Pressure piled on Konta is too much too soon in Grabd Slams
By Ian Herbert and Nick Harris British fans are expecting a lot, from ‘predictable’ Johanna, says tennis legend Navratilova
MARTINA NAVRATILOVA offers a blunt assessment of the state of Johanna Konta’s game as the Briton considers the improvements she must make if she is to win a Grand Slam. ‘Very aggressive, but a little one dimensional,’ is the judgment she offers The Mail on Sunday. But she is equally uncompromising about the British nation’s impatience for success.
‘Look at a graph of tennis improvement and it’s one of these: up and down,’ says Navratilova, gesturing a line which rises and dips.
‘You make a big jump, you level off. You make a big jump, and she made that big jump last year. But then you’re expecting another big jump too soon. The tennis ladder is a long one. You can’t take the elevator there, you have to take the steps. The expectations around her here were higher than they should have been.’
Konta, 26, will carry the entire burden of national tennis expectation if MRI scans on Andy Murray’s hip force him to miss the US Open and end his Grand Slam season.
Konta, who will rise to No 5 in this week’s new WTA rankings, was putting defeat behind her yesterday, tweeting pictures of a batch of raspberry white chocolate muffins.
The view from within tennis, though, is that she simply must find more variety if she is to win matches as tough as Thursday’s semi-final against 37-year-old Venus Williams. The level hit by 23-year-old Garbine Muguruza to destroy Williams yesterday revealed the challenge ahead.
Navratilova says Konta can be ‘predictable’ and Virginia Wade, too, would like to see ‘a little more variety’ in her game — more craft and touch. Wade felt that even Konta’s quarter-final win against Simona Halep was ‘metronomic’ from both competitors at times.
‘She doesn’t bring something extra special,’ says the 2013 Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli of Konta. ‘When it comes to winning a trophy here, you really have to go earn it. No one is going to give it to you by doing 15 mistakes in a match. I still feel she is lacking a little bit of that.’
So what must the focus be? Konta’s second service, for sure. In the semi-final she won just 33 per cent of points on that serve, against Williams’ 65 per cent, and delivered seven double faults against the American’s one. Konta displays minimal inclination to attempt the looping, spun ‘kick’ second serve, persisting with the flat serve with its far lower trajectory over the net and far slimmer margin for error. Serena Williams and Australian Sam Stosur are two of the very few women exponents of the kick serve, though most men use it.
Navratilova and Wade both see this as a huge opportunity for Konta. ‘I don’t understand why more of the girls don’t practise it,’ adds Mail on Sunday column-
ist and former British No1 John Lloyd. ‘They hit flat and when they get a bit nervous they serve double faults.’
Williams’ own confidence and variety on second serve saw her deliver at 106mph when successfully defending the pivotal first set break point in the semi-final.
Konta’s service let her down here last year, too. In her secondround defeat by Eugenie Bouchard, she tossed in two double faults to be broken and hand over the momentum, during the first service game of the third set.
She will also be reflecting this weekend on the 25 forehand errors in the semi. It was the weaker of Williams’ shots, too, but the American was confident enough in her opponent’s weakness to hit crosscourt forehands and services to seek it out.
Konta’s new-found mental strength was demonstrable in the epic wins over Halep and Donna Vekic, though Lloyd feels she can lack a Plan ‘B’ when her hard hitting is repelled. ‘She’s very good when she’s on but when someone is on top of her there are not many changes of pace, for me.’
There is a view within the game that allowing coaches on court during non-Grand Slam events on WTA Tour is not helping some women’s search to change up and find solutions in games. The WTA have done it because they want to bring more entertainment in and mic up the coaches. ‘The women who use them become too dependent,’ says Lloyd. ‘One of the great things about tennis has always been that you have to figure it out. Andy Murray has five different game plans.’
Yet the progress of Konta — who had never gone beyond the second round here before — is more significant than the flaws. Lloyd views the epic win over Vekic, and the crowd’s response, as a huge breakthrough match in Konta’s relationship with Wimbledon. She had not seemed to enjoy the place before.
Navratilova discussed Konta’s prospects at the launch of a range of special edition Avantist watches named after her, each containing a string fibre from a racket she used when winning a Grand Slam singles title. She won nine at Wimbledon alone.
It may be a while before Konta is a multiple winner but Navratilova believes she could lift this trophy. ‘There is no doubt that she could win a Grand Slam,’ she says. ‘She’s got a lot of room for improvement. That’s a great place to be — where you can win this much but still improve that