Mark Petchey finds himself in the unusual position of coaching Johanna Konta’s opponent in the third round here on Friday, although he will do his best to ignore what others might see as a conflict of national interest.
Maria Sakkari, a bright and engaging talent from Sparta, is taking short-term grass court tutoring from Petchey for the duration of her stay at Wimbledon after splitting with her regular coach three weeks ago, and, although ranked 101 in the world, she would appear to be mentally tough enough to make the contest interesting.
She has beaten two Czechs to get to the end of the first week, the world No39 Katerina Siniakova and 44th-ranked Kristyna Pliskova.
After the defeat of Pliskova’s vaunted twin, the third-seeded Karolina, by the world No87, Magdalena Rybarikova on Thursday, Konta suddenly has a clearer path into the second week. Some bookmakers are even elevating her to favourite, which is a bit of a reach in a splintered field. First, she has Sakkari to deal with.
“She’s an incredibly hard worker,” Petchey said on Thursday. “She has obviously done reasonably well to get in the top 100 but I feel like she is just starting her career now at 21 and I feel like there is a lot of ceiling room for her tennis. She moves great, since we have been working she has won three matches from match point down so that tells you a bit about her competitive fire. She finds a way to play big in the big moments. Yesterday she was a set and 4-1 down. She is a great person, I can’t put a figure on how good she is going to be but as a person she is already top 10.”
If Sakkari is still able to wander around Wimbledon virtually unnoticed, Konta is slowly adjusting to the attention that has been building since her fighting win over Donna Vekic on Wednesday. It lasted three hours and 10 minutes, by far the longest match of the draw to date, and hit a level of sustained excellence. But Konta, the sixth seed and playing right at her peak, refuses to be distracted. “I’m just doing my best to be a part of it for the whole fortnight,” she said. “But as you saw, I had a massive battle and that just showcases the depth we have in women’s tennis. Any woman can play at an incredibly high level on any day.”
When she is not starring on court, Konta is relaxing in the quietest and most conventional way at her new flat not far from the tournament. “I do try to not go out too much. However, I guess like with any tournament, the time I have to do stuff is quite limited anyway, so I am enjoying just staying at home, chilling out and making muffins. I am enjoying a book by Cecilia Ahern and I have started watching the new season of Poldark. It’s light and something that’s easy to watch, but, yeah, [Aidan Turner] is easy on the eyes. There you go, you’ve got your headline.”
The more substantive headline is waiting to be written in the second week of this tournament. Petchey obviously knows Konta’s game well from his many years being around the Tour, as player, coach and commentator, and has alerted his new and temporary student to the size of her assignment.
“It’s a big step up in class,” he said. “Not a lot of my [playing] career will be relevant for Maria but, having played Boris [Becker] on Court One and felt very confident going out into the match that I could be competitive, I wasn’t. He was a lot better than I was. It wasn’t that I didn’t try hard enough or prepare properly, he was just a better tennis player. Jo’s results in the last couple of years have been spectacularly good and she is a prohibitive favourite going into it, so Maria’s going to have her work cut out. Those results don’t lie.”
