Konta giving British fans hope
WIMBLEDON— Johanna Konta has said she would remortgage her new house to see U2 live.
And wouldn’t you know — the venerable Irish rock band is playing just a few miles away in London this week.
But Britain’s top female tennis player won’t be there, even though the schedule at Wimbledon has gifted her with both Saturday and traditional grass-tending Sunday off. She Needs sleep, needs rest, needs calm before resuming her muscular tournament labours on Monday.
Konta — or “Jo” as she’s known in newspaper headlines — has been on a shake-rattle-and-hum surge through Wimbledon’s first week, on Friday dismantling the low-wattage Spartan, Maria Sakkari, 6-4, 6-1, in one hour and 16 minutes.
No British woman has won the Venus Rosewater dish since Virginia Wade way back in 1977 and Konta had never before, in five tries, made it through to the round of 16. Suddenly, with top seeds crumbling all over the place, bookies are tipping the 26year-old as odds-on favour to cop the trophy.
Where she has mostly flown under the radar in her tennis career with all the splashy coverage devoted to Andy Murray, the twice and defending Sir Scotsman champion, Jo has metamorphosed into the realm’s Golden Girl, everybody in awe over her earlier three-hour-plus slugfest triumph over Donna Vekic, after which the Croat put her head on Konta’s shoulder and sobbed.
There are shoals up ahead, of course, with No. 2 seed Simona Halep and a resurgent Victoria Azarenka in Konta’s bottom quarter of the draw, while top seeded Angelique Kerber has ducked in and out of trouble at the other end, along with previous Wimbledon finalist Garbine Muguruza and former world No. 2 Agnieszka Radwanska. But the Czech double-whammy of Karolina Pliskova and Petra Kvitova have fallen by the wayside.
So, Bono will have to wait, though not long.
“When I looked at where U2 was, where they were touring, I tried to put it in a section of my season where I was as close to guaranteed to see them as possible,” Konta explained of her judicious fan-timing. “I’m actually seeing them a few weeks later. I didn’t have to mortgage my house either.”
After the exhausting performance against Vekic in the second round, the overwhelmed Sakkari, world ranked 101, proved a predictably easy mouse of an opponent. Konta broke her in the very first game, waltzing through the opening set in just 38 minutes. Sakkari, spraying errors left and right, couldn’t contend with Konta’s firepower and the second frame was even more of a one-sided affair, as the Australian-born Brit claimed three breaks of serve and galloped to the finish line.
“I felt quite clear of what I wanted to try and do out there,” Konta said later. “I wasn’t able to do it the whole time. But I felt I really knuckled down and tried to stay tough when I needed to.”
An appreciative home crowd savoured every minute of it, though the challenge for Konta will be steeper in her next assignment — France’s 21st seed Caroline Garcia, fresh from a run to the French Open quarter-finals.
It was a big day for Brits, on the eve of a huge weekend for British sports — from cyclist Chris Froome trying to hold onto the yellow jersey in pursuit of his third consecutive Tour de France title to the British and Irish Lions rugby squad hoping to seal a first series win against the All Blacks since 1971, down in Auckland.
It had been two decades since four Brits had made it into the third round at Wimbledon. By nightfall only a pair of them were still standing — Konta and Murray.
Heather Watson, the No. 2 British female, fell agonizingly short again, defeated in three sets by Azarenka, while on the men’s side plucky Alijaz Bedene fell 7-6(4), 7-5, 6-4 to 16th seed Gilles Muller of Luxembourg.
The real heart palpitations, however, were trigged by Murray dropping a set —the first of the Big Four to do so at Wimbledon — to flamboyant Italian Fabio Fognini.
Murray was all Mr. Scrambling Man, an indicator that his ailing hip is feeling just fine, through the dramatic 2:36 match on centre court, with dusk descending and vision dimming.
The World No. 1 had warned any- body who’d listen that Fognini, with his blasts of power and pinpoint accuracy, would be a tough encounter.
“It’s difficult when you’re playing a guy with all the shots like him,” Murray said upon the stressful conclusion of the 6-2, 4-6, 6-1, 7-5 match. “He generates power with short swings. It’s difficult to see when he’s going to hit the ball big. He was taking me out of the rhythm. It was getting dark. We probably would have had to come off and bring on the roof if I’d lost that fourth set.”
Fognini had five set points to force a fifth set but Murray won five games in a row to book a berth in the last 16 — it will be against Frenchman Benoit Paire Monday — for the 11th time.
“The end of the match was tense,” said Murray. “Tight game to break him at five-all. Served it out really well to finish. It was a very up-anddown match but I managed to get through it.’’