Ash Barty made his intentions known before Wimbledon started.
"One day, I'd love to be the champion here," Barty said late last month, three days before their first-round match. "It's a dream. It's a goal."
A lifelong student of the sport, Barty has been fascinated by the tradition and history of the event since childhood – since she first picked up a racket, winning the title was what she wanted most.
In the final against Karolina Pliskova at the All England Club, it all came together.
Barty, 25, has made a staggering attempt since coming to court. He won the first 14 points of the match, and took 16 of the first 18 to take a 4–0 lead. It took more than eight minutes for Pliskova to score a point. Pliskova eventually found her level and Barty fought even harder, but in the end, she won her second major title in just under two hours after a 6-3, 6-7(4), 6-3 victory.
The feat was made even more special, coming on the 50th anniversary of fellow Indigenous Australian Ivonne Gulagong Kawle's first Wimbledon title. Throughout the fortnight, Barty wore a scallop-hemmed skirt in tribute to Golgong Kawle, whom she considers a patron, and one she wants to carry on her legacy.
"It took me a long time to articulate the fact that I want to dare to dream it and say I want to win this incredible tournament," Barty said on the court after the match. "Being able to live out my dream right now with everyone here has made it better than I ever imagined. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, what was I thinking, but when I'm coming out I kind of felt at home in this court."
Saturday's result, of course, will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who watched her win the Wimbledon girls' title 10 years ago. But Barty's career since then has been anything but a straight line.
After an illustrious junior career, expectations were high once he turned professional, but life on tour was not what he had hoped for. Though she reached three major doubles finals before her 18th birthday, she missed her family and her homeland during the week-to-week globetrotting grind.
This 18-year-old woman burned down after the 2014 US Open and went home in search of change, trading her racket for a cricket bat. She took an 18-month break from tennis and played in a professional cricket league in Australia.
Eventually, her love for tennis returned. She began working with Craig Tyzer, who remains her coach, then made her comeback in 2016, playing notably at ITF events in Australia, before making her way to grass and her favorite Grand Slam. She made it to the quarter-finals (where she faced Pliskova) at Nottingham, her first WTA event in nearly two years, then lost in the second round of qualifying for Wimbledon. She played in just one more tournament that year, but the spark was back.
She won her first WTA title at the Malaysian Open in March 2017 and played two more finals that year. Her ranking went up and she made it to the top 20 by the end of the year. But her confidence still needed time.
"It's something he's worked on over the years and we've identified that," Taser said on Friday. "At times she questioned herself. ... She's handling that stuff a lot better.
"It's an ongoing thing. It's like hitting a forehand and a backhand, you just keep working on it, you keep building. She's getting better and better at those things all the time."
Tyzer said that even after winning her first major title at the French Open in 2019, Barty would not have been ready to publicly declare her dream of winning Wimbledon in the early years of her return, but now she is ready to make it known. was. She may fail.
In her last four main draw appearances, she had never made it past the fourth round, but the cancellation of the 2020 tournament due to the coronavirus pandemic reminded her how much she loves the event.
Despite retiring during his second-round match at the French Open last month due to a hip injury - something he called "heartbreaking" at the time and said Saturday is the usual two-month recovery process - and Not being able to play in any lead-in events on grass, Barty was determined to compete at Wimbledon. Her team tried to shield her from the details of her injury to keep her focused.
"To be able to play here at Wimbledon was nothing short of a miracle," Barty said. "I guess they didn't tell me [the prospect of being able to play] proved how much we were up against the odds. I think now, playing pain free through this event was incredible. It's weird, Sometimes the stars align, you can think positive, you can plan, and sometimes the stars align. You can chase your dreams."
Barty's dominance in the opening match was threatened in the second set of Saturday's final. Pliskova broke Barty in the 12th game of a tightly contested set and then a decider, the first in the women's final at Wimbledon since 2012. Match on service.
When it was over, she bowed and held her head in her hands as a star-studded crowd, including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Tom Cruise, gave her a standing ovation.
Usually stubborn, Barty couldn't hide her feelings as she climbed onto her player box to hug her team. When she returned to the court for the on-court ceremony, she became the fourth Australian woman to lift the trophy at Wimbledon, and the first since Golgong Kawle won her second title in 1980.
"I hope I've made Ivonne proud," Barty said on the courtroom before turning away from the microphone as she began to choke.
He later told how much Golgong Kawle meant to him.
"Ivonne is a very special person in my life," Barty said. “I think she has been iconic in leading the way for young Indigenous youth to believe in their dreams and chase their dreams. She has done the exact same thing for me. I think there is something more to share with her. To be able to share special victories with him now, [and] to be able to forge your own path is really incredible, really exciting."
Barty has been at the top of the rankings since September 2019. Some questioned the validity of the revised ranking system and its No. 1 position as it opted to restart the remainder of the 2020 season, but it has now left no doubt. . 2 Naomi Osaka in the hard-court season and will be a favorite at the upcoming Olympic Games and US Open.
Wimbledon is his fourth title and fifth final this year. She is now the third woman, along with Osaka and Simona Halep, to win as many Grand Slams since the start of the 2017 season, and no one has won more than 12 WTA titles than Barty.
Barty did not speak on Saturday about his ranking or his place among the sport's latest superstars. She seemed more satisfied with taking the moment that had been a long time coming.
"Dreams don't always come true, but you can fight and do everything you can to give yourself that chance," Barty said before the tournament. “I have been learning a lot over the past two years as a person, not only as a professional tennis player, but as a person, putting my hopes and dreams into the universe and chasing them "