Pierce plays vamp, funny onion and some tennis

RICHARD EDMONDSON

You get more than a game of tennis from Mary Pierce. You get a performance.

In tennis's land of the bland, Pierce is the darling of those who crave easy headlines. She does her best for them before, during and after matches.

An example of the final category came after Pierce was booed off court at this year's French Open and then delivered this telling analysis of her on-court fortunes: "Shit happens," she said.

That was the tournament in which Pierce supplanted Liz Hurley as the wearer of "that dress", a little black number she threw on and almost missed. Expectation was high then when the 21-year-old had an appointment yesterday on Court Four with Britain's Claire Taylor. Like all great divas, Pierce kept her crowd waiting, but this seemed a small price to pay when tennis's version of the neglige was about to be produced. The unveiling, though, was desperately disappointing, Pierce revealing a simple white top with blue trimmings which, with the addition of a lapel watch and thermometer in the pocket, would have gained her employment at the local infirmary.

The No 13 seed had brought a home-brew along in a plastic bottle, a liquid which appeared to resemble antifreeze. This was popped into the ice cooler where, strangely, it remained until the match was over. By that time there had been plenty of pure Pierce.

From the outset she was an aloof and detached figure, the sort of person some refer to as a funny onion. She slunk around the court in the manner of those women who get paid a lot for not eating. There were also touches of the vamp as she carried herself like the character in the advert who used to emerge from a wardrobe with Hai Karate in her hand.

The circuit's drama queen deals in the sort of overt expressionism that you see elsewhere only in silent movies, the black and white films in which facial contortions are the only way of getting the emotional message across. Pierce insists this image is neither put-on nor welcome. Whenever she sees herself on television the overriding urge is to put a racket through the screen.

The Frenchwoman's power game is based on the precision of the tightrope, with the same disastrous consequences when things goes wrong. She has been plopped into the net on several occasions this year as her Australian Open success last season becomes an ever more distant memory, and there was inconsistency again yesterday. Pierce enjoys backgammon and board games, which presumably fully drains her well of strategy as, on court, her policy wavers little from just giving the ball an old fashioned thump.

For a while yesterday this was not enough. At 2-3 down Pierce identified a problem of excess baggage and removed a chunk of blue bubblegum from her mouth. At 3-4 down she stuck a finger down her throat, either a commentary on her own game or the partisanship of the crowd.

But that was as far as Taylor got. Given the film listed as her favourite in the players' manual, it was apt that the match turned into four games and a funeral, the 21-year-old from Banbury collecting just two of the last 11 games in a 6-4, 6-2 defeat.

La Pierce would have expected to win more easily than this, especially as the scoreline did not flatter Taylor, ranked 11th in Britain and 340th in the world. Pierce, though, survived and faces Natalia Medvedeva on her next day at the studio.