PARIS (AP) - On a day when the men's top-ranked player showed why he shouldn't be No. 1, the women's top-ranked player proved decisively why she should.

Martina Hingis may not always be the most tactful person. The jokes she made about the openly gay player Amelie Mauresmo's sexual orientation - calling her ``half a man'' in January - show that.

But Hingis also showed Wednesday that she knew how to put the controversy behind her: how to face Mauresmo and a hostile French public and simply get on with the business of smart, savvy tennis.

In fact, if anybody seemed affected by crowd pressure during the second-round match on center court, it was Mauresmo, not Hingis. Knowing how strongly the crowd was rooting for her seemed to make her tighten up, and against Hingis that is tantamount to surrender.

That this wasn't just another match was clear from the crowd's reaction the moment the players started warming up.

As Hingis described it later, ``It was like, 'Allez, boo, allez, boo.'''

But Hingis went about her business, moving well, as she always does, keeping Mauresmo on the run, and most of all changing tactics when an approach wasn't working.

After a sluggish start, Hingis picked up her game.

``I started just to make her play,'' she said. ``I can play different types of games. It's not for me just hitting from the baseline or just running, I can mix it up if something doesn't work. That's probably the key that lots of girls don't have.''

Indeed, that is the key to most of Hingis' victories, and it certainly was in her 6-3, 6-3 defeat of Mauresmo.

Hingis, who lost to the Frenchwoman when they last met three months ago at the Paris Indoors before a partisan crowd, suggested Mauresmo was too nervous to win this time, on center court at her country's most prestigious tournament.

Mauresmo has been portrayed as France's biggest hope ever since she reached the final in Australia.

``Everybody was putting pressure on her,'' Hingis said. ``Everybody had big hopes she might win this tournament. Sometimes it doesn't help, the crowd and everything.''

And in perhaps another ill-advised reference to Mauresmo's muscular build, Hingis suggested she might be too strong for her own good.

``I don't think she has that much feel on court when she's in too-good shape,'' Hingis said. ``Sometimes you overrun the balls and don't think that much if you are physically very strong.''

Mauresmo came into the match saying Hingis' comments in Australia were not forgotten and would continue to give her an extra incentive. But she said later she didn't feel it interfered with her play.

``I was a bit tense, obviously, but she was tense as well,'' Mauresmo said. But she admitted she ``probably overdid it. I wanted to finish the points too quickly.''

In any case, Hingis was deeply relieved to close out the match on a forehand by her opponent that sailed wide.

``It's like a heavy rucksack of stones has fallen off my back, and I feel much lighter,'' she said.

At her postmatch news conference, she tried not to let the incessant questions about the flap with Mauresmo force her into more damaging comments.

``I mean, we're not best friends on the tour. Obviously everybody knows that,'' she said. ``She has her own people around her. I have mine.''

She made sure to say that Mauresmo ``is a girl, and a player like everybody else.''

Hingis has yet to win a title at the French - like Pete Sampras, she is seeking to add that final leg of a career Grand Slam. And she clearly wants it badly, as her mother showed when she screamed in satisfaction after Hingis won.

Her quarterfinal opponent would be Venus Williams, which led her to say: ``If I win this tournament on this red stuff here in Paris, I really deserve it.''

Just as she deserves, for now, the distinction of being the top-ranked woman in the world.

Hingis' male counterpart, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, showed earlier Wednesday that he definitely doesn't deserve that distinction. The fans even jeered as the Russian walked off after a 6-4, 6-1, 6-4 second-round loss to Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia.

Kafelnikov understood.

``For the fans to see the No. 1 player in the world losing in the early stages of the tournament, it's really frustrating,'' he said.