Konta has no regrets British No1 defiant after US Open exit
Ukrainian Svitolina is just too strong for Briton Emulating Wade to win a slam is still the target
When Johanna Konta offered her customary “no regrets” defence at Wimbledon two months ago, it sounded hollow, and she ended up in a row with a reporter that made the evening news. Yesterday was a very different story, as she played some excellent tennis but ran into an even stronger opponent in fifth seed Elina Svitolina.
The only comparison with Konta’s loss to Barbora Strycova on Centre Court was that it came at the same stage: the quarter-final of a major. But the mood of the occasion was very different. There, she seemed inhibited by expectation against a lower-ranked player. Here, she expressed every aspect of her increasingly varied game.
“I didn’t play badly at all,” Konta said while assessing her third straight exit in the second week of a grand slam. “I actually felt like I was doing a lot of good things out there [but] she just made me play that extra ball.”
Looking composed and upbeat, Konta was asked whether her postmatch emotions were different to the way she had felt in Paris and London. “There was still a lot of good things I did in that match in Paris,” she replied, in relation to the French Open semi-final, where she served for both sets before going out to 19-year-old Marketa Vondrousova. “Actually, out of all of them, probably my match in Wimbledon is where I didn’t feel like I did as well as I wanted to or could have. Today, it’s just unfortunate that she played better.”
Svitolina is the Swiss army knife of tennis: not a player to thrill the crowd, but extremely sturdy and equipped with every tool you could possibly need. Konta experimented with a party pack of tactical ideas: hitting through her with sheer power, bringing her forward to the net, mixing up the pace with some scudding slices. None of it could stop Svitolina inching towards the semi-finals with the implacability of an approaching deadline.
When you consider that Svitolina has held a top-10 ranking for a little over two years, her record of never reaching a major semi-final until this summer used to be a disappointment. But a change has followed from her romantic partnership with French No1 Gael Monfils, who is due to play his own quarter-final today. Perhaps this is the moment when she becomes a force. Not only does Svitolina claim to feel more relaxed since she started dating Monfils in the offseason, but she takes a very practical benefit from living with him in Switzerland. “I think hitting with him has definitely helped me to improve my reaction and my footwork,” she said on Sunday. “[I have to] move really quickly because his ball is very flat.”
There were so many examples of that stellar footwork yesterday. But perhaps the most telling example came when Svitolina held a point to take the first set, and Konta drove one of her many succulent backhands up the line.
The speed and direction of the shot would have defeated almost anyone else, but Svitolina somehow dug her racket under the ball at full stretch and was able to reset the rally, eventually drawing one of Konta’s 35 unforced errors. When your opponent runs down so many potential winners, you have no choice but to aim closer to the lines.
Konta’s coach Dimitri Zavialoff explained on Sunday that “we try to minimise losses, we don’t make a big deal out of them”, and that should be easier after a bountiful season that has delivered 14 wins at the majors. Her previous highest total was nine.
Another part of Zavialoff’s fascinating weekend briefing focused on the way he and Konta try to see tennis as a game rather than a battle. Yes, she is competitive – the last couple of games of this 6-4, 6-4 defeat were furiously intense – but she maintains a perspective that should help her regroup for the Asian swing that concludes the season. Standing 11th in the race for the eight spots at the WTA Finals in Shenzhen, she has plenty still to play for.
The development work will continue soon, once she has visited her new cheerleader Tom Hiddleston in his Broadway play, Betrayal.
There were signs of an increasingly self-confident player yesterday in her 16 approaches to the net – once even rushing in after the service return as if she were John Mcenroe’s daughter. For a woman who used to get a nosebleed whenever she took a couple of steps north of the baseline, this was a huge advance, and speaks of the extent to which Zavialoff has boosted her self-belief. As he said at the weekend: “She is a much better player than she thinks and I just invite her to test many things in practice and then in matches.”
So does Konta believe that she can kick on from here, and become the first British woman to win a slam since Virginia Wade in 1977? “I’m definitely working towards that,” she replied. “There is no reason why not. I think also putting myself in these positions more and more, it can only lend itself to hopefully one day getting the chance.”