Andy Murray has been shouldering Great Britain’s hopes at the Slams for while now and is treated like British royalty every June when Wimbledon comes around. But you have to go down to no. 211 to find the next British men’s player in the world rankings – 24 year old James Ward. On the women’s side, Elena Baltacha and Anne Keovthavong, both 27 year olds, have established themselves as regulars in the top 100 on the women’s side. That’s two additional wild cards in the hands of the Wimbledon organizers for lower ranked British women. And while the Brits have been holding out for Laura Robson to make her breakthrough on the professional circuit, another Brit teenager is rising up the ranks rapidly and making people, not only in her success-starved homeland, take notice.
Heather Watson will not turn 19 for another 3 months and is already the youngest player in the world’s top 150, with a current ranking of #145 which is only going to rise further thanks to another solid performance in at the WTA event in Memphis this week.
Robson was the first of the two young Brits to hit the headlines when she won the Wimbledon junior girls title in 2008 at the precocious age of 14. Her victory made her the first British player to win the girls' event since Annabel Croft in 1984, and the British media described her as the "new darling" of British tennis as she went on to claim to world #1 junior ranking in April 2009. But Robson is yet to achieve a breakthrough result on the professional tour. Watson, who trains at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida, also has a junior Grand Slam title to her name – the 2009 US Open girls’ singles title. And while Robson is still outside the top 200 in the world rankings, Watson has posted consistent results over the past 12 months that warrant her inclusion in the list of the game’s rising stars.
Coached by Andrew Fisher and a former world no. 3 junior, Watson won her first professional title on the lower-rung ITF circuit in July 2009. In 2010, she posted a solid 36-22 record for the year highlighted by qualifying for the WTA events in Charleston, where she lost to Russian Elena Vesnina in the first round, and in Eastbourne where she also won 2 main draw matches, scoring wins over three top 100 players - Tsvetana Pironkova , Bojana Jovanovski, and Aleksandra Wozniak before losing to Victoria Azarenka in the third round. Watson won two more ITF titles in 2010 – in Britain in July and in Canada in November.
In 2011, Watson has already won 11 of 15 matches, highlighted by her run in Auckland, where she went from the qualifying draw to reach the first quarter-final on tour losing to Shuai Peng. And in this week’s WTA Memphis stop, Watson once again advanced through the qualifying draw and reached another quarter-final, where she was beaten by Russia’s Evgineya Rodina on Thursday.
The right handed Watson, who plays with a two-handed backhand, is not just another blonde ball-basher. Her game is often likened to Martina Hingis and Bollettieri himself has cited the Brit for her amazing footwork. According to Nigel Sears, head of women's coaching at the Lawn Tennis Association, Watson possesses "a complete game", with a massive amount of variety including the consistent use of a one-handed backhand slice, volleys and angles.”
Robson is 19 months younger than Watson and that is enough time for her to make the same strides that Watson has over the past year. But Watson is unlikely to step aside to make way for her younger compatriot. By Wimbledon time, Watson would likely earn enough points to gain direct entry into the main draw while Robson will have to most likely have to depend on a wild card. The expectations from both will be high from the British public, who will be hoping that Kate Middleton is not the only new British royalty to debut at this year’s Championships.
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