{"id":500849,"date":"2026-02-24T11:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500849\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:19:09","slug":"ash-barty-to-return-to-golf-as-three-time-tennis-grand-slam-winner-ready-to-play-nz-open-pro-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500849\/","title":{"rendered":"Ash Barty to return to golf, as three-time tennis grand slam winner ready to play NZ Open pro-am"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ash Barty will take a no-stress attitude into her high-profile pro-am pairing with good mate and DP World Tour player Anthony Quayle at the NZ Open.<\/p>\n

The pro-am component of the $1.69 million tournament at Millbrook Resort now draws comparisons with the storied events at Pebble Beach and St Andrews.<\/p>\n

Eleven-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater is a high-profile addition to this year’s field, which also includes the likes of Barty, former Australian Test cricket captain Ricky Ponting, his long-time NZ adversary Stephen Fleming and ex-All Blacks greats Jeff Wilson and Israel Dagg.<\/p>\n

Since retiring from tennis to focus on her young family, former tennis world number one Barty has had little time to devote to golf, another of her sporting loves.<\/p>\n

\"Surfer<\/p>\n

Kelly Slater and Ash Barty during the Ambassadors putting competition at the The 105th New Zealand Open at Millbrook Resort on Tuesday. (AAP: Photosport\/Michael Thomas)<\/p>\n

But the former Wimbledon, French Open and Australian Open champion is very much looking forward to teaming up with Quayle this week where she will play off a handicap of four.<\/p>\n

“This is a beautiful place to visit, a beautiful place to play golf, so it’ll be nice to dust the cobwebs off the clubs,” the 29-year-old said.<\/p>\n

“I’ve played two rounds of golf in two years so the form is pretty scarce.<\/p>\n

“The good thing is I’m fresh and there are no demons \u2026 so what could possibly go wrong?”<\/p>\n

Barty reached out to Quayle a couple of months ago and he was more than happy to sign on as her playing partner in the pro-am.<\/p>\n

Do you have a story idea about women in sport?<\/p>\n

Email us abcsport5050@your.abc.net.au<\/a><\/p>\n

“It’s kind of all worked out really well,” he said.<\/p>\n

“For such an incredible athlete, each time I’ve asked her how her lead-in to this event has been she’s like ‘Oh, it’s just terrible, the game’s terrible, I just haven’t played enough’.<\/p>\n

“And then I was watching her hit a few putts with a custom Wimbledon Odyssey putter.<\/p>\n

“She holed about eight in a row and I’m like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You could be a bit of an over-achiever here’.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ash Barty will take a no-stress attitude into her high-profile pro-am pairing with good mate and DP World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[172559,126238,64,63,118461,755,117278,251933,62084,6417,588,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-500849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-anthony-quayle","9":"tag-ash-barty","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-dp-world-tour","13":"tag-golf","14":"tag-kelly-slater","15":"tag-nz-open","16":"tag-pro-am","17":"tag-ricky-ponting","18":"tag-sport","19":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}