Ash Barty says she is ‘excited’ to be playing tennis outside of her home country once again, even though her first taste of international travel in 12 months didn’t go to plan.
The former French Open champion has not travelled internationally for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and missed two out of the three Grand Slam tournaments which were played last year. Despite her lengthy absence from the Tour Barty has managed to maintain at the top of the rankings due to adjustments to the calculations.
Hoping to maintain her position over the coming weeks, the 24-year-old is headlining the Miami Open where she is the defending champion from 2019 (the tournament was cancelled last year). Heading into the tournament Barty admits she has mixed feelings about embarking on playing a full season with various restrictions still in place.
“When leaving Australia, it was quite hard to leave and quite emotional to me,” Barty told reporters on Tuesday. “But I think we’re (my team) excited to have the opportunity to play the whole season. So I think we’re looking at staying away the whole season.’
“Touch wood, everything goes well with the rest of the world, where we’ll be travelling to and playing tournaments,we’ll be able to play safely and feel really comfortable.”
Unfortunately for the Australian she has already experienced some blips in her travels to another country with it taking two days to arrive in Miami. A trip she describes as ‘usually quite easy to make.’ However, a series of flight cancellations forced her to seek alternate routes in what ended up being an eventful journey.
“It was certainly bizarre leaving Australia. We had quite a lengthy trip over here, had a couple flight cancellations. It turned out to be a near 50-hour trip to get here,” she commented on the duration of her trip.
“It was about 48 hours, 45 hours door-to-door, for us. What should have been quite a simple Brisbane-Sydney, Sydney to L.A., L.A.on to Miami is usually quite an easy trip. We had a flight cancellation leaving Australia and another fight cancellation when we got to L.A. It was quite a wriggle around.”
Travel chaos aside, Barty hopes she can continue her form generated from the start of the season. In Melbourne she won her ninth WTA title at the Yarra Valley Classic before going on to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Open before losing to Karolína Muchová. Barty then suffered a shock loss in the first round of the Adelaide International.
Seeking to get her groove back in Miami, Barty also faces the threat of losing her No.1 ranking to Naomi Osaka who is currently on a 21-match winning streak. Osaka is just defending 65 points in the tournament. Regardless of what happens, she is hopeful that she can once again play at her best.
“I’m looking forward to hopefully bringing some of my best tennis again and giving myself a chance to play a few matches and really get stuck into the tournament,” she concluded.
Barty, who has a bye in the first round, will start her Miami campaign against either Hailey Baptiste or Kristina Kucova.