ENTER THE ICE QUEEN
Ruthless Konta keeps her cool to see off Garcia
LASt night, Jo Konta was cheerfully volunteering information on which muffins she intends to bake next and answering on everything from how she would look cast in bronze to why she stands eight inches behind the baseline when serving.
the clothes of a British Wimbledon quarter-finalist were fitting her well. there was nothing fluffy about the way she reached the last 16. Her match against Caroline Garcia was a struggle. there was little room for artistry and no indication which of the two might yield, until a late gust of support blew Garcia away.
there was ice in Konta’s veins throughout. She looked like she had won a final when she sank to her knees at the end and her racket disappeared behind her.
Garcia thumped hers into a bag and seemed put out by the Briton’s celebrations. Although she later insisted Konta could celebrate as she wished.
‘Oh no, no. I was just frustrated with my last ball,’ said the French player. ‘She celebrated. I have nothing to say about it.’
Garcia knew that tennis played a minor part in the final reckoning, as the match slipped from her grasp. Court No 1 crackled with tension, willing Konta to break as Garcia served at 5-4 in the decisive set. She was drawn into two unforced errors and the Briton did the rest.
Former British No 1 John Lloyd sees a new durability in Konta which he says might see her take the women’s title, 40 years since Virginia Wade last clinched it. Her progress beyond the world No 22 certainly bore him out. Konta lost her serve in the first set on a marginal line call which Garcia successfully challenged.
But she did not flinch, easing through the subsequent tiebreak. Lesser souls would have wilted, but Konta held on for dear life. From the game’s first breath, she played the narrow margins, seeking the baseline with all the risks that brings.
the match had its own sub-plot, in the suggestions that Garcia’s father, Louis Paul, may have coached her with illegal hand gestures. the questions about him irritated her. ‘I mean, you think I’m looking at my dad for 20 seconds trying to understand what he’s telling me?’ she said.
Konta’s quarter-final against Romania’s Simona Halep has a more incendiary subtext. the match brings her face-to-face with the 25-year-old she played in the Fed Cup play-off in April when she left the Constanta court in tears, after abuse from local fans.
It followed the verbal attack on her and Anne Keothavong by Ilie Nastase, whose appointment as captain Halep had pushed for. though Halep ultimately beat Konta, avenging her three- set defeat by the Briton in the Miami Open quarter-final, the indignation felt by the Romanians is still raw. they mutter about British xenophobia.
the irritation was evident in Halep’s insistence that the home crowd did nothing wrong. the No 2 seed, who is two matches from the world No 1 spot, was polite about Konta, who sounds like someone with the mental conviction that champions require. that component was certainly missing during her years trying to break into the top 30.
She believes a Grand Slam is within her one day, saying: ‘Of course, I’ve dreamed of it ever since I was a little girl.’
the single-minded don’t blanch when they’re asked questions about titles and bronze statues of themselves. to the question of what the latter would look like, Konta grinned. ‘Do you want to answer your own question with what you think?’ she said.
Before Wimbledon, Konta looked and sounded like she was carrying a heavy weight. Asked if her loss at Birmingham was a blow for her preparations, she replied: ‘Is it a big blow for you? Cheers for the positivity.’
Yet when the questions about muffins ran out last night she offered more of her own as an avalanche of detail flooded out, on the different varieties. Don’t let it be said that the tension of being British is getting to her.
‘I approach pressure in a very self- imposed way,’ she said. ‘there are only certain things under my control.’
She is the first British women’s quarter-finalist since Jo Durie in 1984 and an open field gives her cause to dream of better.