Johanna Konta is currently on an amazing run of form. Since taking on her mind coach the Brit has seen her tennis improve enormously. In Eastbourne Konta had a run all the way to the quarterfinal before losing out to Belinda Bencic. The Brit started the season ranked down in the 100s but has made great progress this year.
Eastbourne (the home WTA event for Konta) granted the Brit a Wild Card to the tournament, ensuring there was no need to go through the qualifying. Konta started with an impressive victory over the then World #34 Zarina Diyas in straight sets. The second round saw Konta take the biggest scalp of her career to date by defeating World #8 and fourth seed Ekaterina Makarova. The next round saw the Brit face the 14th seed Garbiñe Muguruza and Konta continued to cause the upsets, taking out Muguruza to reach the quarterfinals of the Eastbourne event. Facing the up and coming Swiss Bencic in the quarterfinal did not faze the Brit who was playing with all her might and forced the match all the way to three sets before finally losing out.
Konta then moved onto the home Slam of Wimbledon, and the Wild Card faced possibly the worst first round opponent anyone would wish for (excluding Serena Williams, of course.) Maria Sharapova. On Centre Court in front of her home crowd Konta was unable to make any inroads to the Sharapova game and was soon out of the tournament. The Brit then returned to the lower tier ITF events and back to her successful hunting ground of titles in Canada, taking the title in Granby and doing the double in Vancouver, defeating the higher ranked Kristen Flipkens to take the singles. Although this had pushed the ranking back to the top 100, the cut off for the US Open had been weeks earlier so the Brit had to go through qualifying and was seeded third. Konta reached the main draw without much difficulty and so the Brits had another female player in the Open main draw.
Though to this point in her career the Brit had only won one match in a Grand Slam, Konta had no difficulty in overcoming Louisa Chirrico to set up a second meeting of the year with Muguruza this time seeded ninth. This match turned out to be the longest WTA match in US Open history since the tiebreak was introduced lasting three hours and 23 mins, before the Brit finally defeated the Spaniard again. Next up was Andrea Petkovic seeded 18 and the pair had never played each other before. The Brit wasted no time in extending her run of wins to 16 as she defeated the seed to set up a quarterfinal with Petra Kvitova. The Czech, seeded fifth, halted the brave run of the Brit by taking the match in straight sets, Konta was now up to a ranking of #58.
After the US Open Konta took some time off before returning to action at Wuhan. Again going through qualifying Konta earned a spot in the main draw and would face Petkovic again. Just as last time the Brit came out on top and so now has a head to head lead over the Spaniard Muguruza and German Petkovic, the next round saw the Brit face former World #1 Victoria Azarenka. Konta was up a set and a break when Azarenka retired from the match to hand the Brit a third round meeting against World #2 Simona Halep. Halep was the leading WTA player with hard court victories going into this match (and tournament). After exchanging the first two sets, it appeared that the top seed would run away with it in the final set taking a 5-1 lead. Konta was not done yet though and won the next six games to take the match, and her biggest scalp to date. This led to a quarterfinal meeting with Venus Williams. Williams and Konta again exchanged sets, and so headed to a third in which the Brit was actually serving for the match before being broken by the eventual champion. This took the Brit to a new career high ranking of 49 and she took over for Heather Watson as British number one.
Due to the run at Wuhan, Konta was forced to withdraw from the qualifying rounds for Beijing, but earned her way into the main draw at Linz as a Lucky Loser, where she won her first-round match with ease. If the Brit is able to continue her current form there is no end to how high Konta could get in the rankings. The Brit could break into the top 20 quickly having few points to defend between now and the Australian Open. Who knows? tThe Brits could end up with a WTA top 10 player too next year or the year after.
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