Johanna Konta

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

Johanna Konta

DavidC · Tennis legend

Jo retired from a match against Madison Brengle in Redding in March, which was the last tournament she played. Since then she has been on a few entry lists but withdrawn, so presumably hasn't recovered from whatever caused her to retire.

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

thanks david, hope she's not out for too much longer. Assuming she does decide to play for us, she seems fairly promising.

philwrig · Hall of fame

She retired with a leg strain whilst playing in America. She has missed the clay court season which is her favourite surface and has recently withdrawn from 2 25k tournament in Korea starting 25/05 and 01/06 on 15/05. I was also wondering whether she was still going down the GB route. She clearly has top 100 potential but our rules for representing this country seem to be far more onerous than those for say the US and Australia.She has lived in this country since the age of 14.

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

maybe she has to wait until she is 19? i think it is 5 years for cricketers.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

alex03maccy wrote:

maybe she has to wait until she is 19? i think it is 5 years for cricketers.

I don't think age necessarily comes into it, but residency certainly seems to - an extract from OEM's Net Post article for The Times on 9th February this year (I investigated a few months ago because I'd been asking myself the self-same question & seen conflicting statements...):

Future's bright for British women

The final of the ITF women's $25,000 tournament in Sutton, Surrey yesterday saw Katie O'Brien of Britain defeat Johanna Konta, representing Australia 3-6, 6-2, 6-4. O'Brien has clearly picked up from where she left off in qualifying for the Australian Open last month and Konta, a 17-year-old, reached her first final of this magnitude. Intriguingly, the pair may be British team-mates one day soon.

Konta is three-and-a-half years into a five-year process which would guarantee her indefinite leave to remain in Britain, for which she qualifies through EU citizenship. This is followed by a 12-month naturalisation process after which she can apply for a British passport and thereby represent Great Britain. Konta is currently funded by the Lawn Tennis Association and trains regularly at the NTC in Roehampton, south west London. In two-and-a-half years, therefore, she could well be available to represent her "new" country in the Fed Cup.

[...]

* The mention of "EU citizenship" presumably refers to the fact that, although she was born in Sydney, she is of Hungarian extraction.

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

So why are the LTA giving her funding now, why she is still representing Australia and has not yet qualified?

johnnylad · Tennis legend

We do seem to make it very hard to qualify for GB?

This Spanish lad has swapped to Canada easily though he may have a Canadian passport. Question then is how he represented Spain in the first place?

http://www.tenniscanada.com/tennis_canada/Pub/DisplayNewsStory.aspx?enc=/XySyZbR1UZRlSoOjsyBZQofkZCI97HBLsxLrDFAowWthxxLexSNCX7cEcqSQGZbQ1P8++KUO/xFntOrak9LJg==

If you have dual citizenship can you chop and change, and if so can you change nationality when it suits you?

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

^^^^^

I've been meaning to mention Diez's case for a while, jl, ever since, in fact, Steven & I had a debate of sorts about his surname after he seemed to keep popping up & beating Brit Futures players in Spanish Futures events as a Spanish player (diez= the Spanish for "ten", so I dubbed him "Señor 10") towards the end of last year & after I came across this not so long ago on the Canadian federation site. I'm not convinced that his case is quite the same &, if TeniSpain is anything to go by when it comes to reporting results, the Spaniards still regard him as one of their own! confuse

murray_2k9 · Challenger qualifying

Assuming she became British, would this suddenly make her a likely candidate for WCs into British events? It seems cruel that as a developing player who has shown clear potetial, she has not benefited from WCs from Aus or GB, which is unfortunate considering the obvious benefit they can have when you're so low in the rankings.

philwrig · Hall of fame

Yep she's in nomans land at the moment and I would hazard a guess that its affecting her performances.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

Anyone know how this is progressing?

steven · Tennis legend

Someone on here (I'm pretty sure it was philwrig, but I'm sure I'll quickly get corrected if that's wrong!) spoke to her at a tournament recently and got the impression the switch might occur next month, and sometime soon would be consistent with the "in two-and-a-half-years" in Neil Harman's Feb 2009 article.

philwrig · Hall of fame

Yes it was me and yes that's what Jo said.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Jo iup for a WTA year end award, for most improved payer, and you can vote for if you so choose, here: www.wtatennis.com/news/article/5144222