Barty wins maiden Wimbledon crown

As Karolina Pliskova and Ashleigh Barty walked on to the Centre Court for the final, their tournament accreditation badges were swinging from each of their racket bags as if each woman were reminding herself: remember who you are.

Yet in the first women’s final since 1977 where neither contender had ever reached the ultimate decider before, in Pliskova’s case it showed so much that for much of the opening set she played as if she could barely recall her own name.

Few would have thought that from those toe-curling beginnings, there would emerge an utterly riveting contest. Not since 2012 has the women’s final gone the distance, and ultimately it was Barty who lasted the course to triumph 6-3, 6-7(4), 6-3 in five minutes under two hours.

Fifty years after Evonne Goolagong became the first indigenous Australian to win Wimbledon, Barty walked a dance of joy in her footsteps.

“This is incredible,” she said before congratulating Pliskova. “At the start of the third I told myself to just keep fighting. She’s an incredible competitor, and she brought out the best in me. It was an exceptional match and I’m really proud that I was able to bring my best level, reset, just keep chipping away and hold my nerve at the end. I can’t thank my team enough, sacrificing their time and energy into my dream.

“Match point? I can’t remember it! Being able to live out my dream with everyone here has made it better than I could ever have imagined. I didn’t sleep a lot last night thinking of all the what-ifs, but coming out on to the Centre Court, I felt at home. And I hope I made Evonne proud.”

There may have been more disastrous starts to a Championship match, but watching Pliskova it was very difficult to summon one to mind.

Barty would have been aiming to force enough points off the Czech’s serve to tip the balance in her favour, yet for a long while very little force was required. Fourteen long points were lost before Pliskova got on the board.

Her game is first-strike tennis, all about the serve and the power, but initially the big gun simply imploded. Her service – the weapon around which her game is built – had the sting of a butterfly, without the good looks.

Even allowing for a recovery towards the end of the first set, she won a grim 36% of points off her first serve in that opening chapter.

What the Czech absolutely did not want was to allow Barty to move her around the court, because in a battle of finesse she was sure to fall victim to the Australian’s slice, made for the low bounce of grass.

But in the opening skirmishes, her own game turned to stone. Before the final, her coach Sascha Bajin spoke of how Pliskova can “appear cold” on court, but he was referring to her habitually impenetrable countenance rather than being frozen with nerves.

For four games, it was gruesome to watch. Would this be a repeat of the Rome final this year, where Pliskova succumbed to Iga Swiatek in a double bagel horror show?

But then Barty got just a little tight, and two of the three games the Czech got on the board in that opening set were breaks. Nonetheless, the Australian regained her composure to serve it out to love.

These two had met six times at Tour-level before this encounter, with Barty leading 4-2, including all of the last three matches. But it was positively bizarre to recall that in the most recent pair of encounters Barty was required to come back from a set down.

The writing appeared to be on the wall in neon-lit letters when the No.1 seed cemented her advantage with an early break in the second. But Pliskova was inching back, and she levelled with the kind of return which saw her through against Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals. Next game she fired down her fastest serve of the match, and with a three-game streak she was in it.

At last – at last! – Pliskova had rediscovered the rich vein of form which had fed her progress through The Championships. She came in to this Fortnight having fallen out of the top ten for the first time in five years, and her return to that elite group was already guaranteed.

But if she was to lift the trophy here, she would need to become the first woman to win a Grand Slam by defeating both the No.1 and No.2 seeds since Svetlana Kuznetsova at Roland-Garros in 2009.

At 5-5, Pliskova’s aces were back. But when Barty had her chance, the signature slice was relentless and Pliskova – like so many – wilted beneath its pressure. It seemed the Australian’s time had come, but a loose game denied her. In the breaker, Pliskova was roaring herself on, and the crowd roared with her as she forced the decider.

The stage was set for a classic showdown. In her semi-final against Sabalenka, once Pliskova had gained control in the second set she never looked back. But this time it was as if the effort of getting back in the match had drained her of too much, and Barty did not have to be at her best to grab the early break.

So much of the story of this match seemed to be about Pliskova. But this was Barty’s story too. Winning Wimbledon is many a player’s goal, but the Roland-Garros champion of 2019 is so committed to her ambitions that this year she is spending at least six months away from home to avoid the long quarantine necessary on any return.

Injuries halted her in Rome and Paris, and the hip injury she sustained at Roland-Garros made it touch-and-go that she would get to the All England Club at all, never mind come through seven rounds.

It is not possible to win any Grand Slam by accident. Even in the last game, the crowd rose to both players as Pliskova tested her rival. But the runner-up at the US Open of 2016 was destined to be runner-up once more.

Long hailed as the player with the perfect game for grass, Barty – all 5ft 5in of her – held her nerve.

Though she be but little, she is fierce… and she is Wimbledon champion.