ZHUHAI, China -- British No. 1 Johanna Konta overcame Samantha Stosur in straight sets to make a winning start to her WTA Elite Trophy campaign.The top seed beat her eighth-seeded Australian opponent 6-4, 6-2 in just under one hour and 20 minutes, with both sets seeing Konta take a 4-0 lead after securing early double breaks.The pair are in the Azalea group of the competition, alongside Frances Caroline Garcia. There are four groups, with the winner of each progressing to the semifinals.Konta, who narrowly missed out on competing at the WTA Finals last week, has had a breakout year to be ranked 10th in the world. In 2016, the 25-year-old has reached the Australian Open semifinals, won her maiden WTA Tour title and become the first British woman since Jo Durie in 1984 to make the worlds top 10.She was last month named the WTAs most improved player of the year.Elsewhere in the first round, sixth seed Timea Bacsinszky was also a 6-4, 6-2 winner, easing past Timea Babos. 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Luxury was once the same thing as lechery but the two words have long since parted company. In sport, the term professional was once an insult, now its a compliment. Its a word that reflects changing times.To be a professional athlete was until 1984 to be barred from the Olympic Games. Rugby union didnt accept professional players until 1995. But these days just about every athlete in the world would be happy to be described as a good pro. Its amateur thats now an insult. It now means slipshod, with low standards and expectations.The ancient and negative use of the world professional was largely an English thing to begin with. So inevitably its about social class. Or to be more accurate, its about social differences heavily disguised as moral differences. If you accepted money for playing sport, you were considered less of a person than one who played for free. In other words, the upper-middle classes - who could afford to play sport without reward - were by definition more moral than the working classes, who would lose money by missing a shift.But cricket, though always acutely aware of social class, has always been able to include people of different social strata in the same team, and to pay some but not others. Thats because the game itself is modelled on the class system: hard-working bowlers delivering the ball to privileged batsmen, who get the benefit of any doubt.Cricketers were all in it together, except not quite. Professionals changed in different changing rooms, travelled separately to away games, and frequently stepped onto the ground through different gates. Until 1962 this social chasm was celebrated by the annual Gentlemen v Players match.It should be noted here that the notion of amateurism - of not being a professional - was set about with hypocrisy. Players with gentlemanly backgrounds were frequently paid for playing, but were called club secretary. Sometimes they accepted a sinecure from some local firm. WG Grace, who posed as the quintessential amateur, was a full-time phoney, accepting considerable amounts of money for playing while pretending that he did nothing of the kind.But increasingly professionalism was seen as a good thing - commitment, hard work and responsibility, as opposed to languid condescension. This reflected the social changes of the 1960s. In many sports, the term professional was used, at first a little defiantly annd then in a more straightforward fashion, to cover all sorts of worthy qualities.ddddddddddddThe word has come to imply a set of rather humdrum virtues, the minimum standards for playing top-level sport - proper preparation before seasons and matches, the ability to execute skill sets and to stick to prearranged plans. Its a term never used for performances of inspiration and flamboyance and style.A team is chasing a lowish total in a 50-over match. The players dont try and blast the lot in 20 overs. They work the bowling, collect the singles and win without risk in 45 overs - a thoroughly professional performance. Or a team without stars stifles a better team with tight, accurate bowling, crash-hot fielding and esprit de corps. That too is a professional performance. So to be professional is a compliment, but not an overwhelming one. This has spread to the off-field part of a cricketers life. To put a homophobic insult on your Twitter account is deemed unprofessional. Its professional to arrive on time, to wear the right clothes on match day, to give an interview in which you avoid questions with perfect politeness, to manage public appearances without using words that offend people, to avoid public drunkenness and early-morning spats outside nightclubs.A failure to do so is unprofessional not because its immoral but because it affects your earning power - and that can affect the earning power of your agent and your team-mates. Thus the England team that urinated on the pitch at The Oval after their Ashes win in 2013 was considered unprofessional. It was wrong because it made a newspaper story, not because it was in itself a bad thing. They should have known better. They should have known what newspapers are like. They should have been more professional.Once, to be professional was to be a second-class person. A professional couldnt play for certain clubs in certain sports. In other sports, professionals were banned outright. If you accepted payment for writing a book about rugby you couldnt play rugby again because you were forever tainted.Now rugby players boast about their professional standards. The same thing is true in many other sports, including cricket. Hes a good player, we say: very dedicated, very committed, very focused - very professional. A first-class type, in fact - well, first-class of the second class, anyway. Thats your pro. China NFL Jerseys Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys NFL Jerseys Cheap Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap Basketball Jerseys Online Stitched Hockey Jerseys Wholesale Baseball Jerseys Football Jerseys Outlet College Jerseys For Sale Cheap MLB Jerseys Wholesale Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys For Sale Wholesale NFL Jerseys ' ' '