Like a fine wine, Jo Konta is maturing nicely, to the unlikely point where she is a legitimate contender for the first Grand Slam of the title.
Ranked 150 at the end of 2014, the 25-year-old Konta has enjoyed a meteoric rise to be No.10 seed for the Australian Open, where she made her breakthrough last year by reaching the semi-finals.
Since then, she has won two WTA titles, the most recent in Sydney on Friday, but Konta said her progression was the result of years of hard work, not just clicking recently.
“It's one of those things that I think from the outside it may look really quick, it may look unexpected,” he said. “But when you're in the journey, when you're in the process, it's been years and years and years and years.
“I believe I have matured. I believe I've got better at reinvesting the experiences and the lessons that I've learnt throughout the years and actually putting them into the situations that I face on the match court. I think that has made me a better competitor.“But again, I think things like that also take time. Like a good wine. So I think it was just, again, accumulating experiences.”
World No.1 and defending champion Angelique Kerber and six-times champion Serena Williams may be favourites for the title but behind them Konta has as much chance as any.
However, she said: “There's a whole lot of work to be done between being a contender and possibility to the person who will actually be winning it in the end.
“There is a lot of matches to be played, a lot of different things will happen between now and then. All I can do is take one match at a time, however much of a broken record it sounds, one point at a time, and really just compete the best that I can these next two weeks.”
One thing that could stop her is a fairly brutal draw, with Naomi Ozaka, Caroline Wozniacki and Dominika Cibulkova all in her path before a potential quarter-final with Serena Williams.
Konta plays Belgium’s Kirsten Flipkens in the first round, a match she knows is unlikely to be easy.
“I played her last year in Monterrey and she beat me there,” Konta said. “I'm looking forward to the challenge, the opportunity to play her again.
“She's a great player. She's a Wimbledon semi-finalist, I believe. She's been around the tour for a long time. That's by no accident. So I really am looking forward to the challenge.”
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