How Ash went from the suburbs of Queensland to the top of the tennis world: Ash Barty's life and career in photos
She's one of the most prolific, inspiring women in Australian tennis history, but Ash Barty might have taken up a very different sport as a child if not for her two big sisters.
Keep reading to learn how the former world No. 1 went from the suburbs of Queensland to the top of the tennis world, then retired at 25 to enjoy a quieter life.
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Born Ashleigh Jacinta Barty on April 24, 1996, Ash's parents Robert and Josie Barty raised her and her two older sisters, Sara and Ali, in the suburb of Springfield in Ipswich, Queensland.
The Barty girls loved sport. In fact, Ash took up tennis when she was just four.
Her elder sisters might be reason she's a champion today because if not for them, Ash may have ended up in a totally different sport: netball.
But Sara and Ali both played and Ash's dad Robert once told the Sydney Morning Herald that Ash wasn't interested in doing the same sport as her big sisters. Plus, she "didn't want to play what she thought was a 'girls' game".
Little did they know, Ash would one day be the reason thousands of Aussie girls picked up a tennis racquet.
It was clear from the moment she hit the tennis court that Ash had something special.
Her junior coach Jim Joyce rarely trained children but agreed to start coaching Ash when she was just four because he could tell she had the focus (and hand-eye coordination) to be a star. She excelled under his watchful eye and by the age of 12 she was playing against fully grown men.
Ash made her junior Grand Slam debut at the Australian Open in 2011, and won the 2011 Wimbledon Juniors title when she was just 15. She achieved a career-high junior ranking of world No. 2.
Ash loved being on the court and practised constantly in her teens in the hopes of making a name for herself in Australian professional tennis.
"I used to hit the ball against [the wall exterior to our living room] every day after school, for hours on end," she told the SMH in 2017.
Even as a junior player, she was flying all over the world to compete and while it was certainly exciting, it meant being away from her family for weeks and even months at a time. In the years she turned 17, she spend just 27 days at home.
Being a prodigy came with a lot of pressure and Ash was lucky to have the support and mentorship of Evonne Goolagong Cawley, an Australian former world No. 1 tennis player and proud Wiradjuri woman
The two women shared a special bond, not just because of their love of the sport but also their shared heritage: Ash is a Ngaragu woman through her great-grandmother.
Goolagong Cawley was in Ash's corner when she was ranked world No. 12 in doubles at just 17 and supported her when she decided to step away from the sport in 2014.
When Ash announced she was stepping away from tennis, Goolagong Cawley shot her a text with just a handful of words: "Hey darl. Good decision. Go and wet a line."
The young Aussie took time to address her mental health, tried her hand at professional cricket, and enjoy the 'normal' teenage experiences she missed out on while she was travelling the world as a junior tennis star.
"It was too much too quickly for me as I've been travelling from quite a young age," she told Cricket.com.au in 2015.
"I wanted to experience life as a normal teenaged girl and have some normal experiences."
But it wasn't long before Ash returned to professional tennis and reminded everyone just how good she was.
In 2016, she stepped back onto the court and won three tournaments in her first two months back and picked up her first career wins at the Australian Open just one year later.
In 2017, she made it into the singles top 100 for the first time and just kept pushing, competing against the likes of Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka as millions of Aussies cheered her name.
And her best season yet was still to come.
In 2018, Ash shared the Newcombe Medal with fellow tennis prodigy Alex de Minaur. Both had great things ahead of them.
The next year, she won the Miami Open, made her top 10 singles debut, then won her first Grand Slam singles title at the French Open and rose to world No. 2.
Everyone thought she was on top of the world - until she won another title at the the Birmingham Classic and snagged the No. 1 spot in the WTA singles rankings.
The only other Australian to have achieved that honour was none other than Goolagong Cawley.
At the end of the 2019 season, Ash made her singles debut at the WTA Finals and won, bagging more than $4 million in prize money and wrapping up the season as world No. 1.
It was a mammoth season and Ash seemed to be on a career streak when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and forced the world into lockdown.
It meant months away from competition, but also gave Ash time to focus on something equally important in her life.
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