"So as hard as it was at the time, it helped me moving forward" - The pivotal loss that shaped Ashleigh Barty's tennis career

Ashleigh Barty is very excited for the start to the 2026 tennis season, especially when tennis arrives at her home country of Australia. This includes the Australian Open, in which Barty has previously won. However, that historic run may not have occurred if she did not experience a heartbreaking loss two years prior.

Despite only being 29-years-old, Barty has not stepped onto the tennis court since the 2022 Australian Open. She produced a scintillating two weeks of tennis, not dropping a set ahead of defeating American Danielle Collins in the final for not only her third Grand Slam final, but the biggest win of her career. She announced her retirement from the sport a couple of months later, a huge surprise in the tennis community.

Now, she is a fan. Her racket has been hung up a long time ago and she is sitting back and enjoying the number of Australian tennis players taking to court. "Like every tennis fan. I love getting absorbed in the month of January and the buzz in and around the Australian Open," Barty told AAP. "I'll be looking forward to watching a few of the girls in particular that I have close relationships with.

"I love watching their journey. I love watching them experience things for the first time, whether it's playing on big courts, it's playing top-10 players; whatever that experience is, there's so much to learn from it."

Maya Joint has risen up the pecking order to become one of the brightest youngsters in the sport. Her talent has been showcased on a number of occasions, specifically winning a brace of titles in 2025 at the Rabat Grand Prix and Eastbourne Open, defeating fellow starlet Alexandra Eala on the Sussex coast.

"I just really, really love the way that she goes about it. She works hard," Barty said, in awe of the 19-year-old's ability on court. "She's a funny, intelligent girl and she takes everything in her stride. So I'm excited for her. She's come off a really consistent season this season and next year presents some different challenges."

She sent a message out to the fans to 'enjoy' her rise in tennis. "But it's important that, as fans, we sit back and enjoy that because she's near top 30 in the world and that's a really, really tough thing to do," she acknowledged. "So she's been exceptional. I'm excited to watch her kind of grow and develop and continue to learn all throughout next season."

In 2020, Barty was looking to become the first Aussie to win the major title in Melbourne since Mark Edmondson in 1976. She made a run all the way to the semi-final but was cruelly defeated by eventual champion Sofia Kenin. Barty had chances to serve both sets out but succumbed to the pressure and was knocked out of the tournament.

While she may have been in despair then, it now serves as a turning point in her career. "I look back on that as a really important match for me to lose, to understand what I needed to improve in my game. And it held me in really good stead for the next time I was in that same opportunity, when I grabbed it with both hands," Barty stated.

"So probably without that match against Sofia, maybe the (semi-final) match in 2022 against Maddy Keys probably doesn't happen, where I'm actually really calm and felt like I was in complete control. So as hard as it was at the time, and even as tough as it is to think about how that match unfolded, it helped me moving forward."

This loss was one of the main reasons Barty became the well-renowned tennis player she is. "People have these sort of losses that make them, so it's really important to be able to accept growth from losses," she commented. "And sometimes take the emotion out of it and accept what happened and get back to work. So I could think of 10 matches off the top of my head that were really pivotal in my development, and that was certainly one of them."