Happy Birthday Ash Barty
Ashleigh Barty (born 24 April 1996) is an Australian professional tennis player and former cricketer.
She was ranked No. 1 in the world in singles by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and is the second Australian WTA singles No.
1 after Evonne Goolagong Cawley.
She is also a top 20 player in doubles, having achieved a career-high ranking of No.
5 in the world.
Barty has won seven singles titles and ten doubles titles on the WTA Tour, including one Grand Slam singles title at the 2019 French Open and one Grand Slam doubles title at the 2018 US Open with partner CoCo Vandeweghe.
She is also the reigning champion in singles at the WTA Finals. Born in Ipswich in Queensland, Barty began playing tennis at the age of four in nearby Brisbane.
She had a promising junior career, reaching a career-high ranking of No.
2 in the world after winning the girls’ singles title at Wimbledon in 2011.
As a teenager, Barty had early success in doubles on the WTA Tour in 2013, finishing runner-up at three Grand Slam doubles events with veteran Casey Dellacqua, including at the Australian Open while still only 16 years old.
Late in the 2014 season, Barty decided to take an indefinite break from tennis.
She ended up playing cricket during this hiatus, signing with the Brisbane Heat for the inaugural Women’s Big Bash League season despite having no formal training in the sport. Barty returned to tennis in early 2016.
She had a breakout year in singles in 2017, winning her first WTA title at the Malaysian Open and rising to No.
17 in the world despite having never been ranked inside the top 100 before her time off.
She also had another prolific year in doubles with Dellacqua, culminating in her first appearance at the WTA Finals in doubles.
Barty then won her first Premier Mandatory and Grand Slam tournament titles in doubles in 2018 before accomplishing the same feat in singles in 2019.
She also led Australia to a runner-up finish at the 2019 Fed Cup. Barty is an all-court player who employs a wide variety of shots into her style of play.
Despite her short stature for a professional tennis player, she is an excellent server, regularly ranking among the WTA Tour’s leaders in aces and percentage of service points won.
Barty is an Indigenous Australian and serves as the National Indigenous Tennis Ambassador for Tennis Australia.
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Mr & Mrs Jacob Murdock become 1st to travel across US by car, they leave LA in a Packard & arrive in NYC in 32d-5h-25m On April 24, 1908
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- 1967 Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had “gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily.”
