Play to win

Just two years ago, Johanna Konta was ranked 146th in the world. Now she is seventh and a favourite to take the Wimbledon crown. So what went right? Words by India Sturgis. Photographs by Kalpesh Lathigra. Styling by Sophie Warburton

It’s a sweltering day in south-west London. Johanna Konta is standing on tiptoe posing among tennis balls on an indoor court at a leisure centre near Wimbledon. Around us matches are going on. Shouts of exasperation burst through as shots smack into nets. Men in Airtex pace the viewing deck, shirts tucked in. An air of professionalism pervades, of hushed voices and sparkling kit. Everyone here is tanned and clear-skinned and fit.

But Konta isn’t play ing, she is being photographed and, if truth be told, she’s looking as stiff as plyboard. Her arms are tight and her hands clenched. At 5ft 11in, with moss-green eyes and thick brown hair, Britain’s number one female tennis player is a beautifully commanding, if currently slightly awkward, presence.

But then someone hands her a racquet and something magical happens. Her body loosens, flexes, and is immediately at ease. More than that: she looks strong, robust, formidable – more like the competitor who beat a path through Venus Williams to win the Miami Open earlier this year, and claim the most prestig ious title won by a Br it ish woman si nce Vi rg i nia Wade at Wimbledon in 1977.

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise from a woman who has completely immersed herself in the sport. At eight she picked up a racquet, by nine she ‘wanted to be number one in the world’. But hers has been an unorthodox route. She was born in Sydney to Hungarian parents and moved to the UK in 2005, aged 14, to train. By 2012, she had switched f rom represent ing Aust ra lia to playing for Britain.

Yet it is only more recently that things have clicked i nto place a nd t he 26-yea r-old’s r ise, according to statisticians and spectators alike, has taken on supernova proportions.

The facts are these: having ranked 146th at the sta r t of 2015, a 16-match winning r un helped leapfrog her to 47th. An Australian Open semifinal last year pushed her into the record books as t he f irst Br it ish woman to advance t hat fa r in a grand slam since Jo Durie at the US Open in 1983. Last October, she went one better, making the China Open final to lift herself into the women’s top 10; again, the first female Brit to do so since Durie in 1984. In Januar y, she won the Sydney International without dropping a set. In April she won the Miami Open in a straight-sets final against Caroline Wozniacki, pocketing £931,000 to boot. When we meet, Konta is number eight in the world (six was her highest position and she will shor t ly move up to seven), a few places behind Serena Williams, who is fourth.

It’s a fact made all the more exciting given the woman’s f ield is t hinner t han ever t hanks to Willia ms’ mater nit y leave, Maria Sha rapova missing 15 mont hs due to a doping ba n a nd Victória Azárenka, twice winner of the Australia n Open, only just back f rom 1 2 months of f af ter g iv ing bir t h to a baby boy. Then t here is two-time champion, Czech Petra Kvitová, who has just returned after being stabbed in the hand during a burglary in December.

As such, Konta has breathed life into the hope t hat we might, just might, wit ness two of our own at the top of the world rankings if she can join Andy Murray at pole position.

‘My dream, ever since I was a little girl star ting in the sport, is to be number one in the world. I’ve always dreamt of winning multiple slams – and a gold medal too, while we’re at it.’

We’ve come to a quiet room at the leisure centre to talk before the photo shoot and she reels off t hese goals like a shopping list. Konta speaks Hungarian fluently and her English accent is a slightly off-kilter mixture of sing-song lightness with an Eastern European roundness to vowels.

If she’s known for on-court aggression, taking balls early and a lightning serve, in person Konta is far sof ter. She cracks jokes and laughs easily. She’s here to hand out the winning trophy for the Jag uar Championships National Finals, one of her sponsors ( her old Peugeot hatchback has been upgraded for a Jaguar F-PACE R-sport) and when I a sk whet her she’s a pet rol head, she replies, ‘I enjoy a big eng ine…’ before peeling into hysterical laughter.

Dressed in black tracksuit leggings, a sleeveless g rey hoodie and white t rainers (all Asics, another sponsor) she is also accompanied by her mother and agent. With Wimbledon almost upon us, Konta is in a mood to turn negatives into positives when questioned about her shock defeat in the first round of the French Open weeks ago to 109th seed Su-wei Hsieh from Taiwan.

‘Obviously I wasn’t in Paris for as long as I wanted, but in terms of the tennis I played there, I actually wasn’t too disappointed. Through the clay season I improved with every match.’

Is she nervous about playing in front of a home crowd and the weight of national expectation at Wimbledon? Konta hasn’t yet made it past the second round.

She bats this back. ‘I enjoy a stage and a crowd regardless of whether it is for me, against me or neutral. Part of the sport – and part of most sports when you get to the highest levels – [is that] you constantly hope to play in the big arenas in front of a lot of people. At the end of the day, we are also entertainers… I try to approach every event with the same mindset. It’s important for my own mentality not to get too excited for different events.’

If she is a picture of Zen calm and bonhomie today, Konta has learnt the hard way to balance her emotions. At an April Fed Cup in Romania, she was rocked by an ugly episode that no professional at hlete, or indeed a nyone, should face.

During a match against home favourite Sorana Cî r s te a , t he Roma ni a n te a m’s c apt ai n, I l ie Năstase, was asked to leave t he stadium af ter launching a tirade of abuse at the umpire, Konta and British captain Anne Keothavong, labelling the latter two ‘F—ing bitches’. The situation had escalated when the umpire warned the Romanian crowd to stop shouting ‘Out!’ during rallies. Konta’s Hungarian backg round and historical resent ment between t he two count r ies could have inflamed feelings, but after Năstase’s ejection the heckling continued until, at 3-1 down in the second set, Konta broke into tears and the match was susp ende d for 20 mi nute s . She returned to beat Cîrstea 6-2, 6-3, but later faced a not her ba r r age, th i s t i me of f- c ou r t , when her opponent accused her of ga mesmanship for halting play when she was behind. ‘Next time in t rouble I will cr y – maybe I ca n go of f t he court,’ Cîrstea said.

Năstase is ser ving a provisional ban by t he Inter nat iona l Tennis Federat ion pending a n investigation i nto his conduct and has been ba n ned f rom Wimbledon’s Roya l Box this summer.

Konta acknowledges that what she described as ‘screaming abuse’ was profoundly upsetting. ‘It definitely did affect me. I had never been verbally threatened before, so it was something that I was ill-equipped to deal with. In that sense, it was not the best experience of my life.’ She half laughs. ‘Hopefully it’s something that I’ll never experience again.’ How did she respond? ‘In terms of the aftermath, I tried to get back to my routines as quickly as possible.’

And has there been an apology since from the Năstase camp? ‘No, I haven’t heard anything,’ she shrugs. Konta first got into the sport when the coaches at a tennis centre next to her school discovered her talent. She would wake her father up at the crack of dawn to go r unning, deter mined to prove that she was serious about the game. But she just as easily could have been a r unner. ‘It was more by chance that I picked tennis over athletics. I was a decent 800m runner.’

Her parents were not particularly sporty. Her father, Gábor, is a hotelier; her mother, Gabriella, a dentist, and she has one older sister, Ava, 29.

‘My dream, ever since I was a little girl starting in the sport, is to be number one in the world’

What was she like as a child? She throws this question to Gabriella, sitt ing at t he back of t he room. ‘Two words,’ hurries Konta. ‘Cute.’ There is a pause. ‘And competitive.’ So competitive she would reduce Ava to tears during games of Monopoly in her bid to get the best properties. Homeschooled from the age of 12, Konta moved to Spain at 14 to develop her game at the Sánchez-casal Tennis Academy. She moved to the UK soon af ter and her parents followed, moving to Eastbourne in East Sussex .

‘Australia was very far and I was still young,’ she ex pla ins. ‘Before you k now it, t wo yea rs turned into four and to 12.’

Both her parents still live in Eastbourne and Konta only recently flew the nest to her own flat in south-west London, paid for out of her career winnings; an amount that totals almost £4 million so far. She lobs that figure back with talk of taxation, business expenses, travel costs and the years it took to accumulate.

‘I’m currently saving up with my parents to hopefully buy a new home.’

Another game-changer was Juan Coto, t he Spa nish spor t s psycholog ist she began working with in 2014,and who prev iously worked as adviser to lawyers, asset managers, actors and entrepreneurs. ‘He definitely came into the picture when that was a priority area for me to improve in.’

Coto t ra i ned her to replace negat iv it y a nd st re s s wit h posit ive t hought s a nd neut ra l it y. The resilience t his bred has been a n essent ia l ingredient in her rise to success.

‘I went through a maturation process where I took some st ress away f rom achiev ing,’ says Konta. ‘I took it away from the results and put it more into the process [and] more of my energ y into working. I re-evaluated my priorities and truly tried to understand what made me happy and also what things I have control over.’

This included ig noring what her opponent got up to on the other side of the net. She refocused on herself instead. ‘Most importantly, he got me into the habit of using mindfulness and of trying to keep myself in the present, through being aware of my breath, my physical being – t hat does cent re you. It a lso dis a s sociate s you slightly from when you are in a stressful situation on court. It teaches you good perspec- tive. That was a massive part of his philosophy.’

Coto died in November last year, age 47, and an inquest in April concluded suicide. But his advice lives on through Konta’s results.

And what of her personal life? Does she share her new flat with a new man? She dated former tennis coach Ket her Cloud era nd, if recent reports are to be believed, has a new love interest. I ask about that and she rocks back on her chair in secret mirth.

‘I’ve got a great support system around me .’ More laughter. Her agent joins in.

What about children? ‘Oh yes, I want lots of children. I have this vision that I’m in my 70s, it’s Christmas time and all my children come over to the family home with their spouses and children and it ends up being like 50 people in the house.’

She lists‘ trailblazers’ such as Kim Clijsters and Azárenka, who prove that returning to toplevel tennis after having children can bed one. ‘I’d be sure t hat if Serena says she is going to be back next year, she is coming back next year,’ she deadpans.

While we talk, the French Open final is being played out in Paris between 20- year-old unseeded Latvian, Jelena Ostapenko, and world No 2 Simon aH alep.IfK on ta had stayed the course, it could have been her. When we finish talking the results come through.

It’s an epic upset. ‘Ostapenko won it?’ Konta shouts, incredulous. ‘I feel bad for Simona though because, on a de serving level, she’s been there before. If she’d won she’d have been No 1.’

That prospect hangs in the air, still ripe for the plucking, before she heads off to join the beautiful bodies that fill the courts around us. Johanna Konta is Jaguar’s newest tennis ambassador. Jaguar is The Official Car of The Championships, Wimbledon. For more information, visit jaguar.co.uk