JO ON THE KONTA-ATTACK!
Brit shows battling quality to fight back and march into semi
Ayear ago Jo Konta was just a distant rumour to many British sports fans, someone who could not get past Wimbledon’s second round but occasionally was heard of doing well overseas.
Barely two years ago she was someone known in tennis for getting an attack of the vapours any time a match point loomed.
yet here she was yesterday evening, before an exultant Centre Court, trying to complete a comeback against the world’s second best player to propel herself into the semi-final at SW19 for the first time.
She did so with astonishing sangfroid, closing the match out to beat the speedy Simona Halep — Tough of the Track in her white shorts — 6-7, 7-6, 6-4. It was two hours and 38 minutes of pulsating combat beneath the translucent closed roof that only magnifies every grunt, groan and gasp.
Unfortunately, it also magnified a cry from some idiot on match point, upon which the romanian limply hit the ball into the net. The momentum, however, was irresistibly with Konta by then and had been so since she broke for 3-2 in the decider.
after that there was the shake of hands, the exit ovation and the selfie with a Chelsea pensioner as Konta left Centre Court — the kind of accompaniments to playing there that her opposite number andy Murray is so familiar with.
Looking down from the royal Box, now having retreated from the edge of her cushioned seat, was Virginia Wade, the last British woman to make this stage of Wimbledon back in 1978.
Like Wade partly brought up in South africa, Konta learned her early tennis in warmer climes and, like the 1977 champion, there is something different about her. an ability to absorb pressure is among the shared attributes and in Konta’s case this has only been acquired in the past two seasons.
Now she will face 37-year- old Venus Williams, whose sister’s absence was supposed to have made such a dent in this year’s tournament. In fact, it has turned out to be an excellent women’s event, replete with plenty of outstanding contests among which this was the latest.
It has also been difficult to argue that it has lacked quality, as anyone who saw the phenomenal depth of the exchanges between these less- than- friendly rivals would attest to.
If Konta can reach this level against Williams tomorrow, she ought to make the final.
While Venus remains a remarkable athlete for her age, she is not the sublime mover Halep is. Time and again the romanian effectively made Konta win the point twice by running down lost causes at the far extremities of the court — away from the rutted mass of hash brown defiling the central baseline area on the old arena.
Her scurrying was reminiscent of Murray at his finest and a reminder that, had Halep won, she would have moved to world No 1.
Williams will also haveave to contend with the outstanding Konta serve, which has never purred as smoothly as it didid yesterday.
In the first set, despite losing her opening service game, she delivered an incredible 32 of 36 first serves in.
K onta’ s strange, elephant-trunk-like windup, with a raised left armm bouncing the ball before moving into the motion, barely faltered under steam-hammer pressure.
Halep is a feared athlete among her peers. yet she was overmatched in that department by the end as Konta finished the stronger, roared on by a Centre Court crowd who could barely believe their luck.
British tennis still has a chronic shortage of talent competing on the international stage, but having unearthed one truly exceptional player from an outpost of Scotland, it has found another who arrived aged 15 from australia as a hopeful on an EU passport.
The victory was a remarkable physical effort from Konta, who the previous day had fought for nearly twoand-a-quarter hours in a three-set against Caroline Garcia.
against Halep she had taken only one of her seven break points before fighting back from 1-3 to take the second tie break — showing a calmness on the big points that had marginally eluded her until then.
Halep had the right to be annoyed by her opponent’s long toilet break at the end of the second set, a practice that the deceptively ruthless Konta is rarely shy of abusing. But this will not have bothered the British player after their acrimonious Fed Cup match in april, when she was abused by Ilie Nastase, who is a close ally of yesterday’s opponent.
In truth, this match had more in common with their encounter at March’s Miami Open, where Konta came back from a set down and won after stealing the second- set tiebreak from 4-5 behind. She went on to win the title.
as in that meeting, she was rewarded for keeping up a relentless level of aggressive hitting and controlling the centre of the court. It was a highly courageous performance in that sense and the decisive break came at 2-2 when she dragged Halep — who made only nine unforced errors — all over the court to win to 15. By the end, Britain found itself with the highest remaining seed left in the women’s draw and a cascade of bookmakers hardening her odds. Konta has been the favourite with some of them since the third round and the fact that she has coped with all the pressure is an achievement in itself.