Ash Barty’s retirement at 25 an eye-opener

Australian tennis star Ash Barty, in a short span of five years, 2016 to 2022 January when she won the Australian Grand Slam tournament after 44 years when an Australian last won it, has announced her retirement at the young age of 25.

She has won 15 titles including the French Open in 2019 and the Wimbledon in 2021. She stayed in the number one position of ATP rankings for 123 weeks. And this was no mean achievement.  

She made the candid statement, “I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top level anymore. I am spent.” Many would read this statement as a confession of physical and emotional limitation, and even fear of defeat. To accept one’s limitation is not an acknowledgement of defeat. And to say that she is exhausted is an honest statement.

Barty had announced retirement once before, in 2014 when she was a teenager, and she was away from competitive tennis for two years.

One of the main reasons for the announcement of retirement in 2014 and now is that she did not like the stress of being continuously on the tour, living in hotel rooms and living out of the suitcase, and to be away from home and family.

It is not a price she is willing to pay. And she recognises that more than a mere tennis player, however distinguished, she is Ash Barty the person, who has other dreams than winning tournaments, and who wants to spend time at home with her family. She said, “Ash Barty the person has so many dreams she wants to chase after that don’t necessarily involve travelling the world, being away from my family, being away from my home, which is where I’ve always wanted to be.”

It is a special sentiment, and that Barty, the second Aborigine woman after Evonne Woolagong Cawley to become a tennis star and to inspire fellow-Aborigines and fellow Australians to excel in the sport, perhaps carries her sense of closeness to home and hearth that her people had always sensed over thousands of years.

 And there is something heroic about them. But the decision of Barty hinges on her realisation that there is more to life than winning on the tennis court. Her decision could be a lesson not only to sportspersons but people leading ordinary lives. Her decision would help people realise that happiness does not lie in competing and winning alone, and there is something else beyond it. And it must be said to her credit that Barty has displayed amazing maturity in deciding on retirement.

When the general argument would be that she is too young to retire, she seems to have sensed that what she is missing by being constantly on the tour was more important.

It can be said that the loneliness and fatigue that Barty sensed on the tour is something that must have been felt by many in all the sports, especially cricket. Many of the cricketers feel that the time away from home becomes a burden as the years pass on. And this must be more in the case of tennis which is a singles combat unlike in cricket, and you are on your own with your coach, the physiotherapist, and others.

Some of the players do travel with their families, with parents, spouse, and children. But it does not compensate for the stresses of the game.

The decision that Barty has taken could inspire many more players, and it would be a positive message that it is no shame to retire early. Barty has rightly emphasised those three things: family, home, and other dreams.