Row over `half-man' remark

The world's top two women's players yesterday denied they were talking about anything but tennis when they said Australian Open finalist Amelie Mauresmo was like a man.

The 19-year-old Mauresmo has powerful shoulders and a game to match. She downed world number one Lindsay Davenport in the semi-finals on Thursday with a fearsome display of power tennis.

She is also openly gay and speaks freely about her relationship with a woman who travels with her on the tour.

But the player was said by her coach to be angered by comments from Davenport and a remark attributed to defending champion and finalist Martina Hingis.

Hingis was quoted as saying in a German-language news conference on Thursday: "She travels with her girlfriend, she is half a man" - or in German: "Sie ist ein halber Mann."

"She has the feeling that she played really well and she did well, so she's surprised that the number one and the number two in the world could talk about her like that," Mauresmo's coach, Christophe Fournerie, said. Hingis and Davenport both said their words had been twisted by the press.

Hingis denied she had ever used the `half-man' remark. "A halfman? Who would say that?" Hingis said. "She's a girl, she's playing tennis . . . very good and I have to beat her on court, not somewhere else."

Asked to explain what she had said in the news conference with Swiss and German reporters, Hingis said she had mentioned Mauresmo's girlfriend and had spoken about her style of play.

"She has got a lot of topspin and it's not . . . that she is a man but she plays really like a man, the way she plays. That's what we were saying with Lindsay, I think both of us."

Davenport, who said after being beaten by Mauresmo, "I thought I was playing a guy", angrily accused reporters of taking her words out of context.

"Unfortunately you guys love to write, you know, the worst line possible and unfortunately you have probably hurt a very nice girl."