Melanie South was always tipped to be a British tennis star of the future. Unfortunately she had a number of injuries that have stopped her reaching her potential.

However, Melanie is now as fit as ever, playing every tournament she can in her quest for a top 100 WTA ranking by the end of the year  - and she’s not far off.

She had her breakthrough a few seasons ago, reaching the world top 200, and looked set to go higher. Injury then prevented her march up the rankings as she finished 2007 at a modest 214 in the rankings.

This meant she had to play most of this year on the ITF circuit, travelling around the world to less exotic places than on the WTA tour in order to gain valuable points and try to join her compatriot, Anne Keothavong, in the top 100.

Keothavong has been a revelation this year and her march to No.61 in this week's rankings seems to have inspired a host of British girls to show what they can do, including South!

Melanie has just reached her fourth ITF $25,000 tournament final in a row. Although she has lost three of these finals, the points gained have helped her  reach a new high of 116 in the rankings and with her points still needing to be added from this week's tournament in India, South will enter the top 110 and nervously so step closer to the top 100.

When was the last time two British women achieved this at the same time? Before I was born, I'm guessing. But it's brilliant, and with the likes of Laura Robson and Tara Moore rapidly making a name for themselves, Britain could soon have a competitive ladder of players competing week in week out.

South has also shown glimpses that she can cope with play on the WTA tour and not just the second tier ITF tournaments. She reached the quarter-finals at Edgbaston in the summer, defeating a host of top players including former top 20 player Sybille Bammer of Austria and top 50 player Aiko Nakamura of Japan.

In Los Angeles she took advantage of being a lucky loser in qualifying to defeat Czech rising star Petra Kvitova to reach the third round of this prestigious event. Other notable wins for the 22-year-old this year are against Carla Suarez Navarro, a quarter-finalist at this year's French Open and also the experienced Anne Kremer of Luxembourg and Japanese youngster Ayumi Morita.

Melanie hasn’t had too much competition over the past couple of months in her tournaments with most opponents ranked a lot lower than herself. But it is good to see her prepared to travel the world and play in all these smaller tournament in order to better her ranking as much as possible to be able to gain direct entry into some of the bigger tournaments. Match practice is always good, no matter who you are playing.

Next week South stays in India for a $50,000 tournament in Kolkota. She is the top seed for the event and knows a tournament victory would be good enough to gain that top 100 ranking. She is good enough to win and only nerves will stop the youngster from doing well. It took Keothavong until she was 24 to reach the top 100 so South has a few years on her elder compatriot and, who knows, may even break the top 50 before then.

I am very optimistic for British women's tennis and although it seems to take the girls a little longer to develop their game than players in other countries it is good to see improvements are being made. Let's just hope Robson can achieve things a little quicker. Although the pressure will be on the 14-year-old, I think she could well break into the world top 100 before her 17th birthday. Let's hope so.