Congratulations to Heather Watson; Hobart International Ladies Singles winner.
She won 6-3, 6-4 after a slow start where she struggled in a strong wind. She kept calm and gradually worked it out.
Excellent news.
What does she now have to do to get into the top 30, Vince?
The rankings (on which seedings and automatic entries to tournaments are based) are calculated on a rolling one year basis, i.e. if you won the Australian Open last year and didn't play it this year you would lose 2000 points from your ranking. (There are also special considerations called "Protected Rankings" to allow for top players being injured so that they don't drop too far down the rankings).
There is a separate system termed "The Race" which just counts points for the year to date and gives a better picture of how you are faring with regard to qualifying for the year-end tournament in Singapore for the top 8 players. Anyway, I digress.
There are different amounts of points allocated for different levels of tournaments. The Grand Slam's obviously award the most points, then (excluding the one-off year end WTA Championship and "Tournament of Champions") the Premier Mandatory tournaments, The Premier 5 etc.
The Hobart International which Watson has just won is relatively low down the pecking order.
http://www.wtatennis.com/all-about-rankingsSo basically, Watson has to perform better than those ranked near to her in the rankings relative to last year's performance. She lost in the first round in last year's Australian Open so she has very few "points to defend".
After Hobart she will be on 1292 points, I think, as she didn't play this week last year. Varvara Lepchenko is in 30th place on 1480 points currently, so she has to gain another 200 points to overtake her. Of course there are several other people that she also has to gain points on.
Casey Dellacqua who is in 29th with 1512 points made the 4th round last year so she would lose 230 points if she lost in the first round this year.
If Watson made the 4th round in Australian she might break the top 30, I'd guess. Unfortunately, although she avoided drawing a seed, she has a tough first round draw against Tsvetana Pironkova who is playing well.
Even after the Australian Open, Watson has relatively few points to defend in the next few weeks so, if she plays a full schedule, she should rise in the rankings over the next couple of months. If she does well, she might even make the top 30 in time to be seeded for The French Open in May.
More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.
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