Last year at the Australian Open Amelie Mauresmo took a deep breath and confessed in front of the microphones and notebooks. She reckoned they'd find out sooner or later. Climb all over her private life. The tabloids did anyway. En route to her first ever Grand Slam final against Martina Hingis, Mauresmo told French journalists that Sylvie Bourdon, a co-owner of the Gorille restaurant in St Tropez, was her girlfriend and lover.

In a sport where denial is the first reaction when confronted with an issue that might limit a player's ability to squeeze as much as possible from the market place, Mauresmo's frankness was startling.

In Australia the tabloid press reacted with glee and then came baying for more when Lyndsey Davenport, the first big scalp of the French woman in the semi-final, spoke long and loud about the width of the then teenagers shoulders and her physical strength. Hingis went on to comfortably beat Mauresmo in the final before she too publicly wondered whether her opponent looked like half a man. The number one and two players in the world kept to type. Davenport apologised, Hingis did not and the image of an Amazon with a sexual twist took grip.

It wasn't as if the now 20-year-old Mauresmo was the first female tennis player to publicly admit to being a lesbian. Martina Navratilova did so in the 1980s to her cost. Sponsors names dropped off her shoulders almost over night, a problem that was exacerbated when she was subsequently sued for palimony by her former partner. Like Navratilova, Mauresmo has, so far, handled the revelation with extraordinary grace.

"They exaggerate. You wonder what they are talking about," she said at the time. "Complete bullshit. If I paid attention to everything that has been written since Australia, then I would be hiding in the house. I said everything then, so what can I say now.

"There was everything, good, very good and bad too. There was pressure and media fury. I heard and read things about me which were not easy to take. I became hardened. But I've never regretted my behaviour. It allowed me to be in harmony with what I was. I felt more free. And don't forget I declared my homosexuality, not after the final but after the second round."

Because of the controversy that accompanies her in tandem with a current streak of form that makes her an interesting bet for the title, it is not Hingis, Davenport, Venus or Serena Williams, Monica Seles or even Anna Kournikova who is the most requested player at Roland Garros but Mauresmo. Despite her disputed physique and sexuality, she is the player in demand.

The former world junior number one has learned more than most in a year. After the 1999 Australian Open final came the French Open slump. She departed to Hingis 6-3, 6-3 in round two in front of a home crowd.

Since then injuries buckled her seemingly unbreakable body. She suffered a bad ankle sprain which torpedoed her summer and in the autumn injured her right arm which drew the venom from her powerful rolling strokes.

This year there have been repeated glimpses of the fiery game that has engaged even the elite players. At the Italian Open two weeks ago she defeated Mary Pierce and Aranxta Sanchez Vicario on the way to her third final of the year.

It was, however, former word number one and three times French Open winner Monica Seles, who recently seized on Mauresmo's ability after beating her in two sets in the Italian Open final.

"She really has heavy shots and she's very strong physically. I was always very impressed with Amelie's game. She reminded me a touch, with the heavy spin of Gabriela (Sabatini) but with a lot more power," she said. "In terms of ground strokes she is the only player in my career that I have played that reminded me of her."

It is naive to expect that Mauresmo will not encounter continued prejudice in what is said to be a more enlightened era. At this year's bigger events, it has been Mauresmo's obvious muscularity that has come under attack, some observers accusing her of becoming a body building spectacle almost overnight.

It is true that she looks and plays a powerful game but according to Philippe Bouin, chief tennis writer of the sports newspaper L'Equipe, "Amelie had this physique when she was 11 and 12. There is no doubt that it helped her at a junior level, but it is quite wrong to suggest that it was developed over the last few years or months."

Like the Williams sisters, Pierce and Steffi Graf in her prime, Mauresmo uses her athletic prowess to dominate and has no qualms about intimidating opponents on court.

It is also to her advantage that this year's competition has no red hot favourite with several of the stars' usual dazzle dulled by injury.

Hingis was forced to withdraw from Rome having aggravated a foot injury sustained in Berlin while number two Davenport suffered a lower back injury in Rome and was forced to pull out of her next tournament in Madrid. Number eight Serena Williams, the younger of the two, has problems with her left knee and has not played in six weeks while Williams senior has played only one tournament this year because of tendonitis in her wrists and will be rusty entering Paris. Anna Kournikova, coming under increasing pressure to win her first senior tournament, withdrew from Rome when she sprained an ankle.

It is Mauresmo's first time to be seeded, an accomplishment which should allow her avoid an established elite player for the first week of the competition. Already Davenport has established Hingis as favourite and at the same time written herself out of the script.

But the main question facing Hingis, who has won in Wimbledon, New York and Melbourne but never in Paris, is will she be forgiven for her collapse in last year's final. Disputing calls and at one stage breaking the cardinal rule of not crossing the net into her opponents side of the court, she departed in tears, Graf gratefully accepting her final Grand Slam trophy.

The crowd is likely to be forgiving but Mauresmo, illustrating no real bitterness, is entitled to be tetchy.

"Generally I've always had a good relationship with the other players," she told L'Equipe earlier this year. "I don't throw my arms around Hingis' neck. A victory against her is a particular favourite, for sure. In Couvertin in Paris I didn't let her away with it and beat her. Beat her again in Sydney, then Davenport. Let's say that's a little satisfaction."