WESTERN & SOUTHERN OPEN

August 28, 2020

Johanna Konta

Press Conference

V. AZARENKA/J. Konta

4-6, 6-4, 6-1

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. When did you find out the tournament was going to be paused for 24 hours? And did you consider pulling out of the semifinal yourself in support of Naomi Osaka?

JOHANNA KONTA: So I found out at quarter past 9:00 at night. I was actually going back on the bus. To be quite honest, I'm really not up to date on current affairs.

Obviously I'm very aware of the movement, and I'm very aware of what's happened in the past, especially while I was at home, but I haven't watched the news while I have been here, and also, I didn't see Naomi's post. I really wasn't aware of the situation in its entirety, so that kind of decision was taken out of my hands.

And I fully understand why the tournament, why the USTA and US Open and WTA and ATP, why they decided as they did.

Q. Similar sort of question for me. I'm curious what you make of the disruption, what it's like having a disruption at this stage of the tournament unexpectedly, and if there were concerns it would affect your preparation or if you would roll with it?

JOHANNA KONTA: Well, I think the nature of 2020 is kind of the mantra of "just roll with the punches." So I think in terms of having this sort of disruption, I think it's actually on quite a small scale compared to the other disruptions we have had in the year (smiling).

So I think it's just kind of part of a long list of things to deal with and manage and do the best that you can under the circumstances kind of situation.

I kind of took it with a pinch of salt and used the day to recover. Obviously we have plenty of tournaments where we have a day off. Usually you know about it. But I did know the night before, so we just adjusted our day for the next day and kind of just cracked on, really.

Q. What was your schedule like yesterday with the day off? At any point was there a conversation between you and some other tennis players about what was going on?

JOHANNA KONTA: My schedule yesterday was I just hit from 11:00 till 12:00, kind of did my kind of physical warmup stuff before and things I needed to get done. Then I basically got out of there.

Second part of your question, sorry?

Q. At any point yesterday was there a larger conversation with some of the tennis players about what was going on?

JOHANNA KONTA: To be honest, no, not really. No, I didn't really get a chance to speak to anyone about it, so, no, it was kind of everyone just got on with their day.