Nothing clicking for No66

After two months out Anna Kournikova returned with a new outfit and fresh hope and was promptly beaten in straight sets by a 16-year-old.

Last week Kournikova was voted the world's most recognisable female athlete by ESPN magazine but yesterday she lost 6-1, 6-4 to Dinara Safina in the first round of the Nasdaq-100 Open after giving a performance that suggested her current ranking of No66 is not far wrong.

Only three of Kournikova's many millions of dollars have actually been won and most recognise her not for the pleasant flow of her ground strokes or the excellence of her court coverage but the photogenic pout and the bared midriff.

Kournikova also bared her soul after an embarrassing evening. A double fault in the opening game happened with the ball striking the deck before the net and after 25 minutes half the spectators had slipped away.

"As I get older it is, like, you know, 'Why am I here? Do I really want to do this?'" the 21-year-old photo-opportunity veteran said. "You just kind of start to think more in general - I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it gets in the way sometimes."

Existential crisis or not, Kournikova insisted that she was doing what she wanted. She may have been affected by an opponent she has known since childhood, the hard-hitting sister of the ball-puncturing Marat Safin.

Kournikova's flimsy service may be inhibited by the back injury that has sidelined her. But she hinted at a bigger problem, saying: "It's like my head is, you know, weird."