This Australian Open – like tennis, sport and life, essentially – has echoed to the opening and slamming of doors of missed opportunity, from the entirely unexpected exits of Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray to the more predictable departure of Johanna Konta on day 10.
Into the void left have strode the likes of Mischa Zverev, briefly, and Grigor Dimitrov (perhaps until they dim the lights for the last time on Sunday night) in the men’s draw and, after Konta’s loss to Serena Williams in the quarter-finals on Wednesday, the 34-year-old Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, a movie in her own right.
Lucic-Baroni, ranked 79th in the world, earned her shot at Williams in the semi-finals, an assignment tinged with doom, by beating the fifth seed Karolina Pliskov on Wednesday with her left leg heavily strapped and the crowd baying their support in a see-sawing quarter-final. Some of them will remember her debut here 19 years ago, when she made the second round. A year later, she reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon, after which injury, personal and financial problems interrupted her fairytale – until now.
Her fate will be sealed soon enough, but Konta’s story has many an unwritten chapter left.
Williams took only an hour and a quarter to beat her 6-2, 6-3 on a warm, cloudless day on Rod laver Arena and was kind enough to tell patrons in the courtside interview (a host-network ritual that has come to resemble the adoration of the Magi), “She’s definitely a future champion here, for sure.”
The 25-year-old from Eastbourne (or “Sydney-born” if you’re following this closer to the eye of the storm) soaked up that praise as equably as she did 10 Williams aces, seven of them in the second set, four of them in braces of two towards the end of a match that ebbed away from her after a competitive quarter of an hour. She broke once from three chances, but handed it back quickly, and, even though many of the rallies were hard-fought, Williams was rarely under sustained pressure.
Nevertheless, Konta can be proud of her achievement in getting this far in the toughest quarter of the draw. She beat the talented Belgian Kirsten Flipkens, then went through the gears to account for the bright young Japanese prospect Naomi Osaka, the former world No1 Caroline Wozniacki (her most impressive performance) and the 30th seed, Ekaterina Makarova.
She described playing Williams as, “one of the best experiences of my life”, then admitted her red eyes and sniffling were not signs of a cold but the result of crying her eyes out afterwards in the locker-room.
“I cried because I’m generally quite an emotional person,” she said. “I think I’ve never hid that away. I’ve worked incredibly hard to direct that emotion into a positive way and into a constructive way on court. But off court I’m still very emotional.”
For those who watch her machine-like, three-bounce serve – simulating the appearance of an archer letting loose an arrow – and her tidy, fierce ground strokes, it was an admission that opened up another page in her story. She declined to agree with the suggestion that crying was an emotional release from controlling that side of her nature all the way through the tournament, but it was encouraging to learn that she cares so deeply about losing, that it is not really just “another opportunity”.
The battle for Konta has always been to reconcile the passion with the execution. She took a little while to get the balance right, rising from outside 150 in the world two years ago to 47 12 months ago and No9 in the world this year. As she made the semi-finals in 2016, she drops below Svetlana Kuznetsova to 10 – hardly a disaster – and out of the top 10 if Serena’s sister, Venus, were to win the title.
But they are only numbers, she says. What matters to Konta is the performance. And, while she was disappointed “not to have done better” on her biggest day, she was hardly devastated. Rightly so.
“There are so many things I can learn from that,” she said, her eyes still crimson-tinged, “so many things I can look to improve on, and also to acknowledge some things that I did well. Credit to her, she played an almost perfect first set. She just shows why she is who she is.”
Konta said beforehand she did not know if she would be overawed by the legend that is Williams until she shared the court with her. Afterwards, she said, “I felt I did OK with that. I definitely would have liked to have had a bit more say in the match than I did but, unfortunately, that’s also so much to do with Serena herself, the kind of tennis that she plays.
“I don’t think there’s one player on Tour that goes up against her and feels like they’ve got much of a say in the matches. That’s what she’s very good at, the way she’s able to dictate and the way she’s able to make sure that the matches and the points are on her terms.”
In one sense it was a win for Konta, who had said she was glad to be sharing a stage with Williams before she retired. If Williams means what she said about the Briton being a future champion, they could well do it again.
Certainly, Konta proved she is good enough. The way she was playing before this match she would have given anyone left in the quarter-finals a fright.
- This article was amended on 25 January 2017 to make clear Johanna Konta’s hometown is Eastbourne. An earlier version said it was Bournemouth.
