The games abnormal little girls play

First she made an ill-advised, spiteful comment about French player Amelie Mauresmo ("she's half a man") and then she dumped Jana Novotna as her doubles partner, because she reckoned anyone who was 30 was past it. A fortnight ago she threw a major tantrum when she lost a French Open final she should have won. Then she fell out with her Ma, and on Tuesday she performed hopelessly in her absence (the first time her mother had ever missed one of her matches), losing in the first round of Wimbledon to an unknown 16-yearold. Hallelujah! Martina Hingis is finally behaving like a perfectly normal, maladjusted teenager.

In fact it's probably only now that any of us who was ever 18 can relate to Hingis (as long as we forget about what's in her Swiss bank account), now that she's behaving as most teenagers her age behave. But the difference between her and us is that we didn't have to face the media and account for every single one of our actions and utterances when we were 18 and struggling to stay on the rails. Can't imagine how we'd justify some of the things we (c'mon, admit it) did and said when we were 18, but then one can only assume the people who slated Hingis for her behaviour over the past year were never 18 themselves, and must have led very sheltered lives. "Yes, she resides in an unnatural world," wrote one critic (in the English Telegraph) after the French Open final, "with $10,000,000 in the bank at 18 years of age, 97 weeks spent as number one, agents protecting her, willing boyfriends queuing up to squire her. But she still has a responsibility to the sport. Victories should be taken with a humble heart and defeat accepted with good grace. Hingis has learned to do neither." We can be guaranteed of two things: the author of that statement was neither (a) ever 18 himself, nor (b) one of the world's most famous teenage sporting personalities, whose parent(s) ordained that they sacrifice a normal teenager's life, so that they could live out their unfulfilled dreams, and whose every transgression was analysed by countless critics. Having been groomed to be a tennis champion since the day she first stood, Hingis hasn't had many opportunities to be your regular maladjusted teenager. Hingis, it would appear, has discovered that she does, after all, possess her very own personality, one that is markedly different to that of Swiss-mountain resident Heidi, who she was assumed to resemble by both the media and sponsors, like Italian company Sergio Tacchini, who offered her a $10 million clothing sponsorship when she was just 14years-old. Yes, 14-years-old, the same age as your niece who writes love letters to Boyzone's Ronan once a day.

That was the age Hingis was when she first played Steffi Graf on the Centre Court at Wimbledon, where she lost 6-3 6-1, an age when she should have been allowed to do what most 14-year-olds do - nothing much (apart from writing to Ronan). Obscene, that's the only word for it. To their credit, though, the tennis powers-that-be raised the minimum age for Grand Slam tournaments to 16 (still not high enough) soon after, a move that didn't, however, go down well in some parental circles. Richard Williams christened his first daughter Venus, but in truth he's the one who sounds as though he's from another planet. "Baby, we have a champion," he famously told his wife, when he brought Venus home from her first ever work-out on a tennis court.

She was four years, six months and one day old at the time and if her father had had his way he probably would have put her on the professional circuit there and then. But he waited until she was 14, a year before Serena, his next daughter, joined the professional ranks. At 10-years-old Anna Kournikova was sent by her parents from her native Russia to join Nick Bolletieri's famous tennis academy in Miami. Yes, at 10 years of age, when tennis should have been something she enjoyed with her pals in Moscow, rather than her full-time occupation in America.

Kournikova is, perhaps, the most familiar of today's young female tennis players. Not, though, because she's particularly brilliant (she's only ranked 17 in the world and has yet to win a tournament on the women's circuit), but because she's stunningly beautiful and just 18-years-old. "Skirt up to her arse, fluttering eyelashes - she's a right hoooer," the media argue, as they bin newlyarrived photos of Lindsay Davenport and opt for yet another Kournikova picture for the next day's paper. (Reminder: Kournikova is only ranked 17 in the world and has yet to win a tournament on the women's Tour; Davenport is the world number two, but "she's no oil painting").

So, whatever about the stage, Mrs Worthington, don't put your teenage daughter on the professional tennis circuit, if you have any sense at all. Give her the freedom to act like your average teenager without numerous media cranks giving her a hard time. For now, tell your daughters, Martina, Amelie, Venus, Serena and Anna (the five teenagers who are currently ranked in the world's top 20) to remind themselves of burn-out and nutcase-parent victims Tracy Austin, Andrea Jaeger, Kathy Rinaldi, and Jennifer Capriati and then take their money and run. If they choose to play on tell them to at least not be afraid to act like teenagers, whatever tut-tutting the media do.