Ah, home. While it may be true that there is no place like it (be it ever so humble), it is not always the easiest place for tennis stars to perform. Take, for example, the indoor tournaments in Tokyo and Paris that have taken place over the past two weeks. While these events might be just another stop on the tour for many players, they are considerably more important than that for the women who are natives of the host country and were playing in front of the home fans.

This was especially true of Ai Sugiyama during the Tokyo tournament, and Amélie Mauresmo at the Open Gaz de France in the City of Light. Both women are ranked outside the top 10, but are the most popular players in their own countries. Alas, the pressure of performing well in front of their adoring faithful seemed to get the better of them, and they each lost limply in front of their disappointed admirers.

Sugiyama was seeded eighth in Tokyo and appeared to have a great draw. Ai had just last month beaten the other seed in her quarter, Mary Pierce, in Australia. Furthermore, the unseeded players in her quarter were a rather unimposing group consisting of a wild card, a lucky loser, two qualifiers and 65th-ranked Katarina Srebotnik. Unfortunately for the Japanese star and her fans, Sugiyama fell miserably at the first hurdle, compiling error after error against Srebotnik in a 6-3 6-3 defeat.

Home was where there nerves are for young Frenchwoman Amélie Mauresmo as well. Since her surprising run to the Australian Open final in 1999, Mauresmo has become one of the most popular sporting figures in France, her popularity eclipsing that of her higher-ranked countrywomen Pierce, Tauziat, Halard-Decugis and Testud, and she was the main attraction at the Paris tourney. Alas, in the second round she got tight in the second set against the modest Sarah Pitkowski after a 6-0 first-set start, and went o n to lose the match to the 39th-ranked "Pitko", 0-6 7-6(2) 6-2. "This defeat was 80% mental," admitted the downcast Mauresmo after the match. I wasn't completely loose on the court, and after the 6-0 first set I got nervous."

Ah well, it's a long season and the disappointed hometown heroines will have a chance to make amends when the tour again visits their respective homelands. The traveling WTA circus returns to the Land of the Rising Sun in October, and of course there is a certain French Open coming up in just three months.

As a parenthesis, the upset girls Srebotnik and Pitkowski went on to make a lot of noise in those tournaments. In Tokyo, Srebotnik, the former junior star who won the first WTA event she played (1999 Estoril), made an impressive run to the semifinals. As for Pitkowski, her noise was made with her mouth after a decisive quarterfinal loss to Serena Williams. The feisty Pitko let loose a venomous attack on Serena and her sister Venus which included these morsels: "With the values that I have, I can't respe ct these players.... They don't care about anyone else. For them, you're sh*t." As the Parisians would say, oh là là....

One of the most entertaining weeks of the season is always the first week of Davis Cup play, with action in exotic locales all over the globe and dwarfs trying to oust giants. Our eye was on France-Brazil, as it featured the defending runners-up in a difficult spot, playing the home Brazilian side on slow clay in Gustavo Kuerten's home town of Florianópolis.

The expected drama on the court was somwhat missing, as the Brazilian number two Fernando Meligeni surprised the top French player Cédric Pioline in the opening match, 7-5 5-7 4-6 6-1 6-4, and the Brazilians cruised to clinch the win in the minimum three matches. But as always when the Davis Cup comes to Brazil, there was plenty to talk about off the court.

- Guy Forget second-guessed: The French captain made some odd decisions that had the French media scratching their heads. The strangest was the exclusion of France's top doubles team, Delaître/Santoro, who beat the Brazilian side in Davis Cup last year. Forget went with a makeshift team composed of singles specialists Escudé and Pioline, and they were soundly beaten by the more cohesive Kuerten/Oncins Brazilian duo. Questions were also raised about the use of Jérôme Golmard in singles, as the Fren ch lefty has a poor clay record and has just returned from a long injury layoff.

- Off with your shirts!: Many fans showed up for the matches wearing the yellow jerseys popularized by the Brazilian national soccer team. This was in part a reply to the French, who practiced for the 1999 France-Brazil tie wearing the French soccer jerseys in an attempt to psyche out the Brazilians (recall that Brazil lost to France in the 1998 World Cup final). However, the tournament referee felt that the numerous yellow shirts were confusing the players, since the balls are the same colour, a nd before the doubles match the fans were ordered to take off the offending garments. One assumes that this order was directed at the males only....

- Cédric gets pulled over: After making an illegal turn on his way back to the hotel after a practice session, Pioline was reportedly stopped by the police. This occasioned a spate of rumours: one report claimed that the cops recognized the French player and let him go, while another story indicated that Pioline tried to flee the officers and was detained for two hours at the police station! Pioline refused to comment on the incident, so we may never know what really happened....

- Party time! What would a Brazilian win be without an impressive victory party? After the clinching victory with their doubles triumph, the Brazilian players joined the fans on Saturday night in an impromptu outdoor celebration. Members of the Brazilian team reportedly picked up some musical instruments and, fronted by "Guga" Kuerten on vocals, treated the crowd to renditions of rock standards like "Satisfaction" and "Twist and Shout". The day after the partying, Guga played a meaningless "dead rubber" and not surprisingly lost....