Second surprising Grand Slam loss of 2017 leaves Jo Konta with plenty of lessons to learn
Whatever happens between now and the end of the season this has been a fine year for the Brit but she will need to put together some good performances if she is to finish in style
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Your support makes all the difference.Whatever happens between now and the end of the season this has been a fine year for Johanna Konta, but the 26-year-old Briton will need to put together some good performances in the coming weeks if she is to finish her year in style by playing at the WTA Finals in Singapore.
The eight players who have earned the most ranking points in the year make up the field for the season-ending finale in Asia. Konta, who just missed out on qualification for the tournament last year, is in seventh place in the current race for Singapore, but after her first-round exit here at the US Open she may well slip out of the qualification places by the end of this tournament.
However, Konta is always reluctant to set herself targets based on match victories and ranking points. “For me the goal is to stay healthy, play a full season and keep trying to get better,” she said after her surprising first-round loss to Serbia’s Aleksandra Krunic.
“I think if anything this gives me a great opportunity to do just that. I’ve got still a few tournaments left in the season. If Singapore is in the cards for me, then I will take it and be very grateful. If not, I will take what comes my way.”
Konta said she did not want to “catastrophise” her first-round defeat here. “At the end of the day, it is a tennis match,” she said. “It’s a sport. I think to have a healthy perspective on that, in general, goes a long way.”
While Konta’s philosophical approach is to be admired, for the sake of her tennis she will surely hope to learn some lessons from her second surprising Grand Slam loss of the year.
On a clay court at the French Open in May Konta lost in the first round to Su-Wei Hsieh, then the world No 109. The Briton’s loss on a hard court here was in a very different environment and on a different surface, but there were similarities in the way that Krunic, the world No 78, was able to knock Konta out of her rhythm.
A splendid ball-striker and a fine athlete, Konta can trade blows from the baseline with the very best, but when she has to generate her own pace, play drop shots or hit volleys she does not look as comfortable. Krunic mixed up her game with clever variations of pace and spin as Konta made 42 unforced errors.
“First-round matches in every tournament, and especially at Slams, can be tricky,” Konta said afterwards. “You have to find your footing and play yourself into the tournament and into the match.”
Konta gave credit to Krunic. “She played very well,” Konta said. “She played consistently much better than I did. I think she was able to raise her level throughout the match and mine fluctuated a little bit up and down. In terms of effort and fight, I competed until the very last point. I think the level of tennis by her was just better.”
Konta thought the match underlined the current strength in depth in women’s tennis. “She played very freely and moved incredibly well,” Konta said. “She made it very tough for me to be able to get any easier points. That’s very much credit to her and how she was able to move on the court.”
However, the match also showed that Konta needs to develop more of an all-round game, because there are times when she can look one-dimensional. Deftness of touch is not the easiest quality to learn, but volleys can always be improved.
Konta’s results here and in Paris were very different to her experiences at the Australian Open and Wimbledon, where she reached the quarter-finals and semi-finals respectively. In the first three months of the year Konta also won titles in Sydney and Miami.
The Briton’s results since Wimbledon have been, at best, moderate, but she insisted that she had not experienced a let-down after the heights she had hit at the All England Club, where she became the first British woman to reach the semi-finals since 1978.
“I had an incredible Wimbledon experience, but I have moved on since then,” she said. “The tennis season moves on quickly. We are very spoiled in the sense that we get a lot of opportunities week in and week out to perform and to play. We’ve got four Slams. I think we are very spoiled as a sport like that.”
Konta will now prepare for the Asia swing, but before that she will enjoy some down time. “I’m looking forward to going home and spending some time with my parents,” she said. “I think being home is always good for the soul.
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