Johanna Konta: British tennis ace and Grand Slam semi-finalist retires aged 30

Former British number one, and Wimbledon semi-finalist Johanna Konta has retired from tennis.

Johanna Konta in Montreal earlier this year. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

The 30-year-old, who ranked in the world’s top four in 2017, annunced she had stepped down from the spot and was “grateful and fortunate” for the career she had.

Recently, Konta had slipped to 113th in the ATP rankings, and was most recently eliminated in the first round of August’s CIncinatti Masters but had won the Nottingham Masters ahead of Wimbledon, where a close contact’s COVID test ruled her out of SW19.

Injury issues with her knee have also plagued her recent years since she hit the headlines as the foremost figure in British women’s tennis with her run to the final four at the ALl England Club four years ago.

Johanna Konta. (Photo by AELTC/Pool/Getty Images)

She also reached the latter stages of each Grand Slam event, beaten in the semi-finals of the French and Australian Opens while the quarter-finals was her best finish at the US Open in 2019.

The following coronavirus shutdown caused further disruption to Konta and now she has called time on her impressive career.

"Grateful – this is the word I've probably used most during my career, and is a word that I feel ex[plains it best at the end.

"My playing career has come to an end, and I am so incredibly grateful for the career it turned out to be,” she wrote on Twitter. “All the evidence pointed towards me not ‘making it’ in this profession. However my luck materialised in the people that came into my life and impacted my existence in ways that transcended tennis.

"I am so incredibly grateful to these people. You know who you are.

"Through my own resilience and through the guidance of others, I got to live my dreams. I got to become what I wanted and said as a child.

"How incredibly fortunate I count myself to be. How grateful I am.”

Konta first appeared at Wimbledon in 2012, seven years after moving to Britain as a 14-year-old. She became the first British woman in 33 years to reach a major semi-final a year later in Australia before winning her first three WTA events in Sydney and Miami and would go on to the final four at SW19 and Roland Garros in future years.

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