Injury forces Konta to end season early
Briton scraps plans to play in Elite Trophy Break until new year can help knee to heal
After a fine year in which she reached the second week in three of the four slams, Johanna Konta has decided to start her off-season early. She failed to recover from a knee injury that has affected her since the US Open – her most recent outing, which ended at the quarterfinal stage against Elina Svitolina.
Konta had been intending to play in Moscow this week and also in the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai next week – the event for the next eight players who just miss out on the WTA Finals in Shenzhen. But her body refused to cooperate and now she will look to regroup in time for the new season, and the build-up to the Australian Open in January.
The end-of-year events in China, which are intended as a reward for the players who stand out during the regular season, have not generally gone to plan for Konta. She was so close to qualifying for the main WTA Finals on a couple of occasions, in 2016 and 2017, only for one of her rivals to make a last-minute run and displace her: first Svetlana Kuznetsova and then Caroline Garcia. In 2017, she ended up bailing out of Zhuhai as well because of a foot problem, although that was almost a sideshow to the main story of her split with coach Wim Fissette.
The chances are, this time, that Konta will retain her coach at the end of the season for the first time since she broke through as a contender for WTA titles. She dispensed with the services of Esteban Carril at the end of 2016, despite her transformational run to the Australian Open semi-finals that year. Last year it was Michael Joyce, although Joyce’s departure was somewhat less surprising given that Konta had won only two matches at the majors all season and dropped back to No39 in the world.
This year has been a much happier story for Konta, as her partnership with Dimitri Zavialoff – a softly-spoken Frenchman who bases himself in Switzerland – came to fruition on the clay. From never having won more than a handful of matches per season on her least favourite surface, Konta suddenly blossomed, and even gave herself a chance of winning the French Open when she reached the last four with a memorable victory over last year’s runner-up, Sloane Stephens.
Sadly, she could not sustain that level against Marketa Vondrousova, the 19-year-old underdog, when it came to semi-final day. But that deep run was still an unexpected bonus for a woman who had previously lost in the first round at Roland Garros on every visit. It transformed the narrative of her season, so that she wound up with a career-best tally of 14 victories at the grand slams, including an appearance in the Wimbledon quarter-final.
Admittedly, that day may now be best remembered for Konta’s altercation with a journalist at the postmatch press conference. The performance level against Barbora Strycova on Centre Court was not all it might have been, and while she bridled at such suggestions immediately afterwards – insisting that the “way you asked your question was… patronising” – she did admit at the US Open that “I didn’t feel like I did as well as I wanted to or could have”. In any case, the debate surely did more to reach a wide audience than a blander response would have done, and we can hardly complain when a player gives as good as she gets.
All in all, Konta has carried the flag for British tennis in a year when the men – despite Dan Evans’s climb into the top 50 and Andy Murray’s late return from injury – have made little impact at the majors. As well as being the LBS (last Briton standing) in all four events, she also set an unenviable world record in Melbourne, where a series of long matches left her and Garbine Muguruza walking on court at 12.30am: the latest start to a grandslam match in history.
By the time their excellent contest had finished, with Muguruza sneaking through by a 6-4, 6-7, 7-5 margin, the clock read 3.16am and Konta was in tears. But she has nothing to feel downcast about after a fine all-round showing in 2019.