It is hard to believe that a woman of Johanna Konta’s quality and ranking, a woman who reached a career-high No6 just before her 26th birthday last month, who won one of the biggest WTA tournaments in the calendar, the Miami Premier Mandatory, in March, and who reached her first Grand Slam semi-final last year in Australia, should have arrived at the French Open with just four main-draw wins on clay to her name.
But such was the startling statistic when it came to Konta and the terre battue.
Even taking account of Konta’s relatively recent rise through the ranks from 147 in 2015 to the top 10 does little to explain the numbers.
Take the French Open: she made it to the first round via qualifying in 2015, and was in the first round by right, ranked 20, last year. Both times she did not make it any further.
And this year, single wins at Rome and Stuttgart were all she had to show for three clay tournaments.
In Rome last year, Konta had been keen to accentuate the positives:
“I enjoy [the clay]. I think it’s quite a lot of fun, actually. It’s different than any other surface… I’m enjoying it for all the things that it brings to the game.”
She went on: “I don’t have a favourite surface. I have always said so, and I maintain that… I’m definitely accumulating new experiences. Hopefully, the work I put in now will also translate into not just this time next year but also the next surfaces that I play on. I think there is a lot of crossover no matter what surface we are playing on.”
Yet she continued to find the sliding movement demanded by the red dirt a real challenge.
The Briton had not played the 31-year-old woman from Taipei since 2013, and even allowing for her clay record, Konta’s evolution had moved on apace. What’s more, Hsieh’s record at Roland Garros was no more illustrious than Konta’s. Only once in seven appearances had she made it to the second round—her solitary win.
Hsieh arrived here this year, too, on a five-match losing streak, but she did have plenty of variety in her arsenal. She had, after all, won 19 doubles titles, so was nimble at the net, had lob and drop skills, and an unconventional two-handed forehand that helped generate lots of slice on both wings.
Konta certainly began in a way suited to her ranking, holding serve to love, and then breaking to 15 as Hsieh sprayed errors. In these early stages, the Taipei woman was clearly struggling to handle the power that Konta was producing on this huge clay stage.
With a 3-0 lead, Konta had 12 points to Hsieh’s two, and Hsieh would win just one game in the set as Konta served it out in a confident 20 or so minutes, 6-1.
The second set was more competitive from the off, as Hsieh found better rhythm and began to read and feed off the Konta baseline game. The Briton faced her first break points in a tight eighth game, two of them, but survived. Then it was Hsieh’s turn to come under pressure, 0-40 down.
She rose to the challenge impressively to reel off five straight points, and brought up set point against Konta, but the Briton also resisted, making a rare show of emotion with a big “C’mon!” It would go to a tie-break.
Konta won the first point against serve, but Hsieh was stepping in to receive, rushing Konta, and fooling her with drops here and sliced returns there. It earned Hsieh seven straight points and the set, 7-6(2).
The deciding set began with both showing some nerves. Each survived deuces, both then conceded breaks, before Hsieh began mixing it up again. She worked break points with a fiendish drop shot and got her reward, holding for 5-3 with some tricky sliced forehands that skimmed to both wings.
Konta dug in for a love hold, but now she needed to break, and she had four chances to do so with some heavy-weight returning. But Hsieh pulled off another crucial drop-shot winner, and brought up her first match point with a crisp volley winner—a reward for all those doubles wins in the past. She finally closed out victory with a big serve, 6-4, after two and a quarter hours—only her second ever win in 28 attempts over a top-20 player.
Konta, as has been her way since seeking the support of a sports psychologist three or so years ago, was keen to take the positives from the loss.
“I think there’s always, regardless of ranking, going to be difficult match-ups and easier match-ups, depending on game style. She’s definitely an unorthodox player, but I think she uses the best of her ability to her advantage.
“I still felt that I moved better, and I felt I adjusted better to the balls than I had previously, and that’s actually quite a positive for me.
“So I’m definitely taking all the good things from this period, because I think there are quite a lot. And I do think the things that I built through these last few weeks I will be able to transform to the grass and then onto the hard.”
Konta returns home to Eastbourne now before heading to London to prepare for back-to-back grass events in the run-up to Wimbledon.
Meanwhile Hsieh will next play Taylor Townsend, who beat qualifier Miyu Kato, 6-4, 6-0, in the quarter topped by No2 seed Karolina Pliskova.
One of the favourites coming into the French Open, No5 seed Elina Svitolina, arrived here at the top of the Race to Singapore and with four titles to her name, including the big Premier in Rome. She sailed into the second round, beating Yaroslava Shvedova 6-4, 6-3, and will next play No77-ranked Tsvetana Pironkova, who put out Prague champion Mona Barthel, 6-0, 6-4.
Also through is Carla Suarez Navarro, who will meet Sorana Cirstea in Round 2.