How hard yards in Scandinavia made Konta
As British star prepares for the US Open, Simon Briggs hears about her breakthrough moment
When Johanna Konta qualified for the 2015 US Open, and went on to reach the fourth round, many tennis lovers assumed that she must be an overnight success. When she made it to the semifinals of last month’s Wimbledon, a wider audience reached the same conclusion.
In fact, Konta was 26 in May, and is close to completing 10 years on the professional tour. Admittedly, progress was slow at first. As recently as 2013, she was still hauling herself around chicken feed $25,000 tournaments.
But Konta put those days firmly behind her in April when she won the Miami Open – the most prestigious trophy to be lifted by a British woman in 40 years.
How has she pulled off such a dramatic transformation? This week, as Konta returns to New York with a realistic shot at the title, one of her junior coaches told The Daily Telegraph that her early travails were more than just a prologue.
Instead, they were the true root of her success.
“The tougher the challenge is, the more you have to grow from,” said Surina de Beer, a former South African professional who reached the world’s top 120 and helped Konta claim her first junior title in 2007. “Maybe Johanna needed to go through all this stuff to build the muscle that makes you a success.
“A lot of players receive a lot of support, but then life is too easy, and you don’t build that competitive muscle.”
The Lawn Tennis Association, in its previous free-spending incarnation under Roger Draper, used to be accused of pampering young talents. But Konta – who will play Serbia’s Aleksandra Krunic in the US Open’s first round – was hardly on the radar when she arrived in this country, having been ditched from the Australian national set-up, and then put in 14 months at the same Barcelonabased academy that helped polish the teenage Andy Murray’s game.
That changed after her first serious junior tour. In the early weeks of 2007, Konta travelled to Scandinavia for a series of Grade Four tournaments.
Admittedly, the draw sheets in Helsinki, Oslo and Kramfors were not exactly stuffed with future champions. But whatever the quality of opposition, Konta had their number, winning 16 of 18 singles matches during a month away from home.
“My first impression of Johanna was of a little professional,” De Beer recalls now. “She was 15 and very responsible and selfsufficient. Everything was so neat, how she packed her clothes. This is what she wanted: to be a tennis player. It was impressive.
“At that time I wanted to get back on tour myself, so I was well placed to show her a pro’s mindset. I do remember before her first match, she said ‘I’m so nervous – what happens if I lose?’ But I knew that she just had to get into the swing of things and she would be fine. In that first tournament in Helsinki, she played this Russian girl in the quarter-final, and the dad was crazy on the sideline, walking around like he had a demon inside of him. There was some issue over a point late in the second set. I came around, and the dad was swearing at Johanna.
“She was in tears, and he started to tell me she cheated. But even though she was emotional, she pulled herself out of that and went on to win the tournament.
“Johanna did carry a lot of stress around with her. I saw her cry a fair bit, when she didn’t get what she wanted. Underneath, though, the message was ‘I know I am going to be a good player. I just have to show some willpower and get through this period of my life.’
“She didn’t have impressive talent but she had a hardworking, disciplined mind. The most flashy players are often the ones that have the biggest challenge in dealing with their emotions – and I should know, because I had a ton of talent but I wasn’t able to manage it. Tennis is such a psychological game and there is no certainty. The only thing you can be sure of is how you go on court.”
Emotional control always used
to be Konta’s Achilles heel. As Judy Murray has said: “The thing she always struggled with was the anxiety she suffered when she got into winning positions.”
But her dramatic upswing began after she began work in 2014 with Juan Coto – a Spanish “mind guru” who is now sadly deceased – and learned to separate her results from her self-esteem.
The most impressive thing about her deep run at Wimbledon was the way she dealt with high expectations and passionate crowds. “I didn’t get overwhelmed at any stage,” Konta said yesterday, “which is a very positive thing for me because I don’t think it can get more intense and busy than Wimbledon.”
As for that early trip to Scandinavia, Konta’s memories mainly relate to the freezing weather. “In Finland, I remember walking from the hotel to the venue through the snow,” she said. “It’s not like they send a car for you at that level. It was a big trip for me, because I hadn’t played a batch of junior events together like that.
“I’d done a couple, here or there, but even that was a year or two earlier because I’d been injured. But I remember just being so happy to win my first title.”
‘A lot of players receive a lot of support, but then life is too easy’