport that she wasn’t really sure she had the vigors for anymore.

After some wins and many losses last year, Barty took time off and joined a cricket league in her native Australia the “Brisbane Heat”. It was a good year and then she felt the pangs of wanting to play tennis again.

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"“It sort of just let me breathe a little bit easier knowing I do belong back here. It had been a long time since I had played a big match. I just feel like every match this season is getting better and better”, Barty said as she bounced back into the 2017 season with a lot of determination."

But the start of the year wasn’t that great and she’d began the season with losses in the first or second rounds. This happened in her home country with the Australian Open where she did push her winning streak pass the opening match but lost in the third round to Mona Barthel.

Barty started to get her strategies together when she was in the final of the WTA Malaysia Open doing battle with Japan’s Nao Hibino, but she lost. It was at Roland Garros that her luck still didn’t appear when she bowed out of her opening round to America’s Madison Keys who herself was on the threshold of being a great player, whenever the health issues would subside. The warm-up English tournaments as the Aegon Open at Nottingham, she loss in the quarterfinals to Johanna Konta and the Aegon Classic at Birmingham where she got pass Barbora Strycova, to lose in the final to another comeback player Petra Kvitova.

She had loss to Elina Svitolina at Wimbledon and Sloane Stephens at the US Open’s third round. Barty reached the third round of the Rogers Cup in Toronto but was stopped by  Garbine Muguruza.

As she moved to the Western and Southern tournament in Cincinnati, her game style surprised her and she’d won a great match over Venus Williams in the second round propelling her rankings upward, despite losing the next round to Caroline Wozniacki. She continued to rack up victories as the Asian swing began and in the second round at the Wuhan Open she’d beaten Brit’s Johanna Konta  and Barty made it to the semifinals even to win over the French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko. The Australian’s duel with France’s Caroline Garcia in the Wuhan final was a miss but she did score the finalist position again hiking up her rankings considerably. Again Barty’s confidence was soaring as she entered the China Open at Beijing but couldn’t get pass the determined and crafty Elina Stivolina in the second round.

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Onto the home stretch of ending this 2017, Ashleigh Barty felt encouraged that she was learning from her failures on how to play the big ladies of the game and she entered the WTA Elite Trophy at Zhuhai. She scored wins over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in straight sets and won over Angelique Kerber, a former no. 1 player, showing sensational form and strategy to burn Kerber again and again with down-the-lines and simply moving her around to get to the open court. It worked beautifully for her as she won 6-3, 6-4 over the German. Barty didn’t know that she’d have to undergo a stronger test until she met up with her semifinal opponent, America’s Coco Vandeweghe. The California lady was confident and consistently had blasted down the line serves to Barty who never had played so tentative in most of her matches the last few weeks. The first set was blistering as Vandeweghe used cool strategies to win the opening set over a once strong-willed Barty. At the 5th game in the second set she tried approaching at the net to only get burned by a passing shot from Vandeweghe.

It was the pushing of Barty back to the baseline that allowed her opponent to gain momentum with slices and spins that worked so effectively. Before long it was all Vandeweghe as the winning shot was made and the two opponents shook hands over the net, Vandeweghe remaining calm throughout much of the match. It wasn’t a real loss to Barty as she had admitted.

"“It’s been an amazing season. I’ve played top 10 players this year and felt comfortable, but Coco just has that ability to hit players off the court”."

This was a learning experience for Barty and a winning one, because now she goes home to Australia as being the number one ranked player. The beginning of the year she was staring at being in the 300s and now finishing the season in the top 20s feels wonderful and accomplished.

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