After Retiring at 25, Ashleigh Barty Is Comfortable in a Life Outside Tennis

Barty, a multisport talent, has ruled out becoming a professional golfer or returning to professional cricket, which she played briefly when she took her first indefinite break from tennis at age 17, because of the mental strain and loneliness of life on tour. She returned to the game 17 months later in 2016 with a new coach, Craig Tyzzer, and went on to win three major singles titles, including Wimbledon in 2021. She spent 121 weeks at No. 1.

She was entrenched in the top spot when she retired, and though Iga Swiatek, an explosive talent from Poland, quickly took over at No. 1 and dominated the season, it was hard not to wonder how Barty’s presence would have changed the equation.

“It was a bit of a strange one, I suppose,” Barty said. “But I think that was probably what was least important to me: where I was sitting in the rankings. That was hard for a lot of people to understand.”

How best to sum up why she did retire?

“I achieved my dreams,” she said. “Everyone has different dreams and different ways of defining success. But for me, I knew that I gave everything I could, and I was fortunate to live out my ultimate childhood dream, and now it was time for me to explore what else was out there and not be, I suppose, greedy in a sense of keep playing tennis because that’s what I was expected to do, and then you blink and maybe the other things have passed you by.”

After retirement, Barty worked on a series of children’s books and her autobiography, “My Dream Time,” which has been published in Australia and will be released in the United States on Jan. 10.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/sports/tennis/ashleigh-barty-retirement.html