A year after threatening to gatecrash the party in Melbourne by reaching her first semi-final at a major, Johanna Konta returns for the 2017 edition of the Australian Open armed with a game even more impressive to unleash on a field in possibly more disarray.
The defending champion, Angelique Kerber, who went on to add a second major to her list at Flushing Meadows, has hit an untimely low patch, the great but ageing Serena Williams, newly engaged and just as gnomic, is coming off a rare defeat in Auckland – and Konta is playing the best tennis of her life.
She won the second WTA title of her career by demolishing the estimable Agnieszka Radwanska in two quick sets in the final of the Sydney International on Friday and arrives in Melbourne fully fit and bursting with confidence. In short, the best British player since Laura Robson’s game and health went into decline, is unlikely to have a better chance of winning a grand slam tournament.
However, pressed about her elevated status as a contender, she said: “I think that’s other people’s opinion and actually that’s quite flattering if people talk like that, or think that. But there’s a whole lot of work to be done between being a contender and the possibility [of being] the person who will actually be winning it in the end. There is a lot of matches to be played; a lot of different things will happen between now and then.
“All I can do is take one match at a time, however much of a broken record it sounds, one point at a time, and really just compete the best I can these next two weeks.”
Away from competition, Konta is way more relaxed – and was thrilled to be surrounded by close family in Sydney, where she grew up before her Hungarian parents decamped to the UK when she was 13. Her sister has an eight-week-old boy and there was that air of family contentment.
“I was really keen on playing Sydney [where she has competed twice before without breaking through], because I wanted to meet my nephew. To be quite honest, I am also learning about myself. This is the beginning of my second full year on tour, so I haven’t been playing the schedule for a very long time.
“I am learning about how I feel preparing for slams, and continuously learning about myself in these scenarios, these situations. I am very happy I was there, I got to share an amazing experience with my family. We will see how things develop.
“Ultimately, most players are able to perform at their best when they are happy and when they are comfortable. I guess when you feel at peace and are just enjoying competing, you can play your best. I was able to have that last week.
“The good feeling was created there, because my family was around. They gave me some balance and some external happiness outside the court. I was definitely very happy with that but I was also very happy that, with each match I played, I got that little bit match fitter. I was improving with every match.”
Konta, whose life coach, Juan Coto, died last year, has done well to keep her tennis together and has a new on-court coach in Wim Fissette, a bigger serve, an improved forehand to go with the steady, nagging groundstrokes of her double-handed attack on the other wing, and the same winning smile that simultaneously invites warmth and puzzlement.
Konta gives very little away, a defence mechanism that allows her to control her emotions, even when there is no pressure to do so. It is almost as if she is permanently on court. In press conferences, both arranged and more informal, she is never less than charming, but invariably guarded. She has built a wall around herself that Donald Trump would be proud of.
In the city of her birth last week, Konta beat Eugenie Bouchard then Radwanska so impressively it was impossible not to put her in the frame alongside Kerber and Williams for the first slam title of the season. She would privately acknowledge that – and certainly Fissette, who has coached some of the best players in the game, would be telling her that – but Konta would only say: “I was able to just keep getting better with every match I played. I was definitely pleased.”
She characterises her improvement from a ranking of 153 in the world at the end of 2014 to No9 when the latest list is released on Monday as her “journey”. Others might describe it as amazing.
Even as little as a year ago, she was just inside the top 50. She had made the fourth round of the US Open then the semi-finals here. As her friend and compatriot Heather Watson observed on Saturday, since then, Konta has just kept winning, “week in, week out”. But she has a problem, a significant one: awaiting here in the first week are matches tougher than any of her rivals. She starts on Tuesday against her coach’s compatriot Kirsten Flipkens, with a dance card to follow that may look like this: the Japanese star Naomi Osaka, the former world No1 Caroline Wozniacki, the 2014 Australian Open finalist Dominika Cibulkova, then Serena Williams in the quarter-finals, before another meeting with Radwanska in the semi-finals. The other side of the draw could throw up Garbiñe Muguruza or Kerber as the other finalist. Whoever it is, Konta will be ready.
Her natural caution kicks in when asked about her blistering form and prospects. “To have beaten a player like Aga, I’m definitely very pleased with the level I played but we all know it’s not a given. It doesn’t decide how you will do in the next event.”
She went to her favourite fish and chip shop when she got to Melbourne but was quick to point out she had the fish grilled “but no chips – and I probably won’t for a little while”.
There is a fair chance she will not have many down weeks in which to indulge her love of that sort of food. Her form dictates there is a lot of serious tennis to come.
