An a chilly summer evening in Melbourne, two destined for each other came together: Ashleigh Barty, currently the world’s best tennis player, and the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup, the trophy for the winner of the Australian Open. Barty snatched the trophy with a win in the final against American Danielle Collins (6-3, 7-6), it was her third success in a Grand Slam tournament after triumphs in Paris in 2019 and Wimbledon last year, but the first for Australia in Melbourne in an eternity of 44 years.
Ever since Barty was among the best in the world, she and her compatriots had dreamed of this day, and in the end the reality was almost even better.
expectations of a whole nation
It was a great work that Barty completed that evening. Dealing with a nation’s expectations is a challenge of a tougher nature. Ask Andy Murray, who almost succumbed to it until he won Wimbledon for the first time in 2013, ask the French, who have been for more than 20 years waiting for a winner from their ranks. In Paris, it was Mary Pierce who last won a singles title for the hosts in 2000.
It was all a long time ago in Melbourne, since Mark Edmondson won the men’s event in 1976 and Christine O’Neil won the women’s two years later. After the long march through the desert, everyone was hoping for a refreshing visit to Ashleigh Barty’s oasis.
There is no question that the Australian went into this game as a favourite. On the one hand because of the two Grand Slam titles that she had already won, but above all because of the dominance with which she had rushed through the tournament every hour; she needed an average of around 60 minutes for each of her six wins and lost only one service game.
Danielle Collins, the three-year-old former college player from St. Petersburg, Florida, had won twice from a set deficit en route to the final and, even in over 30 degrees, had always looked extremely cool. During the tournament, her mixture of courage and ice-cold overview reminded her strongly of Catherine Tremell (Sharon Stone), the sub-zero master of Basic Instinct; the older ones will know what we’re talking about.
Emotional award ceremony: the American Danielle Collins
:
Image: Reuters
Collins let the first storm of jubilation for Ashleigh Barty roll off, and the American made a strong, stable impression until the middle of the first set. But after losing her service to 4-2, mistakes crept into her game and Barty was in control by the end of the set.
Barty recovered
Danielle Collins could accelerate the ball exceptionally, Barty had previously said, and this ability combined with precision and now clearly noticeable nervousness of the Australian led surprisingly quickly to a 5-1 lead for the American. Things calmed down a little in the almost full Rod Laver Arena, but Barty recovered and won point after point.
She grabbed the opponent’s service game to 2:5, the next to 4:5, equalized, and a little later the decision was made in the tie-break. With one penalty, Collins went straight behind and there was no escaping this pit; Ashleigh Barty didn’t allow that anymore. With the first match point, the number one in women’s tennis grabbed the trophy, which is named after a great Australian of the 1930s.
It was twelve minutes past 9pm that Saturday night in Melbourne when Ashleigh Barty made herself and the country happy by sinking the final ball on the other side of the field. With a scream so loud it echoed almost as far away as Queensland, where she is based, she celebrated her historic victory which will make her even more popular in her home country than she already is. As popular as Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who has indigenous roots like her. Goolagong presented the trophy, and Ash, Evonne, and Daphne were all happy.
Danielle Collins, who had previously impressed with a well-chosen speech in which every sentence had a logical beginning and ending, was a tough opponent that night and a sporting loser. The words with which Ashleigh Barty said goodbye to her audience a little later on the biggest evening of her career summed everything up very briefly. “A dream just came true,” she said. “I’m so proud to be an Aussie.” That was all played, all achieved, all said.
