Johanna Konta on Wednesday night revealed that she may have to live with her knee problems for the rest of her career – and admitted that she did not act quickly enough when they first emerged.
The British No 1 won the Nottingham Open 10 days ago to register the fourth title of her career, but then explained that she would be resting her knees to give herself her best chance at Wimbledon.
Konta would normally have played at Birmingham and Eastbourne this week as a warm-up for Wimbledon but pulled out of both tournaments.
And the 30-year-old admitted that when the problems first cropped up she did not take them seriously enough.
Konta has been dogged with knee problems since the start of 2019, though she reached the semi-final of the French Open and the quarter finals at Wimbledon and the US Open that year.
She has struggled to hit those heights since, with the pandemic wreaking havoc with sport.
But Konta said: “Will it be part of the rest of my career? Possibly.
“I’m going to be managing this for quite some time. Hopefully I’ll kick it before I stop playing.
“I wasn’t pain free for the best part of two and a half years. But I do have longer stretches of being pain free, so there are positives.”
Konta, now ranked 30th in the world but the 28th Wimbledon women’s seed, said: “At the beginning I didn’t acknowledge there was something going on.
“It took too long to address it properly – and by that time it was a significant thing.
“Tendon issues don’t follow any specific blueprint on rest, recovery, rehabilitation – it’s basically just management.
“Sometimes it is sore when I play matches, sometimes it isn’t. It depends where it is, how acute it is at the time.
