DETERMINED Sabrina Federici has targeted a career as a British tennis star after becoming the UK’s top ranked 14-year-old.

Sabrina is still on a high after becoming the Nike Junior Tour UK National Masters Champion for her age group at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton.

And she has now qualified for the Nike International Masters at the Club Med on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas in December.

Sabrina recently helped England to victory in the Four Nations Championship at the Welsh National Tennis Centre in Cardiff.

Although she lost to Scottish rival Alice Keddie, she later found out that her ranking at under-16s had risen to number three in the UK.

It continues the St Joseph’s High School pupil’s meteoric rise in the sport after she only started playing the game late in her life compared to modern tennis greats.

According to her mother Susan, she did not pick up a racket until she was seven years old.

But the youngster, who lives in Westhoughton and practises at Bolton Arena every day, has never had to be nagged to work on her game.

“We have never pushed her,” said Susan. “She is completely selfmotivated and loves playing the game. Her dad sometimes jokes that he wishes she had never picked up a racket because running her to all the tournaments she plays in is quite hard work.

“But Sabrina is determined to get as far in the game as she can and, if she doesn’t make it as a player, she’ll probably coach.”

The family’s glamorous sounding name comes from her Parisianborn father Claudio, whose parents are Italian and moved to Bolton when he was six.