They thronged around the narrow ramp that leads players into the rat run under Court Suzanne Lenglen at Roland Garros in Paris. They were waiting for anyone to emerge but were hoping for Anna Kournikova.

The Russian player strode out flanked by five bodyguards. No smile from the most photographed face in tennis. Just the pout, the `I'm so bored' expression. They screamed for autographs. She didn't respond. They surged towards her. She flicked her braided hair. The big five stepped across.

She hardly broke stride. Kournikova was, after all, on the way to try something new - win her first tournament in 73 attempts.

The players say she draws attention to herself. They say she plays a different game to the rest because her tennis isn't robust enough in the slash-and-burn of the tour. They say now it's unfair. They say it's not the way they understood the system to work, not the way tennis is supposed to be.

They say Anna Kournikova is turning women's tennis into a paste jewellery and split dress circus, playing on a Lolita appeal that is simultaneously denied by managers and sold by image-makers to a market all too willing to gorge itself. Her face and body, her tennis, her private life, they are all for sale.

Initially it was her under-age relationship with Detroit Redwings ice hockey player Sergei Federov. Did Federov have sex with her as a minor or didn't he? The question consumed tennis columnists around the world as the potential for scandal was ripe. A possible prison sentence hanging over the head of one of hockey's biggest names and a teenage Kournikova moving closer to the sordid than she or her sponsors thought was prudent was like throwing gasoline on the fire.

From there tennis professional Jan-Michael Gambill came into the picture followed by clay court specialist Nicolas Lapentti, then briefly Australian Mark Philippousis before Russian ice hockey player Pavel Bure stepped in to corner the market, allegedly with an engagement ring. At the 1999 Chase Championships in New York Kournikova told reporters: "No one has been in my bed or affections. I am still a virgin."

A sad declaration for any 18-year-old to feel forced into saying, it was also unheard of in tennis. But Kournikova has been burning a vapour trail from the age of 14 when she first turned professional. Her first precocious act was on a tennis court when she became the youngest player to compete in and win a Federation Cup match. Since then she has strutted her way into the tennis front row to a chorus of disapproval from more talented players condemned to live life on prize-money alone. But to deride her for a lack of tournament success overlooks the fact that Kournikova reached the last four in her first Wimbledon in 1997, reaching the semi-final by destroying that year's French Open winner Iva Majoli. It also ignores the fact that, paired with Martina Hingis, she finished 1999 as the world's top ranked doubles player.

What currently irritates rivals is her apparent decline on court to the backdrop of a glamour profile that continues to grow without restraint. Last week she departed the Eastbourne tournament to Chanda Rubin, ranked three places below her at 20. It was the Russian's photograph that appeared in nearly all of the papers bearing the Adidas logo. The sports company pay her for every one that appears.

A secret "Commitment List" drawn up by the WTA and which this year became public had Kournikova on $100,000 a year to turn up to 13 tournaments, the four Grand Slams and any Federation Cup matches.

She was, at that stage, ranked 12th in the world. Mary Pierce, ranked fifth, was paid $50,000 less for the same commitment. Kournikova was the sixth name on the list, twice as high up as her ranking suggested. It was, the critics argued, box office arithmetic where public reaction is more valued than the quality of acting. Kournikova is a tennis cash cow.

This year at Roland Garros the most discriminated of champions because of her sexuality, Martina Navratilova, tired of the whingeing, offered an opinion. "She's worth what the market will pay," she said.

Under Bart McGuire, chief executive since 1998, the WTA have become more committed to selling their product in a crowded market. What the market will bear appears to be the benchmark even if it means tennis flogging sex rather than sport.

"We have nothing to apologise for in having women who are attractive on the tour. I think the promotion of that aspect in moderation is entirely appropriate," he said, leaving a number of people considering exactly what he meant by moderation.

Others believe that officials have not seriously considered any sense of mission as regards where the women's game, which is currently more healthy than ever, is going. And to be worth what the market will pay offers no real comfort for those who suspect that Kournikova's lack of success on court, could in the end, be personally crushing. Even at 18 it may have occurred to her that there is more permanence in athletic success than in beauty.

Despite the many pieces of her dress that were sold in a cheap stunt at Roland Garros in 1998, she sees herself primarily as an athlete.

`I can't change how people see me," she said in Paris three weeks ago. "I don't try because there is no point. Why waste time on something you know you cannot change."

Maybe so. All she can change now, perhaps, is her losing streak.