Heather Watson started off the 2015 season with a bang. In Hobart, in the Brit's first tournament of the year, she stormed through the field to win her second WTA title. During this run, she did not drop a set and beat accomplished players like Sloane Stephens and Roberta Vinci before beating Madison Brengle, a fast riser on the WTA Tour, in straight sets to win it. After losing six of her last seven matches in 2014, this was just the start Watson needed to catapult her up the rankings. In fact, Watson got up to the best ranking of her career, number 38 in the world. So, what happened?
A champion, when they win a smaller tournament like Hobart, uses that run to propel them to greater heights in better tournaments. Look at Timea Bacsinszky, for example. Upon winning her first title in a very long time early this year in Acapulco, she went on to win the following tournament in Monterrey, make the Quarterfinals of Indian Wells, and just recently, make the Semifinals of the French Open and come within three holds-of-serve from the Final. Timea took the momentum and experience of winning this smaller tournament and used it to fuel her to greater things in her career. And although Timea's rise was extremely rapid, Watson could have certainly followed a similar (if less dramatic) path. Instead, Heather Watson shrunk.
Following the win in Hobart, Watson only got four games in a loss to Tstetvana Pironkova in a match in which Watson lost the second set 6-0. Perhaps you could chalk that up to a "champion's hangover". However, her straight set loss to Kateryna Kozlova, a player currently ranked number 150 in the WTA rankings, was a bit more shocking. Watson did have a run to the Round of 16 at Indian Wells, but, that could be because she was playing the unsteady Julia Goerges and Camila Giorgi before facing the slumping Aga Radwanska more than anything else. Watson's form got very poor following her time in southern California.
A First Round win in Miami was then followed by four losses in a row, two of them being to Polona Hercog and Mariana Duque-Marino. Now, no disrespect to those two ladies, but they are players that Watson has to be beating, especially after showing her form in Hobart. After all, Hercog is ranked number 81 in the world and Duque-Marino is ranked number 99 in the world. Those are players that Watson, if she truly had a champion's mindset, would be straight-setting, rather than losing to. Instead of using the momentum and form that she had following her win in Hobart, Watson totally dumped that form and let herself slip a bit.
Following that four match losing streak, Heather's form has not improved much. After her loss to Duque-Marino in Madrid, she then lost in her second match at Rome to Carla Suarez-Navarro in straight sets and then had another loss in the Second Round of the French Open, this time to Sloane Stephens. Perhaps the grass would revitalize her form? That doesn't seem like the case, as Watson lost in straight sets to Aleksandra Krunic, a player ranked only number 82 in the world.
Now, the easy response to all of this would be, perhaps Heather Watson only likes hard courts. After all, that is the surface where she won both of her titles on the WTA Tour. However, I do not believe this is the case. While Watson did go 2-5 on the clay, following her title in Hobart, she only went 5-5 on hard courts. In addition, during 2014, Watson only went 4-12 in WTA-level, main draw matches on the hard courts. In any case, when you had a tough season like 2014, a tournament win is vital for revitalizing your career, but unfortunately for Heather, it didn't seem to do much. It was the same ole' Heather following Hobart.
But, you might be asking, "What about after Watson's first tournament win? Did she show a champion's mindset there?" The answer is NO. At her last tournament in 2012, Watson won Osaka, only losing two sets in five matches and having the very impressive mental resolve of winning a third set tiebreak to beat Kai-Chen Chang in the Final. One would think that a big win like this would make Watson even more hungry for better results in the following season, and she would do everything in her power that offseason to make 2013 the best that it could be.
But, for Watson, 2013 was quite poor. She never won more than two WTA-level matches in a row and only advanced past the Round of 16 once at a smaller event in Memphis in which she only had to win two matches to the make the Quarterfinals. Even back in 2012 and 2013, one sees that Watson doesn't truly have the mindset of a champion. Mediocrity, with the occasional good tournament here and there, is perfectly fine with her, it doesn't matter whether it's 2012 or 2015.
In addition, let's take a further look into how Watson does when she played someone who is currently ranked below her current ranking of 65 (a big drop from earlier this year) following Hobart. This happened nine times following Hobart, and Watson is a terrible 3-6 in these matches. Yes, Heather Watson, after Hobart, has lost 2/3 of her matches against players who currently have a worse rank than her current ranking of 65. A champion beats the players that he or she is supposed to beat, but Heather flounders in these type of situations following her win. It's as if the knowledge that she actually won a tournament and is supposed to beat a player like Kozlova, currently ranked 85 spots below her, is too much for Watson to handle. Not to mention that, after Hobart, Watson is 4-5 against players ranked above her, so it's not like she is consistently beating players above her in the rankings either.
Heather Watson has a lot of thinking to do as she prepares for her next match against Varvara Lepchenko in her home country at Eastbourne. She needs to figure out how to stomp out players ranked below her and consistently challenge those above her in the rankings. It's not easy to have a champion's mindset. There is a reason that so few players win that elusive major title. But, a win just before the Australian Open in Hobart could have been what took Watson to the next level in her career. But, it almost seems as if Heather Watson is fine with not being the best that she can be. It's almost as if she has no problems with losing to players below her, while not raising her game to really challenge the best in the women's game.
And what does this tell me? It tells me that Heather Watson lacks a champion's mindset.
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