As women’s tennis looks to the next generation for a new and glamorous icon to add gloss to the sport, dominate the glossy magazine covers and entice the sponsors, Caroline Wozniacki seems the girl most likely.

Certainly, there will be a retro look to the women’s game in 2010 with the return of Justine Henin to add to the Kim Clijsters comeback story and hopefully Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic will recover full fitness to take them back towards the top of the game. But Wozniacki, who turns 20 a week after next summer’s Wimbledon, already looks to have enough going for her to merit a place amongst the elite.

The Dane is pleasant to the eye and gracious to the interviewer, which cannot always be said for some of her more successful peers at the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Championships in Doha this week. Nobody would expect Wozniacki to be discourteous and rude to a past champion of some standing such as Tracy Austin, as Serena Williams was, bearing a distinct grudge about a comment made in a televised discussion nine months ago. Wozniacki is also a competitor with an abundance of that prime requisite, grit.

Many lesser players than this year’s US Open runner-up would have crumbled into a demoralised mass after losing the first set in double-quick time and then failing to win a game in the second that lasted almost as long, squandering seven break points along the way. Wozniacki, it appears, is made of sterner stuff and as her closest friend on the women’s tour, Victoria Azarenka, eventually lost all trace of her composure, the teenager held firm to win 1-6, 6-4, 7-5 in two minutes less than three hours.

Close to the end Azarenka fell foul of the disciplinary process in similar fashion to the way Serena did at the US Open. She received a warning from French umpire Kader Nouni for angrily hitting a ball out of the Khalifa Stadium having allowed Wozniacki two break points to serve for the match after an errant forehand flew into the net. Her anger still not satisfied, she then decided to smash her racket and the official was left no alternative but to announce a penalty point, which was sufficient to give the Dane the game.

The ugly strapping on the thigh that Wozniacki strained in the dubious match in Luxembourg a few weeks ago, which is still being investigated by the Tennis Integrity Unit - it is concerned about the amount of online betting that occurred after her father Piotr advised her to retire - suggested that she was not physically able to last a marathon in night-time temperatures that still topped 80F. After electing to take a ten-minute break at the end of two sets, courtesy of the WTA Tour’s heat rule and despite having her serve broken four times in succession, Wozniacki proved more durable than her 20-year-old Belarussian opponent at the end.

Next she faces alternate Vera Zvonareva who will take to the court after world no 1 Dinara Safina announced a painful back has brought a slightly premature end to her competitive year. Then Wozniacki must face Jelena Jankovic who seemed completely out of sorts on day one against Azarenka.

Wozniacki may be sufficiently photogenic to warrant Stella McCartney giving her exclusive use of her line of tennis clothing but she is also determined enough not to capitulate when things are getting tough. This girl can go a very long way and if she does, women’s tennis will be the beneficiary.