Ashleigh Barty

Ashleigh Jacinta Barty (born 24 April 1996) is an Australian former professional tennis player and cricketer.

She was the second Australian tennis player to be ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), holding the ranking for 121 weeks overall.

She was also a top-10 player in doubles, having achieved a career-high ranking of No. 5 in the world.

Ashleigh Jacinta Barty, known as "Ash", was born on 24 April 1996 in Ipswich, Queensland to Josie and Robert Barty.

Her father grew up in the rural North Queensland town of Bowen where he became a Queensland and Australian representative in golf and later worked for the State Library of Queensland.

Her mother is the daughter of English immigrants, was a state representative for Queensland in golf in her younger years, and began working as a radiographer after retiring from golf.

Through her great-grandmother, Barty is of the Indigenous Australian Ngaragu people, the Aboriginal people of southern New South Wales and northeastern Victoria.

She grew up in Springfield, a suburb of Ipswich, Queensland, and attended Woodcrest State College throughout her upbringing.

She has two older sisters named Sara and Ali.

Besides tennis, Barty also played netball as a child, but decided to focus on tennis because she "thought netball was a girls' game" and because her sisters were better than her at that sport.

Barty started working with her longtime junior coach Jim Joyce at the West Brisbane Tennis Centre at the age of four.

Joyce remarked that he did not typically train children as young as Barty, but made an exception because of her excellent hand-eye coordination and high level of focus.

He recalled a moment from their first lesson, saying, "The first ball I threw to her, bang! She hit it right back."

As a child, Barty also practised at home, remembering, "I used to hit the ball against [the wall exterior to our living room] every day after school, for hours on end."

By the time she was nine, she was practising against boys who were six years older.

At the age of 12, she was playing against male adults.

She first met her mentor, Alicia Molik, at the under-12 national championships in Melbourne.

Former tennis professional Scott Draper later joined Barty's coaching team and worked with her at the National Academy.

When she was 15 years old, former top 20 player Jason Stoltenberg took over as her primary coach.

Barty's junior schedule took her to Europe and away from her family in Australia for much of the year.

She had a promising junior career, reaching a career-high ranking of No. 2 in the world after winning the 2011 Wimbledon girls' singles title.

As a teenager, Barty had early success in doubles on the WTA Tour in 2013, finishing runner-up at three Grand Slam doubles events with veteran Casey Dellacqua, including at the 2013 Australian Open while 16 years old.

Late in the 2014 season, Barty decided to take an indefinite break from tennis.

She ended up playing cricket during this hiatus, signing with the Brisbane Heat for the inaugural Women's Big Bash League season despite having no formal training in the sport.

Barty returned to tennis in early 2016.

She had a breakthrough year in singles in 2017, winning her first WTA title at the Malaysian Open and rising to No. 17 in the world despite having never been ranked inside the top 100 before her time off.

She also had another prolific year in doubles with Dellacqua, culminating in her first appearance at the WTA Finals in doubles.

She is also a major doubles champion, having won the 2018 US Open with CoCo Vandeweghe.

Barty won 15 singles titles and 12 doubles titles on the WTA Tour.

Born in Ipswich, Queensland, Barty began playing tennis at the age of four in nearby Brisbane.

Barty then won her first Premier Mandatory and major tournament titles in doubles in 2018 before accomplishing the same feat in singles in 2019, highlighted by her victory at the 2019 French Open.

Barty won five more titles in 2021, including a second major singles title at the Wimbledon Championships and two WTA 1000 titles.

With her title at the 2022 Australian Open, she won a major in singles on all three surfaces.

Barty is a three-time Grand Slam singles champion, claiming titles at the 2019 French Open, the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, and the 2022 Australian Open.

Barty also led Australia to a runner-up finish at the 2019 Fed Cup and won a bronze medal in mixed doubles at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Barty was an all-court player with a wide variety of shots.

Despite her short stature for a professional tennis player, she was an excellent server, regularly ranking among the WTA Tour's leaders in aces and percentage of service points won.

She serves as the National Indigenous Tennis Ambassador for Tennis Australia.

Barty announced her retirement from tennis in March 2022, two months after her Australian Open title and still ranked No. 1 in singles at the time, having held the ranking for all but four weeks between June 2019 and April 2022 when she relinquished the ranking.

Her 114 consecutive weeks at No. 1 (not including when rankings were frozen between March and August 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) is the fourth-longest streak in WTA history.