Johanna Konta parts company with coach Wim Fissette after 10 months of association

For the second year in a row Johanna Konta has ended the most successful season of her career by parting company with her coach. Ten months after dispensing with the services of Esteban Carril, who had overseen her progress from outside the world’s top 150 into the top 10, Konta has announced that she will no longer be working with Wim Fissette.

Konta, who also said that she was bringing her season to an early end because of an ongoing foot injury, has not won a match since August, which has cost her a place in the year-ending WTA Finals in Singapore next week, though she has still enjoyed an excellent 2017. In the spring she won the biggest title of her career at the Miami Open and in the summer she became the first British woman for 39 years to reach the semi-finals at Wimbledon.

In announcing the split with Fissette, who has coached a number of leading women, Konta said the decision was mutual and had been reached “after careful thought and discussion”.

She said in a statement: “Things ended very amicably and I wish Wim all the best. We’ve achieved a lot together and I want to thank him for all his patience, hard work and expertise.

“I will be working with my team over the coming weeks to find the right way forward for me and my tennis. The goal is to get a new coach or coaches in place as soon as possible, but the focus will be on making the right decision rather than a quick decision.

“My hitting partner, Andrew Fitzpatrick, my strength and conditioning specialist, Gill Myburgh, my physio, Milly Mirkovic, and my mental coach, Elena Sosa, will continue to support me.”

If the decision to part with Fissette is a surprising one it is also evidence of Konta’s continuing ambition. The easy-going Belgian is an outstanding coach and is sure to be in big demand from other leading players in the coming weeks, but Konta clearly believes that she needs to take a new direction if she is to continue making progress.

While she has had another very good year, there have been times in 2017 when the world No 10’s limitations have been exposed. Konta can be a match for anyone when she is trading big blows from the baseline, but her first-round defeats at the French and US Opens to Su-Wei Hsieh and Aleksandra Krunic, ranked No 109 and No 78 in the world respectively, appeared to demonstrate a lack of variety in her game. If she is to continue building on the huge strides she has made in a relatively short space of time, the 26-year-old Briton needs to be less one-dimensional in her play.

Finding a better coach than the highly rated Fissette will not be easy, but the end of the year tends to be a time when players make changes to their entourage.

Konta hinted that she could be contemplating going down the same route taken by some of the leading men, who have major figures in the game as their lead coach but also have supporting staff who work with them throughout the year. Andy Murray, for example, is not accompanied by Ivan Lendl at a number of lesser tournaments but always has Jamie Delgado available.

One or two women have tried similar set-ups, but sometimes with only limited success. Martina Navratilova lasted just five months as Agnieszka Radwanska’s coach, though Lindsay Davenport and Kim Clijsters have been important figures in the developing careers of Madison Keys and Elise Mertens respectively.

Konta would clearly like to have her new coaching arrangements in place by the time she starts training again ahead of the 2018 campaign but is taking things easy at the moment because of a nerve problem in her foot which has been troubling her for several months. Having considered preparing for the new season in Miami, she has decided instead to do her pre-season training in Britain, as she did last year.

Fissette began working with Konta on a trial basis last December after the Briton’s surprising decision to split with Carril, who had overseen her Grand Slam breakthrough as she reached the fourth round of the 2015 US Open and the semi-finals of last year’s Australian Open. It was a turbulent end to 2016 for Konta, whose mind coach, Juan Coto, had died the previous month at the age of 47.

The partnership with Fissette got off to an excellent start when Konta won the title in Sydney in January and then reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open. She went on to win the title in Miami, beating Simona Halep, Venus Williams and Caroline Wozniacki in her last three matches, and then embarked on a memorable run at Wimbledon, where she beat Halep again before losing to Williams.

However, since beating Dominika Cibulkova to reach the quarter-finals in Cincinnati in August, Konta has suffered five successive defeats, to Halep, Krunic, Barbora Strycova, Ashleigh Barty and Monica Niculescu. In a repeat of her experience at the end of 2016, when Svetlana Kuznetsova knocked her out of one of the qualifying positions for the WTA Finals, Konta was denied a place in Singapore when Caroline Garcia overtook her by winning two big tournaments in succession.

Konta could still have boosted her bank balance by travelling to Singapore as an alternate and by playing in the subsequent WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai, which brings together the players just below the world’s top eight, but has decided instead to focus on her fitness and preparations for next year.

“My foot is improving but it is still advisable to rest it further,” Konta said. “I want to make sure that I am fully fit to start preparations for what I hope will be an exciting 2018 season.”

Konta has yet to finalise her plans for the start of next season. She began her 2017 campaign at Shenzhen in China but this time may decide instead to play in Brisbane before defending her title in Sydney and then heading to Melbourne for the Australian Open.