Having a swell time watching the tennis, Pippa?
SHE may not be a princess, but Pippa Middleton has a lot going for her: a designer wardrobe, the multi-millionaire husband ... and what looks like a burgeoning baby bump.
The Duchess of Cambridge’s sister, 34, attended the French Open in Paris yesterday with financier James Matthews, 42. Miss Middleton kept her bump under wraps in a stylish £349 Ralph Lauren dress, complemented by white espadrilles.
The couple, who attended Prince Harry’s wedding earlier this month, wore matching straw hats as they watched Britain’s Jo Konta crash out to Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva. Miss Middleton, who has become a regular fixture at Wimbledon, is believed to be about four months pregnant.
She is thought to be following a bespoke programme at her exclusive Chelsea gym, KX, which offers a ‘pregnancy support’ package including nutrition advice and post-natal care.
Jo Konta usually employs language fit for the diplomatic corps in her post-match musings, but struggled to contain her frustration after her latest first-round exit from the French open. the British no 1 blamed, in part, the media’s negative tone around her clay-court performances for her latest premature departure from Roland Garros. She has yet to trouble the scorers when it comes to the main draw. Her latest setback in Paris came as she went down 6-4, 6-3 to Yulia Putintseva, ranked 71 places below her at 93. It was little consolation that she was not alone on the opening-day upset front, with defending champion Jelena ostapenko falling 7-5, 6-3 to Ukraine’s Kateryna Kozlova. Konta has tired of questions around her form on clay, which showed some promise at the Italian open but reverted to type once inside the 16th arrondisement. ‘I don’t think it helps anyone’s preparation if the lingo around it is like: “oh, she hasn’t done well there before”,’ she told the media. ‘Let’s say for a few years your pieces of writing have just been c**p every time when you come into Roland Garros. Just c**p. and then your colleagues start to say: “You know, you really suck around that time”. ‘How would you guys digest that and would you feel any sort of kind of back, lingering kind of: “oh, you know what? I want to prove these b ******* wrong”, but, you know, it’s just kind of lingering there. ‘So it’s not something I would like to buy into, and I don’t think I do. However, you guys don’t make it easy.’ Heat and kitchen springs to mind, but she deserves a degree of sympathy for having to carry home hopes in solitary fashion at the top of the women’s game in the UK. this defeat was not for lack of trying and, as she showed again in Rome, Konta can actually play on the brown dirt. She conceded that this defeat — which included 32 unforced errors — was the hardest of her four in the main draw to take. as ostapenko showed in her off-colour display against world no 67 Kozlova, the pressure of defending points from the previous year is an unforgiving business. Meanwhile, nick Kyrgios yesterday became the eighth and most significant player to withdraw late from the men’s singles, sparking a last-minute dash from Barcelona by Italy’s Marco trungelliti to replace him and face australian Bernard tomic. Kyrgios pulled out due to ongoing elbow problems, but he should be fit for Wimbledon. the avalanche of withdrawals is a consequence of the new rule designed to stop players competing when less than fully fit, offering them 50 per cent of the €40,000 first-round prize-money if they do the decent thing, with the other half going to their replacement. It is working almost embarrassingly well.
JaMeS WaRd yesterday lost in the final of the Loughborough Challenger, the Briton going down 6-2, 7-5 to Japan’s Hiroki Moriya.