Simona Halep, Johanna Konta advance to Wimbledon quarterfinals
- by Leland Aguilar
- in Entertaiment
- — Jul 11, 2017
"I feel that I play much better than previous years", she said.
"She's really on impressive form so it's very hard to get any rhythm out there when she's serving so well and gets her first strike in". I was trying to stay light on my feet and strong in my body to try to neutralise her balls.
Konta will face either former world number one Victoria Azarenka or second seeded Simona Halep for a place in the semi-finals. "There was very little between us today". I was happy to compete well and keep in mind all the good things I was doing.
Great Britain has not had a female singles champion at Wimbledon since Virginia Wade lifted the title in 1977.
She showed flashes of potential and posed plenty of questions but Konta usually had the answers, collapsing to her knees when converting the decisive match point after just over two hours of play.
"I'm not thinking about the ranking because I was in that situation one more time", she said. When Garcia had another set point, she appeared to hit it long, the ball was called out but then called in on review, to Konta's enormous frustration.
Feeling her error had been prompted by the out-call, Konta briefly protested but she quickly recovered and stormed into a 3-0 lead in the tie-break.
It wasn't one-sided but when the match got tight, Konta seemed to channel her focus. Konta could easily have let the second set go but she did not, fighting all the way back to 5-4, including a break-back, before Garcia served out for 6-4.
Konta did at 5-4 when a Garcia challenge saw a forehand initially deemed long overturned by Hawkeye to break back at 5-5.
She won the first game of the decider to love but it took nine games before either managed a sniff of a break.
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