When Jo Konta dropped to her knees in celebration on winning her quarter-final at Wimbledon on Monday some of us were concerned in reading it as a possible indication that in living up to her seeding by earning a place in the quarter-finals she had achieved her principal ambition. It was, then, all the more tempting when she was broken in her first service game by the championship’s second seed Simona Halep, to muse knowingly that it had been a decent run, but was on the point of being over. Johanna had given us hope, but only for the longer term future. How spectacularly wrong we were proven to be in the ensuing two and a half hours.

The first evidence that she had no intention of quietly departing the scene was provided when she broke back in the seventh game of the set and while she was ultimately to lose it, having to battle through a tie-break in a set lasting a gruelling 51 minutes represented a much tougher battle for Halep than she might have been anticipating when she started so well.

From that point it was Konta who was the more determined to impose herself, earning a couple of break points on her opponent’s opening service game of the second set and doing so again in the eighth game of the set. While all four of them were thrown away by errors they were attributable more to aggression in going for too much, rather than any timidity.

Another tie-break and this time, after initially slipping 3-1 behind, it was Konta who found what she needed to when it mattered most, seizing upon the chance after Halep netted a backhand to allow her to level at 5-5, to register winners with forehand and backhand in turn to take the set.

The second seed, one of the sport’s pronounced shriekers whose decibel and shrillness level was rising as the seriousness of the threat grew ever more evident, then made what was to be her last significant challenge in Konta’s first service game of the deciding set. At 30-40 she had her chance, but was denied by a typically brave forehand which caught the line. There would be three deuces but no more break points in that direction in the game or the match. Instead, the next opportunities came the way of the British player as she drove Halep ever deeper into the court to get to 15-40, then stretched her on both wings to force a third successive error on the forehand side.

Leading 3-2 in the decider was a treacherous advantage, Halep determinedly ensuring with successive holds to love that Konta must effectively serve for the set not once but three times, potentially draining her emotional energy, but that is where the discipline that seems so central to Konta’s approach, worked to her huge advantage. There is, at times, something rather manufactured about the way she prepares and plays, while there are some similarities in the rather aloof detachment of her demeanour to that of Virginia Wade, the last home winner of this title fully four decades ago. As Andy Murray has alluded to, her lack of on court emotion consequently makes her slightly harder for tennis fans to get behind her, but it is serving her well and she does not shy away from both acknowledging and explaining it.

“I felt very clear about what I was trying to achieve,” she said afterwards.

“I don’t give myself too much time to dream. I’m much more focused on the work. I knew she was not going to give me much so I had to create my own chances and I thought I did that.”

If she could not be accused of trying to cultivate it her efforts have inevitably earned her great backing from the home support and, with Halep having complained about some of the noises being made by spectators throughout the course of the match, Konta acknowledged that.

“I think they were a little bit over-enthusiastic at times, but I feel very excited and very humbled by that support,” she said.

In that vein there was a rather unfortunate end to proceedings when a female spectator got over-excited as Konta played her last shot and let out a squeal or excitement, Halep turning balefully to the chair as she struck her final blow limply into the net, umpire Kader Nouni shrugging sympathetically, but making it clear that there was no more that he could do. As the winner rightly observed, however, the timing of the yelp had been worse for her, just as she was executing her shot. What advantage she had gained from the crowd had essentially been fair.

While she was clearly unhappy about the way it finished, the woman who could have become world number one by winning this tournament following Angelique Kerber’s exit in the previous round, accepted that.

“I was surprised that that lady was screaming (so) I thought he’s going to repeat the point. I think it’s normal to repeat the point when someone is screaming like that,” she said, while also observing that she appreciated the atmosphere and knows what to expect when playing against someone from the host nation.