Konta lays into the press as she

JOHANNA KONTA crashed out of the French Open in the first round and then snapped and blamed the ‘b ****** ’ press for piling the pressure on her.

The British No1 has never had much luck in Paris – this was the fourth year running she had gone out in the opening match.

But yesterday in the sticky heat of Roland Garros, she simply made too many mistakes in a dismal 6-4, 6-3 defeat by Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva.

An astounding 32 unforced errors flew off the Konta racket against a player a full 71 places below her in the world rankings.

It was a huge disappointment for the British player after reaching the third round in Rome two weeks ago.

But when her poor record in Paris was pointed out to her, Konta said: “If every time you journalists went in to work and for a few years your pieces of writing have just been rubbish every time you came to Roland Garros, just rubbish, and your colleagues start to say, ‘You really suck around that time’. And that happens for a few years?

“Would you feel any sort of kind of lingering, ‘I want to prove these b ******* wrong?’ It’s just lingering there. Well, it’s not something I buy in to. I don’t think I do struggle here. But people do not make it easy. I would like to think that we’re not heading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I don’t think it helps anyone’s preparation if the lingering feeling is, ‘Oh, she hasn’t done well there before’. I have had success here in qualifying.”

But she added: “Out of my four main-draw matches I’ve played here, this is probably the one I’m most disappointed in. This one is a bit harder to take.

“I’m still more in control of my tennis and my career than any sort of superstition going into any tournament.

“Last year I had won a lot of matches coming into the grass-court season. But there’s no reason now why I cannot pick up wins and good momentum.”

Konta, though, never got any rhythm going against a player ranked No93 in the world who she would have expected to beat.

The British star simply tried to force the game too often.

She was broken twice in a wobbly, unconvincing first set, losing the set even though she saved three break points.

And although she fought back at the start of the second, Putintseva, a quarter-finalist here in Paris in 2016 and a fiery, feisty opponent with plenty of power, swiftly broke and recovered to storm to a thoroughly deserved win.