Prima Donna

Teenage girls on creatine and stacking steel in the gym. Lesbians. Old stagers Steffi Graf and Jana Novotna making comebacks or just hanging in. The rippling physiques of Venus Williams, her sister Serena and Mary Pierce. Poisoned arrows shooting around the arrogant head of Russian beauty Anna Kournikova because she is, well, beautiful and so far without a Grand Slam. Jealousies, egos, petulance and prima donnas - and that's not even mentioning their dads.

World number one Martina Hingis in rehab recovering from the venomous crowd at Roland Garros. A fallen star, a teenager cracking in the face of defeat and running to the arms of her mother. Wimbledon will be, for one player at least, a place to bury demons.

"Why don't they like me? Why don't they appreciate me? Why don't they respect me the same way they like Steffi, appreciate Steffi and respect Steffi?" was Hingis's puzzled reaction to the harrowing climax of the French Open earlier this month.

Never has such a young player taken such a mauling and rarely has a player been so obviously shaken by a stadium emptying its spleen. If anything, the 18-year-old will have learned not to mess with a heroine, particularly one like the re-emergent Steffi Graf, recovering with dignity from a turbulent two years of injury and personal turmoil.

It is now Hingis who must face the nasty side of celebrity. The abiding image of the world number one serving an under-arm dolly to Graf in the French Open final may haunt Hingis for ever. But Wimbledon is sure to profit, the tennis carnival having been left on the boil for the last two weeks with the crumbling of Hingis never far from the surface.

The fall-out has left the tennis world in earnest debate. Over the next two weeks, analysing the Swiss girl's sorry demise and speculating whether the badly-buckled temperament is terminal will occupy many minds. Hingis will be followed with interest. Wimbledon, more so than the French Open, is where the pressure is relentless.

Formerly the golden girl, it took a number of rash judgements in that final match against Graf to turn Hingis into public enemy number one. A set up and leading 2-0, Hingis was driving home the fact that she was the best in the world.

But the opening point of the 13th game was to have pitiful consequences. When Hingis crossed the divide into the German's side of the court to protest against a line call, she was docked a point by referee Anne Lasserre for "unsporting behaviour." Even callow players understand the sin of trespassing into their opponent's territory. In Hingis's mind, a score that should have read 15-0 to her became 0-30 to Graf. The tide had turned.

Graf then broke Hingis's serve twice to square the match before the teenager's second stupid move. She took a toilet break. Almost five minutes later as Lasserre was preparing to start issuing time violations, Hingis emerged. She was wearing different clothes and her hair arrangement had changed. "Reasonable time up to five minutes," is what the rule states. Hingis was pushing it.

Then before she knew it she was trailing 3-0 to the former champion. Slamming her racquet to the ground in frustration, Hingis caused it to crack. Racquet violation. Default.

Serving to stay in the match prompted her move from a venial to cardinal sin as far as the crowd were concerned. Graf readied herself for the first volley as Hingis served up an under-arm on match point. Gobsmacked by its novelty, Graf smashed it too long. The crowd jeered. But Hingis repeated the tactic at deuce and served long before demanding Lasserre replay the point because of the noise the crowd were making.

A few ugly minutes later it was all over, the two players barely acknowledging each other, Hingis, her chin in the air rushing into the arms of her mother on the way to the locker-rooms. The nerveless little madam was human after all. Sobbing, it was her mum who led her back to court after she had initially refused to attend the presentation.

"I was three points away from winning it," she said. "Come on, I still went out there and made my speech, did everything I was supposed to do. The public was more or less against me all the time. I don't know why."

That is certainly true. In Melbourne at this year's Australian Open, Hingis was also "misunderstood". A few days before she was due to play French girl Amelie Mauresmo in the final, she told a German reporter that Mauresmo looked "half a man".

While Hingis passed it off as a joke, it was taken as cutting remark against her heavily-muscled opponent, who had also recently come out as a lesbian.

Fate decreed that she would draw Mauresmo in the second round at Roland Garros.

The French don't like their players being derided for their sexuality. But the English tabloids have never taken fondly to French lesbians and Hingis, ironically, might find support at the All England club.

It may be popularity by default, however. Amongst the rash of new talent there are no players who are particularly easy to warm to. As for Graf, having fought for years to topple Martina Navratilova, she has herself experienced the cold winds that can blow through the show courts. Invulnerability is never that endearing especially combined with an inability to suppress her natural arrogance and gauche teenage remarks. Hingis is, nonetheless, blessed with an obvious cleverness that others have not yet demonstrated.

While she obviously has not yet developed the philosophy to cope with situations such as the Graf episode, she is still the most complete player in the world.

Five Grand Slam titles including three in a row at Melbourne are more than adequate proof of that. With Seles lacking the edge that allowed her to dominate the sport before she was stabbed by an obsessed fan, Novotna ageing and most of the others, with the possible exception of Lyndsay Davenport, less comfortable on grass than Hingis, it might fall to the German number two seed, Steffi Graf, to again challenge Hingis's dominance. Even for the most hyped-up tournament on the planet, a re-run of a Graf-Hingis final within four weeks of the French Open would bring it to a poignant conclusion.