Former British No. 1 Johanna Konta has announced that she has given birth to her first child. Konta, 31, announced retirement from tennis shortly after the 2021 season ended. Just days after announcing her retirement from tennis, Konta married her long-time partner Jackson Wade.
Konta, who has been married since December, gave birth to a baby girl named Emmeline.
Baby Emmeline 12/09/22 💝👋☺️ pic.twitter.com/9GDf7TiZzF — Johanna Konta (@JohannaKonta) September 13, 2022
Konta retired from the game on December 1, 2021
In late 2021, British media reported that Konta was thinking about ending her professional tennis career.
On December 1, Konta confirmed that those rumors were indeed true after she announced her retirement from tennis. When Konta was asked about her decision to retire, Konta underlined that it wasn’t a decision that happened quickly.
Konta took a long time before deciding her future plans. “This has not been a decision that has been made in the last half an hour and it’s not something even that’s been made in the last two months. This is something that took some time to get to.
I wanted to give it time to see if this is actually what I want to do or if it’s just a tough period. There are so many times in your career where you could very easily be like, Nope, not having any of this anymore [laughs],” Konta said in December.
Konta, a former three-time Grand Slam semifinalist, didn’t really play much in the second half of the 2021 season. Konta played only one event during the grass season as she made it all the way in Nottingham. After winning Nottingham and pulling out of Wimbledon because one team member tested positive for COVID-19, Konta appeared in two more tournaments in the rest of 2021 – Montreal and Cincinnati.
In Cincinnati – what later turned out to be the final tournament of her career – Konta suffered a first round defeat to Karolina Muchova.
