Can Ashleigh Barty win the Australian Open?

     "Today was probably my sharpest match I've played. I felt really comfortable moving around the court. I felt like I found the middle of the racket a lot sooner than my other matches..." Ashleigh Barty has said after winning her third round at the Australian Open against Elena Rybakina. She is heading towards the finish line at Melbourne but Barty has did much in the 2109 season to lead up to being the No. 1 players in the world today.

     She is confident and analytical in describing her way of being a success for her team but mainly for herself. "A lot of time it's not about how you start, but how you continue through the match through every single point." Barty trains hard on working on her game and thinking about her opponents'. "I know if a player's going to beat me, they're going to have to play a very high quality match for a long period of time." This has been proven not only recently in Australia but thoroughout the last 2109 season.

     Ashleigh Barty plays tiredlessly. She has her standards and each time on the court tries her best to fulfill them. She won Miami against Karolina Pliskova last season, then a few months later winning the Italian Open in doubles with her first time partner Victoria Azarenka. A month later it was the French Open title over Marketa Vondrousova. The same month she'd win Birmingham over Julia Goerges and the WTA Finals she splendoredly won over Elina Svitolina.

     When Barty walks onto the court, the fans and crowd can't help thinking she'll perform her top of the notch excellence as she previously did and very rarely is the tennis community wrong. But she has had some 'hiccups' in between when she boed to Jennifer Brady in Brisbane with straight sets too. She was determined to get back onthe drawing board and did so at Adelaide by winning not only a match but capturing the title from Dayana Yastremska. She knows that she isn't infallible and says that "I identify areas I have to work on every single day, regardless if it's the first or second week...we practice those areas, we chip away." For Ashleigh Barty capturing a title isn't the end of winning or hard work, it's just the beginning. She mentions that her road to playing excellent tennis never ends and says of her and her team that "we try to improve 1, 2, 3 percent every day. "Is Barty able to win the Australian Open?"  Well with her bag of confidence, her skill and tactical manuevers and the crowd behind her, it would be difficult for her to do anything else.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2U6EIVd