As impressive as her tennis was at the US Open, Johanna Konta’s words in victory and, finally, defeat on Monday after a run of 16 successive wins, left the strong impression that here was a player whose career is finally going in the right direction.
Konta had always been fragile, a talented athlete with a solid all-round game but who found the prospect of victory inhibiting. Not any more. In winning back to back against top-20 players in Garbiñe Muguruza and Andrea Petkovic to get to the even more formidable No5 seed Petra Kvitova she proved to herself and others she not only deserves to be in this company, but that she is a threat.
The key to her improvement has been consistency. Her game goes neither up nor down to any dramatic degree, which allows her to apply constant pressure on her opponents. It is the single most difficult trick in tennis.
Anyone who gets into a slam draw has talent, but only a few are capable of making the most of it day in, day out against the best players in the world.
That is what Konta did at Flushing Meadows over the first eight days. That she fell to Kvitova was no disgrace at all. She had two break points at 4-4 in the first set and pushed her all the way to the end, although she will be disappointed with double-faulting.
“Obviously not the result I wanted”, she said. “It would have been nice to have kept my run going. Good luck to her for the rest of the tournament because I thought she played quite well.” It is difficult to imagine even a month ago she would be saying anything like that after losing a competitive fourth-round match in a slam to a two-time Wimbledon champion.
“I had an amazing time. My mum reminded me when I was speaking to her yesterday that when we were here in 2007 for juniors, I said: ‘This is like the most amazing stadium.’ I completely forgot about that. I guess I had a little childhood dream come true, so that’s pretty special.
“I think I stayed true to how I wanted to play out there. I felt I competed really well, just stayed calm, rolled with the punches. There’s a lot of things going on here. There are a lot of emotions from a lot of players. It’s a high-pressure environment. I felt I did a reasonable job at just dealing with that.”
