Watson faces world’s top junior in qualifying

Having dropped out of the top 104 players in the world at the entry cut-off, the Sarnian did not gain an automatic place in the main draw and so will fight it out along with 128 other players for one of the 16 qualifier spots.

Remarkably, Guernsey’s 2009 US Open girls’ champion will begin her qualifying campaign against someone who is three years younger than she was when she won her junior title at Flushing Meadows.

British No. 3 Watson is the 11th seed in the qualifying draw and in the first round she will meet 14-year-old American wild card Cori ‘Coco’ Gauff, who last year became the youngest player ever to reach the US Open girls’ final in which she finished as runner-up.

Since then Gauff has become the reigning French Open girls’ champion having beaten fellow American Caty McNally 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 (1) at Roland Garros earlier this summer and is now the top ranked junior in the world.

She only made her professional ITF circuit debut in May, making her current world senior ranking of 926 somewhat misleading as she has in fact won eight of the 10 matches she has played.

Perhaps more revealing is that when asked in an interview for ESPN in January 2017, just as she started making waves in American junior tennis as a 12-year-old, what her dream is, Gauff replied: ‘I want to be the greatest of all time.’

Renowned tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou, who has worked with Serena Williams, said after Gauff’s French Open triumph that the sky’s the limit for the teenager.

‘She is only 14 years old, she reached the final of the US Open juniors last year at the age of 13 – the youngest ever in the history to do that,’ he told Omnisport in Paris.

‘She is fantastic, she can become a top, top player. I believe in her a lot.’

If Watson, who has risen 17 places to world No. 116 after reaching the VanOpen final, comes through her match with Gauff, she would need to win twice more to reach the US Open main draw.