Teenagers show desire to succeed

The teenagers Elena Baltacha and Annabel Blow underlined their emergence as shining lights in the domestic women's game here yesterday.

Baltacha overwhelmed Kerry Hughes 6-0 6-3, while Blow beat Julie Smith 6-1 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals of the National Championships.

Baltacha, Blow and Anne Keothavong, who plays Alice Barnes in the second round, are all 18 years old and along with the 19-year-old Hannah Collin, another quarter-finalist, are rated by Keith Wooldridge, the head of women's tennis at the Lawn Tennis Association, as "the best group of women's prospects since Jo Durie".

"They have the desire, the attitude and the strength and they are not scared to say that their ambitions are to get to the very top," said Wooldridge.

Durie, who broke into the world's top five in 1984, is now involved with Alan Jones in the coaching of Keothavong and Baltacha, whose world ranking has leapt almost 600 places in the two years she has spent under Durie's tutelage.

"I think I have improved enormously in my time with Alan and Jo and now my goal is to get inside the top 200 by the start of next year," said Baltacha.

"I used to try to smack winners all over the place and I didn't know what to do if they weren't going in. But now I feel more confident with myself."

Blow put her full-time tennis career on hold while she completed A-levels in maths, physics and chemistry this summer, but it is now the turn of her education to take a back seat. "At 16 I thought my education was more important so that when I went full-time I would know that if it didn't work out I could go back to something," she said.

In the men's event, the second seed Jamie Delgado beat James Smith 6-3, 7-6 to set up a quarter-final against the reigning champion Lee Childs.

Arvind Parmar also went through after a 7-5, 6-4 win over the national junior champion Richard Bloomfield.

Today's highlight sees the men's top seed Martin Lee face another exciting prospect, the 17-year-old Alex Bogdanovic.