After routing Serena Williams, Is Johanna Konta poised for a rebound?

Recapping Day 3 at the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.

Sitting nearly in the middle of the WTA rankings between No. 26 Serena Williams at No. 68 Sofia Kenin is Johanna Konta, currently ranked 48th in the world.

In San Jose, Calif., this week, the Englishwoman has defeated Williams in a lopsided upset felt around the world, then followed that up with a straight-sets victory over the precocious Kenin. After those two wins—each impressive for different reasons—Konta is now through to the quarterfinals of the tournament with one of her best performances of the year.

Does this current run show she’s ready to put her struggles over the past 12 months behind her?

Last year around this time, Konta was coming off a semifinal appearance at Wimbledon, where she became the first British woman to make it that far in 40 years. Leaving the tournament with a career-high No. 4 ranking, the 2017 Miami Open champion was expected to have a significant impact on the summer hard-court season and was considered one of the front-runners for the US Open.

Instead, she went 2-2 in her next three tournaments, with first-round losses in Toronto and New York. Konta then lost three consecutive matches before shutting down her season due to injury. She also parted ways with her coach, Wim Fissette, despite having her career-best year.

Konta kicked off 2018 with a quarterfinal showing in Brisbane, Australia, but then, as the defending champion in Sydney, she dropped her opening-round match. Righting the ship just wasn’t going to happen Down Under: at the Australian Open, she fell in the second round to the unheralded American Bernarda Pera in a major upset. Pera also beat Konta on clay in Madrid this year.

From Brisbane through the clay-court season, Konta failed to reach another quarterfinal. There was a glimmer of hope, though, as the tour turned to grass. Playing in front of her home crowd, Konta made it through to her first final of the year, where she lost a three-set battle to Ashleigh Barty of Australia.

The draw gods were not working in her favor over her next two events as she lost to Petra Kvitova and Caroline Wozniacki in early-round matches. At Wimbledon, Konta won her opener, but then ran into Dominika Cibulkova, who was determined to prove that she should have been seeded, and lost in straight sets.

By failing to defend her semifinal appearance at the All England Club from the year prior, Konta entered this week’s tournament in California barely holding onto a spot in the Top 50. Then, the 2016 Stanford champion was presented with one of the most daunting tasks any player could face: taking on Serena in the opening round. In their first meeting last year in Melbourne, Williams won their quarterfinal encounter in straight sets.

This time, though, Konta reached back into her bag of tricks and dealt Williams the worst loss of her career, 6-1, 6-0. With a quick turnaround, Konta didn’t allow any room for a letdown and beat Kenin in straight sets.

Next up for the former world No. 4 is a player that’s looked like first-half-of-2017 Konta, Elise Mertens, who has been a force in 2018, winning three titles already.

It’s a performance Konta can relate to, and so far this week, it appears she’s ready to get back to that level.

ATP & WTA Washington D.C.

Catch all the action from the Citi Open with live coverage from three courts on Tennis Channel Plus beginning Monday, July 30th at 2:00 PM ET. All matches also available on-demand.