She has been likened to a young Martina Hingis, but Ashleigh Barty won’t make the French Open final as a 16-year-old like the Swiss Miss did.
The Australian wildcard’s maiden campaign in Paris ended in a 6-1 6-2 first-round defeat on Tuesday at the hands of Czech fourth seed Petra Kvitova.
Playing the reigning Wimbledon champion on Court Suzanne Lenglen was always going to be a tall order for the youngest player in either of the singles draws for the claycourt grand slam.
And it was all over in 54 minutes as Kvitova capitalised on Barty’s obvious butterflies.
The just-turned 16-year-old’s nerves were evident in the warm-up when she failed to land 13 straight practise serves.
Not surprisingly, the Queensland youngster then double-faulted on the very first point of the match.
Barty’s performance was far from all doom and gloom, though.
The Wimbledon junior champion provided Australian tennis fans with a glimpse of the future as she matched Kvitova’s back-court firepower for periods of the match.
Barty also showed grit to hold her opening service game with a big ace down the middle after fighting off two break points.
Alas, eight faults and too many missed dropped shots and netted slice backhands ultimately brought her unstuck.
Kvitova broke Barty three times to take the opening set in 25 minutes.
But Barty wasn’t ready to raise the white flag, breaking Kvitova for the first time to nudge ahead 1-0 in the second set.
The teenager handed the break straight back with another backhand error, but remained with Kvitova until dropping serve for a fifth time in the sixth game to fall behind 4-2.
It was all over for Barty when she flayed a backhand long on Kvitova’s first match point.