Can Konta regain her mojo before the season is over?

Johanna Konta has been a resilient star for most of 2017, but her recent slump deepened after a disappointing loss to Monica Niculescu in the first round of Beijing.

The Brit has suffered five consecutive losses and only two wins since reaching the Wimbledon semifinals. Her two wins came in Cincinnati.

It’s a bit baffling considering that Konta has usually been a terrific hard-court player, including her biggest career title at the Miami Open six months ago.

The 26-year-old has bloomed into a Top-10 player through a lot of hard work and tenacity, but this is a different Konta on court. She’s struggling to command her blend of aggressive precision with her groundstrokes, and opponents might be figuring out her best patterns of play. Konta was bewildered in losing to Niculescu’s low slices, and she sprayed impatient errors. Now she’s just barely holding onto becoming a qualifier for the WTA finals in Singapore.

Konta recently pointed out that the depth in the WTA is tremendous, and that the matches have perhaps not been credited enough.

“More credit needs to be given,” she said. “There is so much talk that the women’s draw is so open. But it’s open in the sense of there are so many amazing players. We have the depth.”

Meanwhile, Konta has endured more scrutiny, good and bad, from the expansive coverage of the British media. Has it become increasingly difficult to live up to the pressures and expectations of becoming a star?

Maybe a little more rest and training can get her back to the fundamentals of hitting with confidence. There still could be time to make a statement in Singapore.