French Open 2019: Johanna Konta and the secrets behind her stunning run to the quarter-finals Roland Garros
If Konta can complete a third successive victory this year over world No 7 Sloane Stephens, she will become the first British woman to reach the French Open semi-finals since Jo Durie in 1983
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Your support makes all the difference.Dimitri Zavialoff, Johanna Konta’s coach, would not be drawn on whether the world No 26 would go on to win the French Open but the 41-year-old Frenchman said here on Monday that she was “a fantastic player” who already has the mindset of a champion.
Konta faces Sloane Stephens in the quarter-finals on Tuesday in the day’s opening match on Court Philippe Chatrier, the main show court at Roland Garros. If she completes a third successive victory this year over the world No 7 she will become the first British woman to reach the French Open semi-finals since Jo Durie in 1983.
With the winner to face either the Czech Republic’s Marketa Vondrousova or Croatia’s Petra Martic in the last four, Konta has an outstanding chance of becoming the first British woman to play in the final since Sue Barker won the title in 1976.
Stephens is a former US Open champion and was runner-up here 12 months ago, but Konta beat the 26-year-old American in both their previous meetings this year, in Brisbane in January and on clay in Rome last month.
Zavialoff, who used to coach Stan Wawrinka and Timea Bacsinszky, started working with Konta at the end of last year and has guided the 28-year-old Briton to her best season on clay.
Until this year Konta had only ever won eight tour-level matches on clay and had never won a main-draw match here. This year, however, shehas won 15 tour-level clay-court matches – a total bettered only by Martic – and will return to the world’s top 20 next week, having been ranked as low as No 47 two months ago.
“She is obviously a very good player, I would even say a fantastic player,” Zavialoff said. “It’s just a case of showing her how good she is and trying to invite her to try things. I really don’t want to control anything in there. The main thing is for me is that the player is playing, not the coach.”
Zavialoff said that the big difference with Konta was that she had simply started winning matches again. “I like how she is committed to what she is doing, though I’m not surprised by that,” she said. “It was the first impression I had from her and I like it. It’s a thing that most champions in tennis have.”
He added: “I think she can adapt to any surface. I would like to say [her best surface] is grass. I don’t know yet. I think she will be a good player on grass. She has already proved that in the past. She can express her game against anyone on any surface.”
Konta told Eurosport: “A lot of the work I’m doing does translate to all surfaces, but what clay requires is for you to play the game more than other surfaces, because you have more time.
“With the things that we are doing that’s a big part of it, to give myself the space and the freedom to play out there, to create the points the way I want to, to trust what I do out there, because I’ve got a lot of good things to do. Dimitri has been really great in giving me the space to express myself out on court.”
Konta, whose best Grand Slam performances saw her reach the semi-finals of the Australian Open in 2016 and of Wimbledon one year later, insisted that simply reaching the quarter-finals here was “not my end goal”.
The former world No 4 said that her run in the last two months had given a major boost to her confidence. “I have been in a lot of different situations over the last number of weeks, a lot of tough ones,” she said. “Coming through them definitely gives me confidence in being able to deal with different situations when I go back out on court.”
Stephens, who moves particularly well on clay and strikes the ball with easy power, insisted that her two results against Konta this year would be irrelevant and pointed out that their meeting in Rome had been in challenging conditions on a cold and damp day. “I'm just going to go in with a clean slate,” the American said.
Conchita Martinez, the former Wimbledon champion who now coaches Karolina Pliskova, said she had not been surprised by Konta’s run here. “I watched her play in Rome in the final against Karolina, so I know how well she’s playing, how pumped up she is,” Martinez said. “We all know she’s a great player and she’s playing better, more consistently.”
Martinez added: “She’s not making as many unforced errors, her serve is working well, she moves well on the court and she’s aggressive.”
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, three times a champion at Roland Garros, thinks that Konta has a good game for clay. “I just think she has to believe it,” the Spaniard said. “She is doing that right now. She has no pressure because she is not [regarded as] a contender. Nobody is talking about her, so that helps her to play her game. She is showing more patience and has more variety in her game, so I’m not surprised that she is doing well.”
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