All of that was surprising to me

All of that was surprising to me."Martina is an absolutely wonderful competitor but she does need to work on bringing out her positive and attractive side. She made an issue of a point which gave Steffi several minutes to recompose herself and turn the crowd, already sympathetic to Graf, even more solidly against her. Of her fine for unsportsmanlike behaviour in crossing to her opponent Steffi Graf's side of the net to query a call, McGuire added: "I view it less as lack of sportsmanship than lack of competitive judgement. Having viewed a video of the matter, the WTA chief executive, Bart McGuire, said: "The incident was extremely minor and is not something we are going to pursue."McGuire has written to Hingis but declined to divulge the letter's contents. It was in her mother's arms that Hingis sought solace in Paris moments after an incident when the player was reported to have pushed a WTA communications girl who told her she should go back on court for the presentations.

There may be a lot of trauma before that."For the moment, Melanie's presence seems enough. Melanie has done a pretty good job walking the tightrope but as Martina gets more independent she will want to seek her own people who she feels comfortable with. All the dimensions of her game have to be examined now, otherwise she is going to lose the No 1 spot."Hingis's mother, Melanie Molitor, has always been her coach and as Dr Loehr pointed out: "It is hard to separate being a parent and a coach, it gets very messy. There is such a host of outstanding challengers emerging that Martina has to feel the heat, and that intensifies her sense of unease until she feels she has to do something.

But if people saw from the inside the challenge and pressure of being No1 they would be more understanding. We came to expect if from John, we don't expect it from Martina because she has always presented an image of grace and demeanour. We expect Tiger Woods and all of the young superstars to be gracious and mature and when they aren't we are very tough on them."We see John McEnroe's imperfections well into his later adulthood and were more tolerant of something like that, which is kind of mysterious. When you have won so much and haven't experienced a tremendous amount of adversity and failure along the way you just assume success will be there again. "We have younger and younger athletes attaining remarkable professional levels of skills and if they are champions we expect them to be impeccable in their demeanour and graciousness."What Martina did simply reflects the fact that she is a very young girl in whom maturity and development are not complete.

The Paris spectacular was Hingis's third blunder of the year, so what on earth is going on? Since sport now benefits from people qualified to explain, let's hear from them.Jim Loehr, of the Florida organisation LGE Performance Systems Inc, is America's foremost sports psychologist "This is something I see in a lot of sports," he said. After a week of rest and reflection Hingis will ease back into action by playing only in the doubles event with that other high-profile teenager Anna Kournikova at Eastbourne this week, but if she thinks the spotlight will thus be dodged she is mistaken. A world No 1 is never out of the glare, especially when given to comments like calling the muscular Amelie Mauresmo "half a man" or acts like severing her doubles partnership with Wimbledon champion Jana Novotna because she felt the Czech was "too old" at 30. The tantrums and tears brought the vilification of that renowned guillotine bunch, a Parisian crowd, and the reprimands of the world's media. The girl Women's Tennis Association officials like to refer to as the "can't-miss Swiss" ended up missing by a mile after reaching out over-confidently for the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen. MARTINA HINGIS won't be 19 for another three and a half months but she came of age dramatically eight days ago in the furnace of the French Open final. At first this, too, seemed to be getting away from him but he held on, reached match point with a stunning forehand down the line and then seized the only opening he was to need by steering away a backhand volley for the shot which put him into this afternoon's final..

Though Hewitt saved one break point he could do nothing about the next as Sampras made a great "get" of a drop shot and flicked it away across court for a crucial winner to level the set at 3-3.Sampras survived a break point at 5-5 to stretch this nerve-jangling contest into a tiebreak. An indication that the conditions remained difficult was the sight of Hewitt going full length as he scampered sideways along the baseline.As he warmed up Sampras began to find his rhythm of the second set and seized his chance when the umpire overruled to call a Hewitt shot out when the line judge thought otherwise. Hewitt moved his lead to 2-0 with some difficulty, responding to a bellow of "Come on you Aussie boy" which disturbed the otherwise peaceful scene. Sampras opened with a brace of double faults and two backhand errors which cost him his serve. When Hewitt projected a backhand beyond the baseline, the match was level at one set all after 71 minutes and as Sampras quietly pointed out that conditions were beginning to get dangerous underfoot, the umpire decided to call a halt as the rain set in.The delay had done neither man any good. This he managed just in time as the clouds rolled in again, conjuring two set points with a cracking forehand down the line.