Johanna Konta focusing on clay-court campaign as she misses Billie Jean King Cup play-off
Johanna Konta prepares for the clay-court season as she heads to Stuttgart next week with the French Open still over a month away, starting on May 30; the British No 1 will miss this week's Billie Jean Cup - formerly Fed Cup - play-off against Mexico in Roehampton
Tuesday 13 April 2021 07:07, UK
British No 1 Johanna Konta says she is "feeling good" ahead of her clay-court campaign which begins in Stuttgart next week.
The world No 18 plans on travelling to Germany in preparation for the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix where she is hoping for a run of tournaments after a stop-start 18 months.
Since Konta's knee issue forced a premature end to her resurgent 2019 season, she has played just 13 tournaments, winning more than one match in a week only twice.
She has maintained her place in the top 20 because of changes to the ranking system allowing players to continue counting points from 2019 but those will now start to drop off.
Konta had a superb clay-court campaign in 2019, reaching the Rome final and French Open semi-finals, so faces a substantial drop in ranking if she cannot repeat those results.
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"Overall I'm feeling good," she said. "It's been a hard process to be at the physical capabilities that I am at now and it's nice to be able to do the kind of training that I am doing now again, which I hadn't been able to do for a very long time because of the different challenges.
"So I'm really pleased with that and hopefully this will give me the best possible base to be able to play my best. The ranking will do what it needs to do and I go out there looking to do my best. That has always been where I've left it."
The Briton will be training outside on the clay courts at the National Tennis Centre this week while Great Britain face Mexico in the Billie Jean King Cup play-offs indoors, but she insists she has not turned her back on the competition.
Konta, who played a key role in earning promotion to World Group II in 2019, is continuing to manage a knee condition and cited the need to give the joint time to adapt to a different surface for her decision to miss the hard-court tie.
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Should Britain prevail without the 29-year-old, it would give them the chance to compete for a spot at next year's finals event, and Konta could return in 2022.
She said: "Had it been on clay, that could have been a different conversation. I'm definitely not ruling myself out, I would love to still play in the competition. But I will definitely have to decide in a way that I know it will fit with the needs of my body."
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