Kournikova's struggle to defeat the doubters

A breakfast of champions is one thing, lunch with Anna Kournikova quite another. And there the diva was, at a house in Wimbledon, her home for the tournament, relaxing on a sofa in a white training suit, sniffling with a cold but otherwise a picture of health and beauty.

The invitation came from Kournikova's agent, Phil de Picciotto. The purpose seemed to be part charm offensive, part informal discussion with a group of British tennis reporters concerning how the wealthy, 21-year-old Russian was working hard to put her game together before it disappeared altogether under a welter of derision.

Also, Kournikova acknowledged, she had time to spare, having been eliminated in the first round of the singles by a compatriot, Tatiana Panova, which left her to pursue the doubles in partnership with the American Chanda Rubin. They advanced to the fourth round yesterday.

No questions were off limits, De Picciotto said, which prompted Kournikova to giggle and say that subjects of a personal nature might not be answered. "Those are for Anna's book," Picciotto joked. "Anna's got a book?" she said. "I'm not even born yet." As far being a tennis champion is concerned, that may be true, but Kournikova has featured in so many magazine pictorials since she was a tot at Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy in Florida that she seems to have been around for ages.

To be fair, injuries have stunted her progress in the sport during the past few years. "I'm going through a lot of changes in my life, too," she said. Such as? "Well, just growing up and starting to think about things, analysing stuff, and working with Harold, and just talking about things and listening to other people's opinion." Harold, incidentally, is Kournikova's coach, Harold Solomon, who has guided her since May. Solomon talks about long-term adjustments to her game rather than a quick fix.

"Anna's basic game was a classical game when it was originally put together. It was a closed-stance type of game when she was brought up, and then she started to play open-stanced on both sides, which depended on her footwork and her ability to move and her ability to go forward to the ball a little bit, so we've been working a lot in that area, and that's a really tough adjustment to make when you're starting to work with your feet."

"And when you don't move for a year," Kournikova interjected, emphasising that a stress fracture to her left foot had caused her to miss the majority of last season.

Solomon picked up his theme again. "It's easy to get lazy if you start hitting open-stanced on both sides," he said. "You don't have to move your feet in order to get your body in the right position for the ball. For the last four or five weeks, we've spent a lot of time just getting the feet in the right position and rekindling the thinking process of moving, moving, moving all the time.

"Anna's always going to be an aggressive tennis player. I think that's going to be her style of game. It's her nature. She's like an artist on the court more than somebody else. She creates shots and creates openings, and for her to be aggressive is really dependent on her feet moving to the ball and being in the right position." Your correspondent wondered if all this thinking through matches was a wise thing. After all, if you thought what you were doing while you were eating, you would probably poke your eye out with your fork (this was before we helped ourselves to the salad and pasta).

"You're right," Kournikova said. "But the things we're coming to now is the way I used to play three or four years ago. When I started to play lots and lots of tournaments, without having the off-season that other sports have, which allows you to go to a training camp for preparation, the more matches you play, your technique and everything gets a little bit out of place.

"The things that we're working on now, they're basics, and they're basically a lot of the things I used to do when I was younger, before I started to play so much. So it's not like I'm learning totally new things. I'm just going back to basics, basically." She gave a little laugh at the unintentional pun.

What first prompted her to pick up a racket at the age of five? "I didn't pick up the racket," she said, laughing, "my parents gave me the racket. I had so much energy, just like now. I'm really over-hyper, huh? So my parents couldn't handle me, and they figured that I should do something. When they started me with tennis, they just wanted me to exercise, to be healthy. They never thought I was going to be professional. I went twice a week to play with a little group, and then when I was seven I went for professional training every day at a club.

"The club was in a forest, and I used to practise and play, and eat ice cream, and play, and go to the park and play. It was great. You didn't think about anything except actually playing. It's not like when I was 10 years old I said: 'I'm going to be the most famous tennis player'. It's not like that at all. I didn't even know you get paid to play. Now, of course, there's thoughts of winning, how to get better, and all that."

Kournikova's mother, Alla, who used to be a familiar figure on her daughter's practice courts, appears to have taken a step into the background, leaving Solomon to do his work. "It's more about myself getting involved," Kournikova said, "more about me being responsible in general. My parents were never my coaches. It's not like Martina's mom [Melanie Molitor], she is a professional coach. Obviously my parents have been with me and around tennis for 15 years. Obviously they know my game, but it's not like they are knowledgeable enough to coach me."

Few players in history have been so admired for their looks and so lampooned for their lack of success (more than 100 mainstream WTA tournaments without a title). Some of the criticism hurts, not least John McEnroe's recent comment that if Kournikova did not realise that she was not in the best shape she was kidding herself. "That's something I wasn't thrilled about," she said, "because the former players, they've been there, they've done that, and obviously now I can see that they've never been in my situation. They don't understand. That's something I have to deal that."

"Ah, yes," Solomon added, "the world according to John McEnroe." "And," Kournikova continued, "somebody said Pete Sampras should retire now. Why? Maybe he loves to play the game."

As far as her post-match press interviews are concerned, Kournikova said she became irritated by inquisitors who preface their questions: "I read somewhere that..." "Read somewhere?" she repeated. "That's hearsay."

Surprised at some of the reaction to the BBC television interview, during which she objected to the line of questioning and stood up, as though ready to walk out, Kournikova said: "This happens quite often during recorded interviews at other tournaments round the world. It's not as if it was live. It's not as if I did anything bad." A colleague said he doubted whether the incident would have been replayed so many times if the player had been ranked 65 in the world. "I am!" Kournikova said, endearingly, exaggerating the paucity of her status by 11 places.