Can you count on Konta?
Watching Johanna Konta’s two set defeat yesterday on the side court to Czech Marketa Vondrousova, I wondered if Konta would be in that great line of British never-quite-made- its.
On the male line, there was Bobby Wilson, Mike Sangster, Taylor, Cox and Tim Henman.
My great aunt Gladys, a committee member at Queens and umpire, told me as a young girl of the feats of Angela Mortimer, Ann Jones, Christine Truman and Virginia Wade but the silverware disappeared after that with Sue Barker and Jo Durie.
The latter won two mixed double grand slams with Jamie Bates and reached a semi final in 1983.
She could argue that her career spanned the greatest of them all Martina Navratilova, and also Steffi Graf, Chris Evert-Floyd, Gabriele Sabatini and Hana Mandikova. Tim Henman had to compete with Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Roger Federer. However post-Serena Willliams the field is now more open in the Ladies section.
In the two sets Konta led 5-3 and 5-4 but seemed to lack the toughness to close the match out.
In tennis the seventh game is often all important and winning those Konta should have have gone on to triumph.
One can imagine that an American or German would. She is 10 years older than Vondrousova and with so many teens around she may well have missed her chance. That she was Australian till 12 and also carries a Hungarian passport may mean she would never be regarded as a British champion but she seems an amiable and wholesome type so a media career might await.
I called to congratulate Uncle Bob Tickler on being successful in the Wimbledon Debenture ballot in the secret hope that he might let me have his ticket in the final week.
He was fulminating against fund manager Neil Woodford for “gating” his flagship fund (suspending dealing to you and I) and threatening to have him bounced out of the Square Mile till I pointed out that my partner Josh, who works for a digital broking platform, had told me he operated out of Oxford.
After he calmed down, Bob made the interesting point on the great debate on equality of prize money. He had done his homework on the prices for tickets in the secondary market this year for the semi-finals and finals and they were very much less for the Ladies matches.
Finally I was amazed when watching Novak Djokovic play Dominic Thiem that, at the first drop of a shower, the Serb ran off the court without any decision yet made by the umpire.
He was losing 2 sets to one and 3-1 down and that seems to be his rationale.
The French Open authorities rightly took flak as play seemed perfectly possible. With that, and the decision to play the ladies semi-finals on an outer court with a capacity of 5000, they justifiably are under fire.
