How do I vote for the ‘Barty Party’?

It is worse than that. A key Australian attribute is the ‘fair go’. But Kyrgios weaponises his audience like a troop of Twitter trolls to put his opponents off. It becomes not a contest of tennis but psychological warfare and bullying.

The central tenet of postmodernism is that truth is essentially interchangeable with power. If I have power, I control truth, and if I control truth, then I have power. Kyrgios is trying, whether he knows it or not, to parlay this conception into tennis success.

‘If I have the crowd, and my crowd is bigger than your crowd, then I win.’

And if he can’t have success in tennis, because either his opponents can’t be bullied enough, or the rules are just inflexibly objective, then maybe he can parlay it into a fortune anyway.

Being the centre of attention is what counts. He certainly believes in himself, but to what end?

At the moment the narcissists and bullies appear to be winning more broadly in our culture. Take Tennis Australia’s decision to ban people wearing t-shirts saying, ‘Where is Peng-Shuai?’ as the most proximate example. Or more shockingly our universities expelling academics like Peter Ridd for expressing an opinion they didn’t like. Or vaccine mandates.

But Barty gives me hope. I suspect I wouldn’t agree with her politically, but I wholeheartedly support her whole mode of being. Watching her hit the ball is deeply spiritual, whether she looks at it that way or not.

That Barty draws a much larger crowd than the hubristic and narcissistic Kyrgios gives me hope that the Australian spirit not only survives, but thrives, and that it seems submerged because it doesn’t talk itself up, not because it has been defeated.

Maybe it needs to speak up more, because that is what it needs to regain control going forward. Speak up not from self-belief but situational need. It might be down 5:1, but they’re only numbers. It has the game, and the audience will ultimately follow.

They talk about the Barty Party. I wish there were a political one I could vote for, focussed on truth, wisdom, and achievement. Not performative – functioning. Not narcissistic – doing its best in the moment for what is necessary.

I’m convinced there will be one like that, whether new, or out of the ashes of one of the majors. Ash Barty took time off from playing tennis. Many of our best have taken time off from engagement. They’re buried in living a good life, looking after those around them. They just need to be coaxed back. And if they are, they will be well-rewarded.

We’re not playing for silver platters here, we’re playing for the future. It’s a really big trophy.