One of the tougher asks in tennis is to win a match after coming incredibly close and being denied. Today, Ashleigh Barty did just that in the 2021 Wimbledon final. She defeated Karolina Plíšková 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3 in a topsy-turvy match filled with close to equal parts nerves and quality tennis.
With Plíšková serving at 5-all, 40-love in the second set, Barty played a spectacular series of five points to seal an unlikely break. She landed first serve returns and defended beautifully, coaxing Plíšková into errors. But when serving for the match, errors invaded Barty’s own game, and after being broken back she lost the tiebreak as well as her opponent ascended in confidence and execution.
Barty’s challenge was imposing — in the space of a few minutes, she had gone from being three points away from a monumental victory to having to win an entire new set to reach the finish line. The task is doubly difficult when a player has the mental burden of having come close once before. But win the set Barty did. She broke serve early while protecting her own service games to great success, putting pressure on Plíšková just to keep the score close.
As the pressure peaked again when Barty served for the match a second time at 5-3 in the decider, Plíšková made her push. Barty faced a break point after netting a swing volley, but survived a deep Plíšková return and saw her opponent net a backhand. At deuce, Barty produced a stunning ace down the middle, then sank to the ground in joy and disbelief as her opponent netted another backhand on championship point.
Barty is steadily building a fantastic career. She is the world number one and won Roland-Garros in 2019. She won important titles in Miami and Stuttgart this year. And she has now added a second major trophy to her name, which has the added bonus of putting her #1 status out of reach for a while longer. Her potential to win big titles in the future is extremely high, too — big titles on all three surfaces since the start of 2019 speak well of her surface versatility.
Barty’s game doesn’t share the seeming technical perfection of many of her rivals on tour, but her strengths more than make up for her minor weaknesses. Her topspin backhand can land short, but she compensates with a biting slice, a slice that stays low and often carries sidespin as well as backspin, a slice that forced several errors from Plíšková today. Her serve is a weapon wherever she plays. It’s no small wonder that she can hit the corners with weight and pace at a height of just 5′ 5”. Plíšková is eight (eight!) inches taller than Barty, yet in this match hit one fewer ace, faced three more break points, and won a far lower percentage of second serve points (44% to Barty’s 70%). Barty’s serve sets up her forehand, which is a deadly stroke capable of brushing the edges of the court. Plíšková was burned many times when she aimed her groundstrokes at the Barty forehand, and with all kinds of point-ending shots: a lob, a crosscourt passing shot, inside-out winners…the shot can practically do anything.
Though she was overmatched, Plíšková played bravely. Clearly stricken by nerves in contrast with Barty’s razor-sharp beginning of the match, she lost the first 14 points of the final. But she slowed her opponent’s momentum before the end of the first set and came up with some timely serves when under pressure in the second. At 1-3, 30-all, with a decisive double-break deficit looming, Plíšková slammed an ace and a service winner, beginning a string of ten straight points won.
Major finals are relentlessly demanding, though. While it seemed that Plíšková had greatly increased her margin for error after stealing the second set, she failed to put an easy volley into the open court on break point at 0-1 in the third, and never recovered the break. While Barty’s challenge was to mentally rebound from the second set, Plíšková’s was to sustain that high level of play without giving an inch, and that level of intensity is tough to sustain. Even so, Plíšková will regret missing a neutral backhand at break point — the first break point Plíšková had failed to convert all match — when Barty served for the match. She was not incredibly far from completing an incredible steal in the final.
Plíšková has still accomplished much this tournament. Few gave her a chance going into Wimbledon, but she didn’t drop a set in her first five matches. And after going down a set to Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals, her serving clinic over the next two frames was one of the most impressive passages of play in the entire two weeks. She is still without a major, but the quest to collect her first has been given a boost.
Barty, meanwhile, is on top of the world. The world #1 is surely a threat for more titles later this year, even as the tour returns to hard courts, four-time major champion Naomi Osaka’s favorite surface. But even if she plays poorly for the rest of the year, she will probably still look back fondly on 2021. She’s just fulfilled her childhood dream, after all.