Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Konta’s final serve
JOHANNA Konta has hung up her tennis racket with gratitude and pride and hopes she will provide hope to others that they can achieve their dreams.
Rumours had been growing that the 30-yearold was preparing to announce her retirement and that came on social media.
“All the evidence pointed towards me not making it in this profession,” Konta wrote. “However, my luck materialised in the people that came into my life and impacted my existence in ways that transcended tennis.”
Born in Australia to Hungarian parents, Konta was not marked out as a talent destined for stardom.
She moved to Europe to pursue her tennis career as a teenager, settling with her family in Eastbourne and becoming a British citizen in 2012.
She did not establish herself in the top 100 until the age of 24 and then surged unexpectedly to the top of the game, reaching grand slam semifinals at the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon, winning the Miami Open and peaking at world number four in 2017.
Although her feats have been overshadowed by Emma Raducanu’s remarkable US Open success, Konta put British women’s tennis back on the global stage, hitting heights not achieved since Jo Durie in the 1980s.
“I’m so grateful for my whole career,” said Konta. “It was not straightforward, it was not simple, it was not written in the stars. It was earned and it was hard fought for.
“I’d love to have been top 100 at 16, to have had over a decade on the WTA Tour, but I didn’t. But I got to have a career and I could just as easily not gotten to have had a career.”