Johanna Konta vows to keep coach despite another early Grand Slam exit at US Open

1/78
Paul Newman29 August 2018

Johanna Konta has parted company with her coach at the end of both of the last two seasons but insisted last night that she was happy with her relationship with Michael Joyce, despite her continuing run of early exits from Grand Slam tournaments.

Since reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals last year, Konta has won only two matches in five Grand Slam appearances, suffering her latest first-round defeat to Caroline Garcia here. Konta said she would continue working with Joyce, who joined her team at the end of last year, “as long as we feel it’s mutually beneficial” and feels they are doing “good work” together.

“We’re putting in the work to try to make me the best player that I can be,” she said. “Whether the results will come now or in a few months, or whether they don’t, I don’t know. But it’s definitely not for a lack of trying. Coming into this year I was in a very unhappy place. The number one job was to get me into a happy place. I feel we’ve achieved that.”

Over the last 13 months Konta has fallen 42 places in the world rankings to her present position at No 46.

She will play four more tournaments this year — Tokyo, Wuhan, Beijing and Moscow — and has not ruled out reaching the year-ending WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai, which brings together the next 12 players beneath the eight who qualify for the WTA Finals. “I think there’s still a lot to play for,” she said.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in