Ash Barty has revealed her tennis retirement plans were set before having "one last crack" and marching to a dominant Australian Open title.
The world No.1 and three–time major champion sensationally announced her retirement at age 25 on Wednesday.
Speaking alongside coach Craig Tyzzer on Thursday, she revealed a wedding date with fiance Garry Kissick had been set but remained coy on her next professional move.
Winning an Australian Open wasn't essential before making her shock decision though, Barty explaining she had "never been a prisoner" to the profession she had already walked away from once as a prodigious teenager.
"The Australian public allowed me to be myself. They allowed me to make mistakes. They allowed me to be imperfect," she said.
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"It really did make that Australian Open so much more enjoyable for all of us to be able to go 'you know what, this is one last crack, let's see what we can do'.
"It was really cool."
Tyzzer admitted he wasn't surprised by Barty's decision, given she had cheekily asked if she could retire after her 2019 French Open victory and that her limp Olympic singles campaign last year had been telling.
"After (winning) Wimbledon that was an obvious goal for us and once she achieved it and once we got to the Olympics, it sort of hit home for me that there wasn't much left in her," he said.
"The motivation wasn't there, except when she played doubles with Storm (Sanders) and mixed with John Peers, her singles really went by the wayside.
"She wasn't fussed.
"So I felt that she had climbed where she needed to get to and it was going to be a hard slog to keep her involved."
He said marching to a breakthrough title in Melbourne without dropping a set was only more remarkable given that mindset.
"Unbelievable. It was really difficult to do a pre–season for the lead–up to the Aussie summer circuit and she just put her head down and went super hard," he said.
"The hardest thing was trying to motivate her to get a spark to go, 'hey, you know, you need to be out there' because her tennis and her mindset, she was so relaxed and so easy going with it all, it was almost like she didn't care whether she won or lost.
"But she obviously did (but) I think the Australian summer was for everyone else and not for her." – AAP
