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Youth has its day as British starlet Watson breaks into the world's top 150

احدث اجدد واروع واجمل واشيك Youth has its day as British starlet Watson breaks into the world's top 150

Youth has its day as British starlet Watson breaks into the world's top 150

On the day that Heather Watson officially became the youngest player currently ranked in the world's top 150, you ask her what it feels like.

The response is spontaneous, accompanied by a beaming smile as wide as the nearby Yarra River. 'I love it,' she says. 'And I would love to set another benchmark.'

Going up in the world: Heather Watson is ranked 149th after reaching the last eight in Auckland

Going up in the world: Heather Watson is ranked 149th after reaching the last eight in Auckland

Aged just 18 years and seven months, the girl from Guernsey keeps on going up. After starting last year at 588, she reached 149 on Monday thanks to making her first full WTA Tour quarter-final at the Auckland Open last week.

'During every December I sit down with my Dad and discuss targets for the year. Last season it was to break 150, so I'm a couple of weeks late. This year it's to break the 100, I'd like to smash that target if I can,' she says.

Getting this far at such a young age is a highly unusual achievement for a player from success-starved Britain. However, the idea of Watson being considered young in worldwide terms, when she is within sight of her 19th birthday, may strike many as peculiar when they consider the young starlets of tennis' past.

Family matters: Watson poses with her mother Michelle after winning the 2009 US Open junior event

Family matters: Watson poses with her mother Michelle after winning the 2009 US Open junior event

Yet a sport with a reputation of breeding champions from the kindergarten has evolved quite dramatically away from that.

It is 15 years since Martina Hingis reached a Grand Slam semi-final at 15, and 20 since Jennifer Capriati did the same at 14.

DEL POTRO BACK IN THE FRAME

Juan Martin Del Potro won his first match in a year on Monday, coming through a test of his fitness with a 6-7, 7-6, 7-6 victory over Feliciano Lopez at the Sydney International. The 22-year-old Argentine, who beat Roger Federer to win the US Open final in 2009, has played only two events since surgery last May on a wrist injury, losing in the first round on both occasions. His world ranking has dropped to 259

As Watson's travelling Lawn Tennis Association coach Billy Wilkinson points out: 'There is greater longevity in the game now. Women are staying in it to an older age and fitness-wise the girls need to be stronger and more athletic.'

Experience tells you to be cautious when assessing how far a player might go. In most cases it is a bit like those financial services advertisements, which warn past performance is not necessarily a guide to the future.

Watson does not have the same natural ball striking ability as her younger rival and good friend Laura Robson, but she is a fine athlete with a solid all-round game and natural thirst for competition.

She first came to wider prominence when she won the US Open junior event in 2009, but it is a match played here in Australia earlier that year that sticks in the memory.

On an outside court she played Japan's Miyabi Inoue as the temperature rose to a (literally) breathtaking 43 degrees. Every other match was suspended for the extreme heat but, locked in a third set, the decision was made to try to finish this one.

The bloody-minded courage the then 16-year-old showed in closing it out 6-4 suggested that we might just be witnessing a good 'un in the making.

'The thing I remember about that was the heat burning into the soles of my feet, but I have always been competitive,' she says on a contrastingly cool and drizzly Melbourne afternoon.

Rival: Watson is ahead of compatriot Robson in the current women's rankings

Rival: Watson is ahead of compatriot Robson in the current women's rankings

'You should see me play table tennis at the (Nick Bollettieri) Academy, I've got to beat even the young kids there.'

Watson, whose father is originally from Manchester and mother from Papua New Guinea, spent most of her teenage years in the Florida academy but also studied properly, graduating from high school only last year.

Her parents reluctantly concluded it was the best compeoption, and despite being a proud Guern, she could spend only 12 days there in 2010.

Accompanied by Wilkinson, a Floridian himself, she was back at Bollettieri's in November and December, which she believes is connected to the strides made in Auckland.

'It's the first proper off-season of training I've had, we were running on the beach four miles a day and developing my game to be more offensive. It was exhausting but I'm fitter than I have ever been,' she says.

Watson hopes that when the Australian Open women's qualifying starts on Thursday, she will pull off the same trick, having qualified last year for main tour events in Eastbourne and Charleston and won a Challenger level event in Canada.

Watson's natural self belief does not come across as arrogance, and anyone who reads her postings on Twitter will see that there is a thoughtful side as well, as she is fond of sharing bits of philosophy that she picks up.

For instance, to Sloane Stephens, an American friend from the junior ranks, she advises: 'Never frown, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.'

Watson collects these. 'I've got a file on my computer just for sayings I like, so whenever I hear or see something that is good I will type it in straight away to remember it. I just wish that I could come up with them myself.'

British No 1 Elena Baltacha opened her season with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Thailand's Tamarine Tanasugarn in the first round of the WTA Tour event in Hobart. The 27-year-old next faces Italian Roberta Vinci




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