History maker
Konta ends Britain’s 39-year wait for women’s semi-finalist – and next up it’s Venus
If you ever wanted proof that people can change, Johanna Konta provides it.
The woman who “always struggled with anxiety” – in the cleareyed assessment of Judy Murray – has transformed herself into an icy-veined closer.
In beating Simona Halep on Centre Court yesterday, Konta produced the finest performance we have seen from a British woman at Wimbledon – in the era of graphite rackets, at least. Heather Watson might have pushed Serena Williams close a couple of years ago, but to get over the line in a contest of this intensity was a colossal achievement.
By doing so, Konta became the first British woman to reach a Wimbledon semi-final since Virginia Wade in 1978.
For the third time in this tournament, she had to go to a deciding set. Each time, she has served like Pete Sampras down the home straight, so that a single break in her favour has been enough. She will need to maintain that same sort of accuracy against Venus Williams tomorrow, because Venus has a siege-gun serve of her own. We can expect the semi-final to be a very different match – a shoot-out between two ambitious hitters, rather than yesterday’s contrast of styles.
Halep has many assets but firepower is not one of them. Instead, she relies on foot speed, consistency and a unique ability to find her targets at a dead run. It might not sound like the most imposing combination, but she has reached two French Open finals, and a win yesterday would have taken her to No1 in the world for the first time.
Halep’s opponents all know one thing: you have to hit clean winners, because if she gets her racket on the ball, she will find the court. The scorekeepers yesterday could locate only nine unforced Halep errors in the full 2hr 38min sweep of the match. Konta might have come away with a 6-7, 7-6, 6-4 victory, but after dropping the first set, she could have been forgiven for throwing up her hands in frustration. On her way to the tie-break, she made 30 out of 32 first serves – an almost impossibly high percentage. And yet 22 of those balls came back, many of them landing deep in her own territory. Halep then moved into a one-set lead with the help of an almost impossible get, running forward to a drop volley and diverting it at an acute angle to clip the outside of the sideline. She was playing near-perfect tennis.
But there was some consolation for Konta in the memory of her most recent victory over Halep, which came in Miami in the spring. There, too, she stood two points from defeat in the second-set tiebreak, before Halep suffered a mental meltdown so dramatic that it changed the course of her season. Her coach, Darren Cahill, gave up on her for a couple of weeks, only returning when he felt she was ready to give her best.
Halep has won too many big events – including the Mutua Madrid Open in both the past two seasons – to be considered an out-and-out choker. But she does get tight when the finish line draws near. In an echo of that Miami match, she held a 5-4 lead yesterday in the second-set tie-break, with two serves to come, and the match apparently in her grasp. But it was Konta who seized the opportunity, moving into the court and landing those challenging, high-tariff groundstrokes over the high part of the net. She levelled, and promptly walked off court for a five-minute bathroom break.
Halep became impatient with the delay, even starting to hit practice forehands so that umpire Kader Nouni had to step down from the chair and ask her not to play with the match balls. When Konta returned, though, she had the light of the true believer in her eyes.
She had been hammering her service returns with vicious intent, even at the expense of outright misses. But the strategy came together in the fifth game of the decider, as she landed four straight raspers close to the Halep baseline to force only the third break of the match. Again, Sampras came to mind – a player who had such coldhearted belief in his serve that he would gamble with his returns.
Halep’s tournament ended not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a scream from the stands on Konta’s first match point. The perpetrator clearly thought Halep had hit her backhand long, whereas, in fact, it landed around six inches inside the baseline. Konta did well to maintain her composure, bunting the ball back, whereupon a bewildered Halep half-heartedly batted it into the net. She said later that she felt the point should have been replayed, but Nouni was having none of it, and the two women shook hands at the net.
Again, this moment fitted into the history between these two players – which is colourful yet full of mutual respect. When Great Britain faced Romania in April’s Fed Cup match in Constanta, it was Ha-
lep who came through with the vibrant support of her home crowd. Now, her defeat means that Karolina Pliskova, of the Czech Republic, will become the new world No1 when the next set of rankings are published on Monday.
Konta, meanwhile, will be a topfive player for the first time. Not bad for a woman who, until she belatedly broke the top 150 a couple of years ago, was always a prisoner of her own nerves.