Ash Barty retires from tennis at age 25; won 3 Grand Slams
Brisbane(AP): Ash Barty surprisingly retired from tennis at age 25 while ranked No. 1 and less than two months after winning the Australian Open for her third Grand Slam singles title.
I'm so happy and I'm so ready. I just know at the moment, in my heart, for me as a person, this is right," Barty said, her voice shaky at times, during a six-minute video posted on her Instagram account Wednesday in Australia.
Saying it was time to chase other dreams, Barty said she no longer feels compelled to do what she knows is required to be the best she can be at tennis.
It's the first time I've actually said it out loud and, yeah, it's hard to say, Barty said during an informal interview with her former doubles partner, Casey Dellacqua.
I don't have the physical drive, the emotional want and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top of the level any more. I am spent.
This is not the first time Barty walked away from tennis: She was the Wimbledon junior champion at age 15 in 2011, presaging a promising professional career, but left the tour entirely for nearly two years in 2014 because of burnout, overwhelmed by the pressure and travel required.
She played professional cricket back home in Australia, then eventually picked up a racket once again and returned to her other sport.
Barty went on to win major championships on three different surfaces on clay at the 2019 French Open, on grass at Wimbledon last year and on the hard courts of Melbourne Park in January, becoming the first Australian player in 44 years to triumph at the nation's Grand Slam tournament.
She won 15 tour-level titles in singles and another 12 in doubles since first turning pro in 2010. She spent 121 weeks at No. 1 in the rankings, including the last 114 in a row.
Her announcement was all the more stunning from an on-court perspective given her recent run of success: Barty had won 25 of her last 26 matches and three of her past four events.
Only one other woman has walked away from the sport while atop the WTA rankings: Justine Henin was No. 1 when she retired in May 2008.
In a statement released by the WTA, CEO Steve Simon called Barty the ultimate competitor and said she has always led by example through the unwavering professionalism and sportsmanship she brought to every match.
We will miss her, Simon said.
During her 21-month sabbatical from tennis as a teen, Barty played cricket with the Brisbane Heat of the Women's Big Bash League. She returned to tennis in May 2016, playing a 50,000 ITF event in Eastbourne winning three qualifying matches and three more in the main draw.
One year later, she was ranked No. 88; by the end of 2017, Barty was an established member of the top 20.
I know I've done this before, Barty said with a laugh in the retirement video, but in a very different feeling. I'm so grateful to everything that tennis has given me. It's given me all of my dreams, plus more, but I know that the time is right now for me to step away and chase other dreams and to, yeah, put the rackets down.
A semifinal loss to Petra Kvitova in Doha in February was the last match she played in 2020; Barty stayed home in Australia for the balance of the season when the global pandemic emerged.
After six months on the road in 2021 and after winning five titles, including at Wimbledon, Barty ended her season abruptly after a loss to Shelby Rogers at the U.S. Open.
Wimbledon last year changed a lot for me as a person and for me as an athlete, Barty said.
When you work so hard your whole life for one goal to be able to win Wimbledon, which was my dream, the one true dream that I wanted in tennis, that really changed my perspective."
She described what she termed a gut feeling after Wimbledon about maybe being ready to move on, but she also described herself then as not quite fulfilled." Her victory at the Australian Open satisfied another gap, and Barty said she was completely aware that "my happiness wasn't dependent on the results.
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TMC dismisses reports of I-PAC halting WB ops, Mamata says party to give jobs to staffers if needed
Kolkata/Tarakeswar (WB) (PTI): Dismissing reports that political consultancy firm I-PAC had suspended its operations in West Bengal as "completely baseless", the TMC on Sunday alleged that a conspiracy was being hatched by the BJP-led Centre to cripple the party's campaign machinery through intimidation.
The sharp rebuttal from the ruling party came hours after reports surfaced that the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), which has been closely associated with the TMC's election campaigns since 2021, had allegedly asked its employees in West Bengal to stop work immediately and proceed on a 20-day leave.
A newspaper report claimed an email purportedly sent by the organisation to its employees late on Saturday night cited "legal obligations" and said work in West Bengal would remain suspended until May 11, after which the next course of action would be communicated.
While the I-PAC is yet to issue any statement on the matter, the TMC, in an official comminique issued on Sunday afternoon, said the I-PAC had not withdrawn from the party's campaign.
"We have come across a media report claiming that I-PAC has halted its operations in West Bengal for the next 20 days. This claim is completely baseless and appears to be a deliberate attempt to create confusion on the ground," the party said.
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The statement asserted that the I-PAC team in West Bengal "remains fully engaged" with the TMC and that campaign operations across the state were continuing according to plan.
"These narratives are a deliberate attempt to distract from the clear mood on the ground. The people of West Bengal are fully capable of seeing through these attempts and will respond democratically," it added.
In a politically loaded message aimed at the BJP, the TMC said West Bengal would not be "swayed by misinformation or intimidation" and that the electorate would give its answer during polling on April 23 and 29.
The issue acquired a sharper political edge later in the day when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee broke her silence and accused the BJP and central agencies of trying to frighten not just the TMC, but also those working for the party.
Addressing an election rally in Tarakeswar, Banerjee, without taking the consultancy firm's name, declared that if I-PAC employees were forced out of their jobs because of the ongoing pressure, her party would absorb them.
"They raid us through the ED every day. Suddenly, during elections, they remembered all this? They are telling those who work for our party to leave West Bengal. They have fifty organisations. We have only one," Banerjee said.
In a combative mood, she said, "If they are threatened, they will join us. We will give them jobs. I will not allow even one boy to lose his job. I spoke to Abhishek this morning before coming here."
Without naming the BJP directly, the chief minister alleged that a "deep conspiracy" was underway to disrupt the TMC's election preparations at a crucial juncture.
"We will not accept this conspiracy. How much more will you torture us? How many more votes will you try to snatch? After this, you will bring NRC," she said, invoking one of the Opposition's most potent political issues in West Bengal.
The TMC's aggressive pushback comes against the backdrop of mounting legal and investigative pressure on I-PAC and some of its senior functionaries.
The Enforcement Directorate had earlier conducted searches at I-PAC's office in Kolkata and at the Loudon Street residence of the organisation's founder, Prateek Jain, in connection with the coal smuggling case.
During the raid, Banerjee herself had reached Jain's residence and later alleged that central agencies were attempting to seize confidential election-related documents linked to the TMC's campaign.
The matter eventually reached the Supreme Court and remains under judicial consideration.
More recently, I-PAC co-founder and director Vinesh Chandel was arrested in New Delhi and is currently in ED custody. The arrest had triggered a sharp reaction from TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who described it as "not democracy, but intimidation".
