Johanna Konta: Which way next?

Almost two years ago exactly I watched a girl play tennis. She was a fairly normal girl in nearly every way except for one: this girl was someone that we would all come to know as Jo Konta, British number 1 and current world number 8.

It was 2015 and the Aegon International tournament was being televised for the first time by the BBC. My money was on Caroline Wozniaki to lift the woman’s singles trophy but I was wrong. This prize went to Belinda Bencic who defeated Agnieszka Radwanska in the final to emerge the victor from a very strong field. However, in retrospect, none of this became my most enduring memory of the tournament. Surprisingly, all I can really remember was watching one of the wildcard entrants. She was a local girl who was ranked around the 150 mark in the world. I wasn’t expecting much from her: just another home hope that the commentators were excited about who would probably have an unremarkable career when all was said and done. But still I settled down to watch…just in case.

I was incredibly glad that I did.

It is easy to say now, with the benefit of hindsight, but corny as it sounds; I knew I was watching someone special. The question was, how special? She was certainly a talent capable of exceeding her then rank. Potential for top 20? Definitely. Top 10? Quite possibly. World number 1? To be honest, I didn’t think so.

But she was not far off potential wise. She was 24 years old and hitting her groundstrokes with pinpoint accuracy. 24 is not exactly prehistoric (I grant you) but on the WTA tour it was a fairly late age to be first hearing her name. I liked to think I was aware of who the rising stars in Britain were. Names like Heather Watson, Laura Robson, Naomi Broady and Katie Swan were batted back and forth. So where had this girl been???

Wherever she had been hiding it was evident where she was heading as over the next year and a half she continued to ascend and ascend the tennis ladder. The term stratospheric rise may be overused but in the case of Johanna Konta it truly does seem apt. By the next time she returned to play Eastbourne in 2016 she was top 50 and a serious contender to win the title. Only as recently as 2 months ago she peaked at her highest ranking to date of world number 6 and we now talk about her as the bookies third favourite to win Wimbledon 2017 and the owner of possibly the most reliable and effective second serve in the woman’s game.

Yet, there has always to me seemed to be something rather fragile about Jo Konta.

She comes across as a sweet and engaging, though ultimately introverted, character. There is a kind of nervous energy about her. Anne Keothavong (who spent a lot of time mentoring Konta when she was a junior) has described her as ‘quirky’ frequently. Whatever that means. My thoughts are that most of the time she is very bubbly and smiley but, just occasionally, she has looked like a very emotional-dare I say slightly unstable?-person who is capable of meltdown and self-implosion at any moment. I just get the feeling that she could burst into tears on court at any time. That it could all very easily get too much for her. Seriously though, from the first time I watched her I have been simultaneously in awe of and slightly worried about her. Hence, I was very happy to hear she has worked with a sports psychologist to help her with the mental side of the game.

Maybe I am being unfair. She has shown immense mental strength at times. At the US Open, when she was struggling in the heat to the point of lying on the court in wait of medical attention, she gathered herself and carried on admirably to win the match! So when she made a relatively poor start to the 2017 clay court season it was easy to put it down to an understandable dip in form that can happen as a player gets used to a surface again. However, in her French Open 1^st round loss Konta had looked in control for the first set but let the match slip away. Sure, she did a few technical things wrong and clay has not been her best surface to date but most people were expecting more. Was this the first signs of the pressure beginning to affect her?

Before we chronically overreact to a potential crisis that is not a crisis we must remember that she is doing fine. For now at least. She has only dropped two ranking spots which is normal fluctuation and she has reacted well to her underwhelming spring results by reaching the final in Nottingham only yesterday. She lost to Vekic in what was a tight 3 set score-line.

Still, it is hard not to feel that Konta is at a crossroads in her career right now. The way I see it, it could go one of three ways. She could simply maintain her current form hanging comfortably around the top 10. That is fine for many. Or she can go higher still. Attempt to make it all the way to the top. This is something that every player dreams of and Konta has expressed her ambition to do this exactly in recent months. She seems game for the challenge but her results recently are not supporting the achievement of it. Or she could go down. What every player dreads…

There is no real reason to assume that she will fall into the fate held by that dreaded third road. Not at the moment anyway. But it is reasonable to presume that at some point Konta would awaken from her 2 year long dream. That she would pinch herself and find out that it is indeed all real and just for a little time she may wonder to herself: which way next? This might just be Johanna Konta’s crossroad. Right now she is at a junction and she must keep calm to choose her next direction wisely. If not her dream could easily turn into a nightmare.