In decades to come, watching Barty take on Angelique Kerber amid the global pandemic will become a souvenir fond moment of Australian tennis
When I was a kid I had Pat Rafter posters Blu-Tacked to my bedroom wall. Those complimentary ones from the centre of tennis magazines before the internet was really a thing. Andre Agassi was up there, too, and the Woodies and Williams sisters. But Rafter was the real face of my sporting childhood.
I saw him in the flesh only once, warming up on the outside courts one year at the Sydney international. But his face was a fixture on our television screen, through all the times he didn’t win a grand slam and the two times he did.
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