Bookmakers can shut their markets and tennis followers can despair: Ash Barty has emphatically dominated out making a comeback — ever.
Nor will the sporting tremendous expertise be making any cross-code forays to golf or returning to cricket.
“Nope, I’m done,” Barty advised AAP on Monday after returning to Melbourne Park to replicate on her momentous Australian Open triumph in January and to advertise her My Dream Time memoir.
“You can never say never but no. No, no, no. I’m done.”
Barty’s shock retirement in March, at solely 25 and after having fun with 121 weeks as a dominant world No.1, despatched bookmakers right into a frenzy making an attempt to foretell what sport she’d pursue subsequent.
Even Barty, a one-time Brisbane Heat BBL star and a four-marker with a swing that even wowed Tiger Woods earlier than the 2019 President’s Cup, “cracked up” when newspaper graphics had the three-time grand slam champion saddled on a horse as a possible jockey and even turning to garden bowls.
But now blissfully married, the retired celebrity insists she now not yearns to be an expert athlete.
“I miss competing and challenging myself against the best of the world but I don’t miss a lot that comes with it,” Barty mentioned.
“I’m still competitive with myself when I train at home. I still try and push myself but there’s no white-line fever any more.
“And I never really felt like there was this void that needed to be filled in because there was a genuine sense of fulfilment at the end of my career.
“I don’t think I was still searching for the competitive beast anymore.”
That wasn’t all the time the case, particularly when Barty walked away from tennis for the primary time in 2014, homesick, disillusioned and dissatisfied.
“During that period of my life (while) playing cricket, I was searching. I was searching for stimulation, I was searching for other things,” she mentioned.
“But now I don’t need that. Now I have probably understood and realised that I’ve had an extremely full, fulfilling, incredible journey in my athletic and professional career and now it’s time to close that chapter.
“Now it’s the beginning of a completely new chapter in my life and we see what’s possible as opposed to searching for what’s missing.”
The 26-year-old stays not sure what the longer term holds, although she’s already having fun with mentoring younger gamers and a task as Australian Fed Cup captain a while down the monitor wouldn’t shock.
For now, she’s blissful to odor the roses after the possibility to jot down her ebook supplied a semblance of “closure”.
From the very first chapter, which revealed how Barty “hit rock bottom” following a demoralising third-round Wimbledon exit in 2018, the Queenslander was intent on providing up a warts-and-all account of her profession and younger life.
“I didn’t want to sugar-coat it or lie about anything. I was just telling my story, my journey and the tears that came with it were therapeutic,” Barty advised AAP.
“But also at times there was probably an understanding of how much single moments meant to me, and how much single moments became really pivotal moments.
“At those times, I didn’t know. But reflecting on it, I realised how big a moments they were.”
