once more during the season. The Heat finished with a 7–7 record, good for sixth out of eight teams in the competition. The WBBL season ended in January, while the local Brisbane league ended in February. 2016–2018: Return to tennis, singles breakthrough, US Open doubles champion Barty announced her return to professional tennis in February a few weeks after the end of the WBBL season, and began working with Craig Tyzzer as her coach. Barty initially only competed in doubles events on the ITF Circuit at the $25K-level. In her first two months, she played five tournaments and won three of them, including her first one back where she partnered with Jessica Moore and two in back-to-back weeks in Canberra. Barty returned to singles in late May. She qualified for the Eastbourne Trophy, a $50K event, where she made it to the semifinals in both singles and doubles. The following week, Barty returned to the WTA Tour, where she qualified for the Nottingham Open. She made it to the quarterfinals, losing to top seed Karolína Plíšková in a close match. She was happy with her performance, saying, "It's nice to know that straight off the bat I can come in and compete with the best in the world." Barty also received a wildcard into qualifying at Wimbledon, but did not reach the main draw. After a bone stress injury in her arm, she only played in one more event that year, the WTA 125 Taipei Challenger in November. Singles: First WTA title, WTA Elite Trophy, world No. 15 At the start of the 2017 season, Barty picked up her first career wins at the Australian Open, reaching the third round. Barty's next tournament was the Malaysian Open, where she had won her first WTA singles match four years earlier. She entered the singles main draw as a qualifier and won both the singles and doubles events. This was her first career WTA singles title and helped her enter the top 100 for the first time. Barty continued to climb the rankings after a quarterfinal showing at the Internationaux de Strasbourg on clay, where she lost to compatriot Daria Gavrilova, and a runner-up at Birmingham on grass, her best result at a Premier tournament. During the US Open Series in August, Barty reached back-to-back Premier 5 rounds of 16 at the Canadian Open and the Cincinnati Open, despite needing to qualify