Can Ash Barty Deliver Australia's First French Open Title in 46 years?

This image is a derivative of Sydney International Tennis WTA Premier Sydney,
by Rob Keating (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Not since 1973 has any Australian - female or male - won the French Open, yet Queensland’s Ashleigh Barty has the best chance in quite some time to disrupt 46 years of unwanted Australian sporting history.

Barty, who’s dropped just one solitary set at Roland Garros this year, is currently forecast by the Stats Insider model as being a 5% chance (8th) of winning the clay-court slam, while the bookies are considering it a better than odds-on proposition that she’ll graduate to what will be her first ever Grand Slam Semi-Final.

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Barty’s ascension, though rapid, has been in no way unexpected.

As a junior, she was ranked as high as number #2 in the world, and, in 2011, and at just 15 years of age, Barty won the Wimbledon Girls event. In that tournament, she dropped just a single set, ironically to American Madison Keys who Barty will square off against in her French Open Quarter-Final.

After taking a few years off from professional tennis (to try her hand at cricket), Barty has returned to the WTA Tour, showcasing much of the youngster's game that had so many predicting such a bright future.

Since returning, Barty has been in absolutely brilliant form, and in a short time has a variety of pundits viewing her as a legitimate chance to claim the game’s number #1 mantle.

Barty’s current WTA ranking of #6 constitutes a career-high, while Stats Insider's own in-house rankings presently rate her as the world’s number #2 female player, taking into account the quality of the opposition she's beaten, and on which surface.

Barty boasts a 7-4 record against players ranked top 20 in 2019, while in March she won her most significant tournament to date, toppling Karolina Pliskova in the final of the Miami Open.

Barty’s progress at this year's French Open has been very much straight-forward with easy wins so far against Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins and Andrea Petkovic, before ousting the rising Sofia Kenin in three sets in their Round of 16 duel. 

At just 23 years of age, and with an enormously bright future in front of her, Barty will have plenty of opportunities to grab a swag of significant titles, which hopefully include a couple of Grand Slam crowns as well.

With that said, opportunities like this year’s French Open don’t come along very often, especially when considering how incredibly fractured and unpredictable the women's draw has become. 

Just six of the initial 32 seeds remain on the women's side, with five of the top six already gone. For comparison’s sake, the men’s draw still has 8 seeded players remaining, with all of the top five seeds still active.

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Barty’s ride at Roland Garros in 2019 has been gentle, probing and with minimal fanfare so far. 

The media attention will, however, ratchet up significantly over the coming days especially if she advances past Keys and qualifies for her maiden Grand Slam Semi-Final. 

Yet, should Barty step up and accept the increasingly difficult challengers set to confront her, she might be just three matches away from erasing 46 long years of Australian sporting underachievement in France. 

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