• WTA Tour

Top 25 aim for Watson in 2013

ESPN staff
December 22, 2012
Heather Watson has ambitions for 2013 which include being seeded in a grand slam © Getty Images
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British No. 1 Heather Watson is resisting the temptation for mere gradual improvements and is aiming to make giant strides in 2013.

Watson achieved her goal for this year of making it inside the world's top 50, she is currently No. 49, but in 12 months' time she hopes to have halved her ranking.

If her form towards the end of 2012 is anything to go by, that high hope is more than attainable. In October the 20-year-old became the first British player in 24 years to win a title on the main WTA Tour when she triumphed in the HP Open in Japan.

One marker Watson is using to gauge her progress by next year is whether she can be assigned a seeding at a major tournament but the Guernsey-born player admits that remains a tough ask.

'For the coming season the soft target is to get into the top 30 and the ultimate one is to make the top 25," Watson told the Daily Mail. "It would be great to be seeded for a grand slam, which sounds a lot but I believe in setting quite tough goals."

On the home front, Watson's developing rivalry with Olympic silver medallist Laura Robson, 18, has attracted a lot of media attention. But Watson shrugs off the idea that remaining the top female tennis player in Britain is a primary goal.

She said: "I would want to finish the year British No. 1, not No. 2, but I am focussed far more on what happens in the world rankings in general."

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