Johanna Konta 2015 Johanna Konta (born 17 May 1991) is a British tennis player of Hungarian extraction who represented Australia until 2012. Konta has won 11 singles and four doubles titles on the ITF tour in her career. On 19 October 2015 she reached her best singles ranking of world number 46. Her doubles ranking peaked at 104 on 2 November 2015. Johanna Konta 2015 Johanna Konta 2015 Johanna Konta 2015 Early and personal life[edit] Konta’s father Gabor is a hotel manager and her mother Gabriella is a dentist. The couple emigrated separately from Hungary, and met in Australia. Konta was born in Sydney, has an elder sister Ava, and an elder half-sister Emese, from her father’s previous marriage. She grew up in Collaroy on Sydney's North Shore[1] and was introduced to tennis at age 8 when she started to play at an afterschool programme.[2] In 2005, at age 14, Konta had begun a promising junior tennis career in Australia and moved to Barcelona mid-year to train at the Sanchez Casal academy in an attempt to further her development. 15 months later her parents migrated to England where the family then settled.[3] Konta switched her sporting allegiance from Australia to Great Britain after she became a British citizen in May 2012.[4] Konta can speak English and Hungarian. Konta’s grandfather, Tamas Kertesz, played football for Ferencvárosi TC and won two international caps in the fifties. He was later coach of the Ghana national football team. Johanna Konta Career[edit] 2008: $10,000 title[edit] Konta won her first ITF singles title at a $10,000 tournament in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina shortly before her 17th birthday in May 2008. 2009: $25,000 title[edit] A significant breakthrough was achieved at the $25,000 tournament at Sutton, UK, in February 2009. Entering as a wild card Konta defeated the top seed Corinna Dentoni who was ranked 153 at the time, and two other top 250 players to reach the final where she lost in three sets to Katie O'Brien. Konta backed this performance up by winning a $25,000 tournament in June at the W.O.W. Challenger in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada over Heidi El Tabakh.[6] Konta then went through a difficult time in the second half of the year, losing her first match in eight of the nine tournaments entered, six of these losses going to three sets. However, with the help of the earlier results she rose from 668 to 360 in the world rankings during the year. 2010: $50,000 title Konta regained some form at the start of 2010 though her progress was largely unspectacular until May when she reached the quarterfinal of the $50,000 tournament at Indian Harbour Beach, Florida and the following week took the title on the green clay courts of the 2010 RBC Bank Women's Challenger in Raleigh, North Carolina, another $50,000 tournament where in a close encounter she defeated Lindsay Lee-Waters in the final on the day before her (Konta's) 19th birthday. Highlights later in the year included another $50,000 quarterfinal appearance, two semifinal appearances in $25,000 tournaments and her second ITF singles title of the year at a $10,000 tournament in Westende, Belgium, where in the final she defeated Nicky Van Dyck with the loss of just one game. 2011: Drop in ranking In April 2011, Konta lost in 3 sets in the qualifying draw of the 2011 Family Circle Cup to Sania Mirza. She also failed to qualify at Fes and Strasbourg but in June she qualified for her first WTA tour event at the e-Boks Sony Ericsson Open in Copenhagen. She fell in the first-round to fourth seed Lucie Šafářová (ranked 38 at the time) in a match that lasted over two and half hours. Konta won her fifth ITF singles title at the Aegon GB Pro-Series event in Woking in July. In the final against Laura Robson, Konta was 6–4, 1–1 up when her opponent retired. After a patchy couple of months interrupted by injury, Konta got back to winning ways at the $10,000 event in Madrid, beating Lucy Brown in the final. However, her year ended during a second meeting with Laura Robson, in the first-round at Barnstaple in October, with Konta having to retire this time. Although showing flashes of brilliance, in the world rankings Konta slipped from 248 to 305 over the year, and showed an improvement of only 55 places over the previous 2 years.

• published: 28 Jan 2016
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