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Wuhan - Double Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova said Johanna
Konta has the quality and consistency to become a fixture in the women's top
10, despite putting her rise on hold at the Wuhan Open.
Kvitova ended the 13th-ranked Briton's chances of joining
the top 10 this week when she knocked her out of the Chinese tournament's
quarter-finals 6-3, 6-4 on Thursday.
But the former world number two - who has ended the last
five years in the top 10 - was full of praise for the big-serving 25-year-old.
"She doesn't really have any weakness, which is always
kind of tricky," she said.
"She has the quality, for sure. I mean, she's a very
consistent player... I think that she really has a quality to be one of the top
10 players."
A strong run at next week's China Open in Beijing could see
Konta become the first British woman to break into the top 10 since Jo Durie
reached world number five in 1984.
At the beginning of 2015, Konta was ranked 146th but she
made it to three quarter-finals and reached the last 16 at the US Open as a
qualifier to end the year inside the top 50.
This year, she reached her first Grand Slam semi-final at
the Australian Open, won her maiden WTA title in Stanford in July and was a
quarter-finalist at the Rio Olympics.
But level-headed Konta said she's not concerned about
whether or not she reaches the top 10.
"I'm not thinking about what will come. A lot of those
things are actually not all under my control. It also depends on how other
players do," she told reporters after the quarter final loss in Wuhan.
"So now I'm going to be in Beijing and I'm going to try to do the best that I can in Beijing."
