"You have to come back" - Serena Williams halted Ashleigh Barty's retirement with inspiring text message
WTA
Ashleigh Barty continues to add to her growing legacy, as the Queensland native lifted her first Australian Open title in front of her home crowd on Saturday.
Barty's Grand Slam tally now stands at three, with the Aussie having won Roland Garros (2019) and Wimbledon (2021). However, it was only seven years ago that the World No.1 walked away from the sport with no hint that she'd ever come back.
After losing in the opening round of the 2014 US Open, Barty, then just 18 years old, announced she was taking "a break from professional tennis" and instead began pursuing a career in cricket.
"It was too much too quickly for me as I've been travelling from quite a young age," she said at the time. "I wanted to experience life as a normal teenaged girl and have some normal experiences."
Following just one successful season with two cricket teams, the Queensland Fire and the Brisbane Heat, however, Barty returned to tennis in early 2016.
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Speaking with The Courier Mail, per 7News, the Australian's former coach Jim Joyce revealed that it was a 2015 text from none other than tennis icon Serena Williams that inspired Barty to give tennis one more try.
"Ash was in a restaurant I think and Serena sent her a message saying, 'You are too good a player to retire. You have to come back,'" Joyce said.
Williams statement proved to be correct, as Barty returned to the WTA Tour the following year and began a gradual ascent to the top of the women's game.
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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