Ash Barty and Bianca Andreescu: Driving Fast, Changing Lanes

Ashleigh Barty and Bianca Andreescu are two sports cars on an open highway. 

They have both zoomed past the competition this year in women’s tennis. They are making the finals of significant tournaments. The primary difference between the two players this year is that Andreescu’s shoulder injury kept her away from the tour for four months, minus a brief foray to Roland Garros. 

Barty has turned in quality results on all three surfaces.

One cannot compare the two players in a three-surface context, but on the hard court, this fact is known:

Either Barty (once) or Andreescu (twice) has reached the final in each of the last three significant hard court tournaments: Andreescu at Indian Wells, Barty in Miami, and now Andreescu in Toronto.

Earlier in the year, Andreescu won a Premier Mandatory on hardcourts. Barty won the next one.

Are we going to have a North American summer in which Andreescu’s full-distance run in Toronto is followed by Ash making a run to the Cincinnati final?

While you think about that question, absorb the reality that both Barty and Andreescu – while hardly carbon copies of each other in playing style – share a fundamental capacity to win with a 'Plan C' if 'Plans A & B' aren’t working, or if an opponent poses specific questions they have to answer. Barty and Andreescu have many tools in the bag and can use them expertly.

<ad>

Australian golf icon Greg Norman (who married Chris Evert several years ago) loves his tennis. He would surely appreciate the diversity of skills Barty and Andreescu bring to the tour. Those deep toolboxes, the inexhaustible supplies of resources, have carried Ash and Bianca to the top tier of women’s tennis in 2019.

Barty has risen from WTA ranked #15 at the start of the year to the top of the charts. She relinquished her #1 ranking this week to Naomi Osaka, but is still ranked 2nd with a great chance to pass Osaka at the US Open, where the Japanese star is defending 2,000 points as the reigning champion.

Andreescu was ranked outside the top 200 just 12 months ago. She is now in the top 20.

These are both rapid-moving stories, roaring past the competition on the WTA Tour… but their paths haven’t intersected yet.

Serena Williams has played Naomi Osaka. She played Andreescu on Sunday. (This article was written just before the start of the final in Toronto.)

If you wanted to see one match at the US Open, the two foremost choices have to be these:

Serena vs. Barty or Andreescu vs. Barty.

Am I wrong? I don’t think so.

Let’s live in the fast lane… and hope that Ash and Bianca don’t swerve to avoid each other in New York.