BarcelonaAustralian Ashleigh Barty has managed to unite an entire country every time she hits a ball. The world number one has qualified to play in the Australian Open final for the first time. It is just one step away from ending the long journey of the Australian tennis desert, which has not seen any local player, male or female, win in Melbourne for more than 40 years.
Barty qualified for the final with an out-of-the-box superiority, defeating American Madison Keys 6-1, 6-2. The local player has not lost a single set in this edition of the tournament. In fact, only once did a rival manage to win four games in one set. In fact, Barty didn’t even need one tie break to impose their aggressive and safe game. With 78% accuracy in the first serve, Barty has conceded just two balls of break to Keys, in the semifinals, and he saved them both. Concentrated like never before, Barty dominates the game from the bottom of the court, calculates well when it is his turn to get on the net and is physically at the best moment of his career. The pressure of having an entire country waiting to hear the Australian anthem back on the Rod Laver track does not affect him, quite the contrary.
Her rival in the final will be 26-year-old American Danielle Collins, who beat Poland’s Iga Świątek in two sets (6-4, 6-1) and qualified for the finals for the first time. a great tournament. “I’ve never felt so free, playing so well,” said the Florida player, who will have to face a Barty who almost always wins against American rivals, with a record of 13 wins and 7 defeats. This will be the fifth duel between the two. And Barty has won three.
Barty is confident of becoming the first Australian to win in Melbourne since 1978, when Chris O’neill beat American Betsy Nagelsen in the final. The last Australian woman to reach a final was Wendy Turnbull in 1980, when she lost to Czechoslovakian Hana Mandlikova. The last Australian man to win the tournament was Mark Edmondson in 1976. Prestigious players such as Pat Cash (who lost the 1987 final to Stefan Edberg and 1988 to Mats Wilander) and Lleyton Hewitt (who lost the final 2005 against Russian Marat Safin), had also failed to bring joy to Australia, the world that dominated world tennis during the 1960s and 1970s. A total of 54 Australian players have won Grand Slam titles, with a total of 166 titles, a figure surpassed only by American tennis. But if before it was normal to see Australians winning every year, in recent decades it has been difficult to find benchmarks, with just five titles in 40 years, all men: Pat Cash won Wimbledon in 1987, Patrick Rafter twice in the Open of the United States (1997 and 1998) and Hewitt in the United States in 2001 and Wimbledon in 2002. Now Barty aspires to win his third major title, after doing so in 2019 at Roland Garros and 2021 at Wimbledon.
