Anna’s ambition is to achieve a top 10 ranking

ANNA KOURNIKOVA nurses an extraordinary ambition. Not to join the cast of Baywatch, be the world’s most downloaded woman or bring about world peace, but to be ranked among the world’s top 10 women players. Again.

That's right she wants to regain her spot.

She was actually there, at number eight, at the end of 2000.

She was then 19 and was regarded as a tennis player as much as the body that launched a thousand sponsorships and magazine covers.

Kournikova yesterday won her first grand slam singles match for two years when she defeated Slovakian Henrietta Nagyova 6-1, 6-2.

Kournikova's dismal slam record over the past two years is slightly misleading in that she missed the French and US Opens and Wimbledon with stress fractures in 2001.

But she did not get past the first round of the four majors last year.

And, increasingly, doubles was her and the paparazzi's salvation.