Jason Gay: The expectations brilliantly self-aware Ash Barty has defied with shock retirement at 25

That’s the expectation of great athletes now. The money is fabulous, the sponsors adore longevity, the science is there, the modern accoutrements of success make it easier — the physios, coaches, therapists, nutritionists, private jets and more.

Go and go and go and go. Until the body quits. Until you’ve chased every record and possibility. Until the public has had enough.

Look at ancient Tom Brady, already back at it. Look at Serena and Venus Williams, chasing greatness into their 40s. Look at LeBron James, pledging to stick around until his own son is playing in the NBA.

Why not? It can be done. And again: The money is fabulous.

Once in a while, however, a great athlete says no more, at an early age, way before they’re due, and they mean it.

That’s what the tennis star Ash Barty did this week, announcing her retirement from the tour at age 25, while still No. 1 in the world, the reigning champion at Wimbledon and her home country’s Australian Open.

While still No. 1 in the world. Let that linger for a moment. Barty’s playing the best tennis of her life. She’d be a favourite in every tournament she played. She isn’t quitting because of a decline in her skill, or any apparent physical injury.

It’s quite the opposite. Barty says she’s simply ready … for what’s next.

“The time is right for me to step away and chase other dreams and to put the racquets down,” Barty said in a short, admirably level-headed interview with her friend and former doubles partner Casey Dellacqua.

As for the why, Barty offered nothing terribly specific. She revealed that the tennis grind had become wearisome, that atop the summit of the women’s game — a climb that had taken years of doubt and sacrifice to achieve — she realised she no longer had the desire to keep pushing.

“I’ve said it to my team multiple times, I don’t have it in me anymore,” she said. “I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top of the level anymore. I just know that I’m spent. I just know that physically I have nothing more to give, and that, for me, is success. I’ve given absolutely everything I can to this beautiful sport of tennis, and I’m really happy with that.

“I know that people may not understand it,” she said. “And that’s OK.”

She sounded utterly rational, but it’s astonishing self-awareness from a young athlete; If you have a couple minutes to watch Barty’s comments, do it. She doesn’t appear to have rushed this decision; she’s not second-guessing herself in real time. She is at home and comfortable in her choice.

It also sounds a lot like, well, Ash Barty. If you follow tennis, you know she’s been a grounded sort of champion, a multidimensional talent who, in interviews, keeps it low-key. She’s an enormously consequential athlete in her home country, where her success, her Indigenous Ngaragu heritage, her bond with the Oz tennis legend Evonne Goolagong Cawley and her one-woman revival of all that great Australian tennis history vaulted her to superstardom.

Barty’s victory in Melbourne in January was the first time an Australian singles player had won the Australian Open since 1978. If this is indeed it, it’s a marvellous exclamation point.

She seemed to shoulder this fame and pressure so well. Barty was a player without a tactical weakness, who’d proven she could win on any surface. She appeared built for a long run.

But tennis is a consuming beast. There’s occasional team competition, and doubles offers camaraderie, but it’s mostly a business of you, alone, even in this era of entourages clapping from the box. It is a sport with a brutal history of burnout and rapid physical decay; It isn’t uncommon to see teenage talents unravel in their 20s or sometimes faster than that. For every comet that reaches the top 20, there are thousands of capable players who abandoned along the way.

For tennis fans, Barty’s walk off recalled Björn Borg’s at age 26, or more recently, the early departure of Justine Henin, who quit in 2008 while the women’s No. 1, on the verge of the French Open, where she was the three-time defending champion.

Ash Barty has also been here before. A prodigious junior champion, she walked away from the sport in her late teens, citing a want to be a “normal teenage girl.” She dabbled in professional cricket, a period of her life that she recalls joyfully, because she was part of a team, and not in the tennis cyclone.

“I met an amazing group of people who couldn’t care less whether I could hit a tennis ball or not,” she told me in 2019, after winning her first major at Roland Garros.

Will she come back? Who knows. Every early retirement is an occasion to predict when the athlete will return to the sport — Henin came back, and Borg, too, late and regrettably. Tom Brady barely lasted a month.

But Barty may be different. Not everyone needs to go and go and go. Her career earnings are well north of $20 million. Playing on would earn her plenty more, but she’s already experienced a life away from tennis, and she liked what she saw.

“I’ll never, ever stop loving tennis,” she said. “It’ll always be a massive part of my life. But now I think it’s important that I get to enjoy the next phase of my life as Ash Barty the person, not Ash Barty the athlete.”

More Coverage

Philippoussis: Barty’s grace in a world of egos

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Analysis: Why Ash Barty has decided to walk away

Courtney Walsh

It sounds reasonable, if rare.

A warm welcome, then, to Ash Barty … the person.

- Wall Street Journal