A tenacious Ash Barty has booked a place in the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the first time and ended the winning streak of French Open champion Barbora Krejčíková at 15 matches with a 7-5, 6-3 fourth round victory.
Key points:
- Ash Barty had previously never made it past the fourth round at Wimbledon
- Her opponent Barbora Krejčíková had won 15 straight matches, which included the French Open title
- She could play fellow Australian Ajla Tomljanovic in the quater-finals
Krejčíková had won the title at Roland Garros, as Barty did in 2019, as well as Strasbourg before it, and came into The Championships as one of the most in-form players on the WTA Tour.
And against Barty the Czech world number 17 came out of the blocks firing in an old-school grasscourt encounter, the likes of which former champions and rivals Steffi Graf and Jana Novotna would have been proud of.
In a rarity for the modern game and especially so in women’s tennis both players possess all-court games and penetrating slice backhands with which they can and did attack the net in a tactical battle.
It was an example of traditional grasscourt tennis rarely seen anymore, even if there was little use of serve and volley tactics.
Barty, though, was under fire early and often on her much-vaunted serve.
The world number one was broken in just her second service game of the encounter and was forced onto the back foot in the opening set.
And for much of that set it was Krejčíková who was dominating the play and pushing Barty around the court.
Barty, though, was clutch when it mattered, saving eight out of 10 break points with some big serving.
First she saved a break point at 2-4 down and then broke the Czech to level the set before taking a 6-5 lead and breaking Krejčíková to love as unforced errors flowed from the rising Czech star’s forehand.
Barty acknowledged just how difficukt the opening of the match was for her.
“Probably for the first 15 or 20 minutes, I felt like I was really struggling to pick up her ball off her racquet. I wasn’t able to make enough, give myself a chance to get into games,” Barty said.
“That 2-4 game was a big one. I played the (break) point a bit more aggressively, was able to be a bit more assertive. That was a little bit of a change.”
In many ways the second set was a reversal of the first with Barty looking the dominant player early on and taking the break to lead 4-2.
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It was the first in a series of three service breaks before Barty eventually fought off another break point when serving for the match and closed it out with an ace.
The match ended a streak that saw Krejčíková announce herself to the tennis world in emphatic fashion but for Barty it represents another chance at history at a tournament she has long been considered a chance at winning due to her potent serve.
“It was was an incredibly tough match Barbora has had an incredible year and is one of the toughest players to beat,” Barty said.
“Certainly happy with the way things are going, it’s a stepping stone to what is kind of one of my biggest dreams.”
A win in her quarter-final against either fellow Australian Ajla Tomljanovic or teenage British wildcard Emma Raducanu would make Barty the first Australian woman to make the semi-finals at The All England Club since Jelena Dokic in the year 2000.
Barty was in no doubt who she would like to play much to the chagrin of the partisan British crowd.
“Both would be exciting for different reasons … and sorry but Ajla is an Aussie,” she said.
Were Barty to lift the Venus Rosewater dish she would be the first Australian to do so since another Indigenous woman Evonne Goolagong Cawley did back in 1980 and with only one other major winner left in the draw in Germany’s Angelique Kerber, the world number one has every chance.
