Is there another teen sensation coming along?

Zarina Diyas of Kazahkstan will be 16 years old in October and if she keeps up her winning ways, tennis fans (besides us writers) will be acquainted with her by this time next year (we'll introduce her now). 

Only 15 years old at the moment, she has been surging through the ranks of late and may make her Grand Slam debut in 2010.

Diyas began to take form in the fall of 2008 when she was ranked 9999th in the world (an arbitrary rank assigned to players who may possess points, but don't crack the top 1200 or so).  In an ITF event in Astana, Kazahkstan, just the fourth one in her career and with just one career match win, Diyas ran the tables and pulled off 5 consecutive wins to take the tournament down.

In April 2009 she made the finals in Japan, at Gifu, another ITF event and continued to move up the ranks.  She followed up that finals loss in early May with another ITF finals appearance, losing at Fukuoka in Japan.  Then at the Stuttgart-Vaihingen event in Germany, Diyas ran the tables again to win 50 WTA ranking points, thereby surging even higher.

Presently she is the 295th ranked player in the world but she is probably playing much better.  A proven winner on the ITF 'minor leagues', she is making her WTA tour event debut at Prague, a tournament held between July 13th and July 19th.  It's not clear where her skill level is right now in terms of becoming a top 100 player, but she did beat the 157th ranked played earlier this month 6-2, 6-1 and she's only dropped 6 sets in her last 17 matches.

Is qualifying for next month's US Open too big of a prediction?  How about the Australian Open 2010 and the next forty Slams after that?  15 year olds ranked in the top 300 are not that common.

To bet on WTA tour matches, including Prague, go to bet365.