Myself, I just don't get it with Anna on or off the court; I could flip through a selection of TV game-show hostesses and find someone more worthy of my attention. Deford shares Anna's view of herself that people only think she's beautiful because she's such a renowned tennis player: "If Catherine Zeta-Jones were still a shop girl in Wales, how many people would look at her in quite the same way as they do now that she is a movie star?" Uh, Frank, if people who saw her as a shop girl in Wales saw her that way, she wouldn't have gotten out of the shop and become a movie star. What's your point?

But I digress. I just wanted to say that Allen St. John crystallized my point of view last week in the Village Voice. Writing about the Chase championship, he said: "Anyone who suggested that the Garden would host her coming out party didn't seem to understand that Anna is to tennis what Britney Spears is to music." Damn, wish I'd said that.

By the way, this is the woman who saw Elizabeth Hurley at Wimbledon and thought she was "ugly." Maybe Anna's problem is poor eyesight?

Last week I wrote about the increasing pressure Venus and Serena Williams and their father, Richard, are putting on the World Tennis Association for appearance fees. Can't you just imagine how loud Mr. Williams would scream racism if the WTA actually started paying such fees and Anna, perhaps the world's 23rd best female tennis player, got more money than his daughters?

What is Anna going to be doing two years from now? My bets: the autograph circuit and a syndicated talk show, "Anna's Maniacs."