BREAKING NEWS: Barty Shines In Her First Match Since Retirement But Shows no Interest of Returning to Tennis Anytime soon Due to…
Ashleigh Barty played her first tennis match in front of audience since she retired from the sport in 2022.
The Australian player is one of a very few tennis players, and athletes in general, who have retired on a winning streak. She did that after winning all of her 11 matches in 2022, first lifting the title at the Adelaide International before adding also the Australian Open triumph.
Since then, she’s been away from the tennis courts, but at the 2024 Wimbledon Championships, the 28-year-old is back in competitive action. Obviously, she’s not in any WTA Tour-level competition, but instead in Wimbledon’s invitational doubles tournament for retired players and legends of the sport, who she undeniably is.
Her former doubles partner, Casey Dellacqua, who she played with in four Grand Slam finals, is her partner also in the invitational tournament, and they got off to a good start in front of the excited audience on the Centre Court, where the match was played, after Alex de Minaur’s retirement canceled one of the matches on the Wimbledon’s main court.
In the first match, the Australian duo took former World No. 9, Andrea Petkovic from Germany, and former Wimbledon semi-finalist, Magdalena Rybarikova from Slovakia.
The German-Slovak duo was better in the first set, despite falling behind 2-4 early in the set. Still, they were able to rally back, winning the opening set of the match 7-5.
Barty, who was the youngest, most successful, and second most recently retired player on the court, visibly increased the intensity in the second set as she and her partner jumped out to a 5-1 lead.
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Their opponents pulled one break back, but still, the Australians won the second set 6-3 to force the decider, which for the invitational tournament represents a match tie-break to 10 points.
Barty and Dellacqua fell behind 1-4 early in the match tie-break, but they were the better team late in it, winning 10-7 to win the match 5-7, 6-3, 10-7, as Barty kept her winning streak, which she ended her career with, going.
It’s not usual for players taking part in the invitational tournaments to hold press conferences, but as a legend of the sport, who didn’t stand on the tennis court since her retirement, Barty had one.
Obviously, the first question was about her possible comeback, which the Australian, once again, denied, saying that she wasn’t coming back to the sport.
“You guys are killing me. I don’t know how much more. Anyone have a thesaurus for a word that I can use for ‘no’? No…”
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Jessica Pegula‘s stay in the top five of the WTA rankings will end at the beginning of next week, thanks to Jasmine Paolini‘s historic run at the 2024 Wimbledon Championships.
Pegula has been a mainstay in that elite band for 90 consecutive weeks. She first entered the top five after reaching the 2022 US Open quarterfinal and rose to a career-high ranking of World No. 3 after winning the Guadalajara Open a few weeks later.
It was the highest ranking by an American player that season and the harvesting period for Pegula, who, after 13 years of toiling on the lower tiers and fending off career-threatening injuries, was finally enjoying the fruits of her labor.
2022 was also the year Pegula made the quarterfinals in three of the four Grand Slams, losing each time to the eventual champion. But after an injury-hit 2024 season, the 30-year-old will vacate her top-five spot to Italy’s Jasmine Paolini.
Despite a triumphant return on the grass courts of Berlin, where she bagged her first title of the year, Pegula suffered a shock second-round defeat to Wang Xinyu at Wimbledon (singles). She is dropping 360 points for failing to replicate last year’s quarterfinal run at the grass-court major.
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Pegula will drop to sixth (best-case scenario) or seventh if Jelena Ostapenko wins Wimbledon. With plenty of points to defend during the North American hard-court swing, starting with the Canadian Open next month (which she won last summer), she is in danger of cascading out of the Top 10.
Her spot in the top five will be taken by Jasmine Paolini after the Roland Garros runner-up became the first Italian woman to make the Wimbledon semifinal.
Although Pegula’s stay in the top five will end after 90 consecutive weeks, she will be determined to secure her Top 10 spot (currently over 100 straight weeks), showing that she’s been a consistent force on the women’s circuit since she transitioned into a late bloomer.
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