This time twelve months ago, Ashleigh Barty was scoring runs and taking wickets for the Brisbane Heat in the Women’s Big Bash League.
Fast forward to now and the 2011 junior Wimbledon champion is through to the third round of a tennis Grand Slam tournament for the first time after she defeated Shelby Rogers in straight sets in her second round match on Margaret Court Arena.
Her representation in the third round of the Australian Open comes as Daria Gavrilova gets set to face Ana Konjuh in her second round match tonight.
If Gavrilova wins tonight as expected, there will be two Australian women in the third round for the first time since 2014, when Samantha Stosur and Casey Dellacqua got this far (the latter eventually reached the fourth round).
Barty’s win over Rogers is another important but positive step forward for the 20-year-old, who is currently ranked 223rd in the world and should break back into the top 200 at the conclusion of the tournament.
It comes a fortnight after she pushed world number one Angelique Kerber to three sets in the second round of the Brisbane International, taking a set off the German.
Having forged a successful doubles partnership with Casey Dellacqua in 2013, whereby the pair reached three Grand Slam doubles finals that year, Barty has decided to focus mostly on singles as her comeback continues to gain momentum.
In her first tennis career, she won the 2011 junior Wimbledon title and came toe-to-toe against the likes of Petra Kvitova, Francesca Schiavone, Ana Ivanovic and Serena Williams, among others.
Most notably, she stunned Schiavone, the 2010 French Open champion, in straight sets during the 2013 Hopman Cup, losing just three games in a performance that belied the gap in experience (she was about half of Schiavone’s age at the time; Barty was 16 and Schiavone 32).
She then “took a break from tennis” in September 2014 and decided to try her hand in women’s cricket, eventually being signed up by the Brisbane Heat and becoming a regular in their side during the 2015-16 season of the Women’s Big Bash League.
The Ipswich native then announced her return to professional tennis in February 2016, working her way back up the rankings by contesting some lower-level doubles tournaments with partner Jessica Moore.
Then, in June, she came out of qualifying and reached the quarter-finals in Nottingham, losing to the eventual champion Karolina Pliskova in two tightly-contested tiebreak sets.
To the present now and she has taken what was supposed to be Simona Halep’s place in the second quarter of the draw, her second round victim, Shelby Rogers, having beaten the fourth-seeded Romanian in the first round on Monday.
Barty will next face German qualifier Mona Barthel, who caused a bit of an upset when she took out reigning Olympic Gold Medallist Monica Puig in the second round in straight sets, in the third round on Friday.
Barthel had, earlier, defeated another Australian with bright prospects, 16-year-old Destanee Aiava, in the opening round in straight sets. This is the third time the German has reached the last 32, doing so in 2012 and 2014.
Another win for Barty could see her face 13th-seeded Venus Williams for what would be a quarter-final berth no one thought possible after the 20-year-old announced she would pause her professional tennis career in September 2014.
Though she did push world number one Angelique Kerber to three sets at the Brisbane International earlier this year as noted above, a potential meeting with the seven-times Major champion would be one definitely worth watching.
Not since Jelena Dokic’s captivating run in 2009 has any Australian woman reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open, so that is something Barty could possibly achieve if she keeps performing well at Melbourne Park.
Her fighting win over Rogers was the biggest highlight of the third night of the Australian Open, especially with the men’s biggest hope, Nick Kyrgios, having been knocked out of the tournament following a five-set loss to Andreas Seppi.
It was a rematch of their equally-as-epic fourth-round encounter from 2015, in which Kyrgios came from two sets to love down and saved a match point in the fourth set to become the first local man since Lleyton Hewitt in 2005 to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Open.
This time, it was nearly the exact opposite, whereby Kyrgios led by two sets to love, and had a match point in the final set, but lost it 10-8.
Not helping the Canberran’s cause was the fact that he was pinged twice for code violations, including having a point docked at a crucial time in the third set.
Kyrgios’ departure, along with that of Alex De Minaur’s, leaves Bernard Tomic, Jordan Thompson and Andrew Whittington as the last remaining men in the draw.
It marked a disappointing end to a rather promising comeback from his three-week suspension by the ATP World Tour, which came about after he spectacularly tanked his match against Mischa Zverev at the Shanghai Masters last October.
It is also proof that he still has a long way to go if he is to continue climbing up the rankings, and with a title to defend in Marseille next month, he could risk drifting away from the world’s top ten.
To finish off, all eyes will be on Ashleigh Barty this Friday when she comes up against Mona Barthel in a match likely to be played on one of the three showcourts, and if she can continue her fairytale run, then who knows what might happen going forward.
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