Section:GDN 1N PaGe:38 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 20:16 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Tuesday 27 August 2019
(^38) Sport
Tennis US Open
Konta overcomes Kasatkina
but lingering questions remain
Kevin Mitchell
Flushing Meadows
l
ws
Brad Gilbert was hardly going out on
a limb this week when he declared
that any one of 15 players could win
the women’s title at th e US Open and
Johanna Konta would have to agree
with him after battling her own game
and that of Daria Kasatkina to reach
the second round.
The 16th seed bamboozled Russia’s
highest-ranked player (42) to take the
fi rst set in half an hour, hitting with
power and certainty off the ground to
break serve almost at will and pinning
Kasatkina deep with her metronomic
serve.
It was an impressive start by a player
who arrived in New York looking lost
after two straight defeats against rank
outsiders, the world No 33 Dayana
Yastremska in Toronto and the
Swedish qualifi er Rebecca Peterson
in Cincinnati. However, Konta said
before the start of play that she felt
fresh and ready.
Quick sets are an indicator of
obvious diff erence in levels, and not
uncommon in the women’s game
(although Gilbert’s judgment of the
strength of the tour is accurate) but
Konta rarely fails to keep every-
one guessing. Her dip in the second
set gave Kasatkina the sort of hope
Peterson must have felt only a week
ago. Konta regathered her compo-
sure to fi nish the job soundly enough,
winning 6-1, 4-6, 6-2 in just over two
hours in front of hundreds of enthu-
siastic British supporters among the
estimated 3,000 fans on Court 17, the
tournament’s fourth-ranked venue.
Double faults plagued Kasatkina
from start to fi nish. Her 11th handed
Konta match point in the eight game
and another one gifted her the result.
Konta will have tougher examinations.
“If I played three-setters all year I’d
be upset,” she said in response to a sug-
gestion she might have welcomed the
workout. “But I played an incredibly
tough opponent and I’m pleased to get
past her.”
So, relieved rather than elated,
Konta progresses in a tournament
where she has had mixed results. In
her main draw debut seven years ago,
she lost in the second round after qual-
ifying. She went out in the fi rst round
in 2014, 2017 and last year but had a
decent run in 2015 when she reached
the fourth round and 12 months later
when Elina Sevastova stopped her run
to the semi-fi nals. The US is the only
grand slam in which she has not gone
that far, testimony to the quality of her
play in big moments.
Those runs – at the 2016 Australian
Open, Wimbledon the following year
and this summer at the French – looked
to be breakthrough moments but she
has not quite kept it together long
enough to make it to the fi nal.
Inexplicably in her last two majors,
she has faltered against lesser oppo-
nents after beating quality players to
come tantalisingly within sight of the
prize – and she did not take kindly
to the suggestion this was a fl aw in
her game when she lost to Barbora
Strycova in the quarter-finals at
Wimbledon.
As she says repeatedly, each match
and tournament exists in its own right,
and this refusal to be bowed by either
ordinary form or a lack of focus during
a contest has served her well enough.
Compartmentalising is the term used
in sports psychology and few players
rely more on the cerebral side of the
game than Konta.
Yet any analysis of this win under-
lines a lingering weakness. She was
absolutely fl ying in the fi rst set, as
nearly every shot found its place.
Kasatkina, a canny player but occa-
sionally fragile, collapsed in the face
of the onslaught. When the Russian
resumed she was a diff erent player – as
was Konta, who struggled for nearly an
hour before losing the second.
The third was the cherry on a cake
that looked at one point as if it would
not make it out of the oven. It took her
40 minutes to grind down Kasatkina
and had to do little more than wait for
the mistakes to pile up at the other end.
Harriet Dart, the other British player
in the women’s draw, did not make it
out of the fi rst round. She found the
world No 152, Ana Bogdan, too strong
almost from the fi rst ball and could
do no more than watch the fi rst set
sail past her in half an hour. The sec-
ond took marginally longer but the
Romanian breezed into the second
round with a 6-3, 6-1 win.
As Dart put it : “She played a pretty
perfect match. I couldn’t really do
much.”
Andy Murray breezed past
teenager Imran Sibille as
he continued his comeback
from surgery at the Rafa Nadal
Open. Murray, currently ranked
329th in the world, won 6-0, 6-1
in just 44 minutes in Mallorca
last night. Sibille, a trainee
at Nadal’s academy which is
hosting the event, avoided
a whitewash by winning the
penultimate game. The 17-year-
old Frenchman does not have an
ATP ranking and stands at equal
2,792nd on the International
Tennis Federation’s system.
Murray is now due to face the third
seed, Norbert Gombos, who is
ranked 116th in the world, in the
second round later today. PA
Meanwhile, in Mallorca ...
Johanna Konta
bamboozled
Daria Kasatkina
in the fi rst set but
needed to regain
her composure
after losing the
second
RAY STUBBLEBINE/EPA
▼ Tom
Hiddleston
was on hand to
support fellow
Brit Konta at
the US Open
Harriet Dart ‘couldn’t
do much’ against
Romania’s Ana Bogdan
@RNADALACADEMY
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