If the network can air a miniseries on the Raiderettes, then I can get away with a column on Anna Kournikova.

I'll even talk about her tennis.

The truth is, she is playing her best matches of the year right now, in the aftermath of that Wimbledon blow-up with the BBC. After her first-round exit in London, they asked her if she'd be better off playing minor tournaments -- rather than the WTA Tour -- and her petulant reply made headlines. That looked to be the end of her, but she has shown up in California, reinvented.

Instead of posing, she's trying especially hard to win now. The hair is tied back harshly, and the visor is low over her eyes, and the outfits are conservative, and you can barely see the "cover girl" in her. She is winning the way Chris Evert won in the '70s -- by getting every ball back. She's taken the pace off her serve -- to make sure the first one's almost always in -- and she has managed the court better, with drop-shots and an occasional approach shot.

At Stanford two weeks ago, she played a relatively close match with Venus Williams (losing 4 and 3), and she followed that up by reaching the semifinals last week in Carlsbad. People on the tour had never seen her sweat so much. She lost her opening sets to both Conchita Martinez and Anna Smashnova, and didn't quit, winning both matches in three. In the semis, she blew two match points in her loss to Jelena Dokic, but, for the first time, she just looked like she had a plan.

So, maybe it will all end soon -- the 0-for-113. In seven years on the WTA Tour, Kournikova has never won a tournament, and no one would care if it weren't for her baby blues (and other obvious attributes). She is the most photographed, lusted-upon woman on the circuit, and probably in all of female pro sports, and, whether she likes it or not, she needs to win once, so she's no longer a freak show.

But now she has the right coach. His name is Harold Solomon, and, in the 1970s, I saw him play practically a four-hour match against Guillermo Vilas. Every rally was virtually 100 balls back and forth, and Solomon would be cramping, but he wouldn't miss and he wouldn't quit. He won ugly.

And that's his challenge now.

To make Anna Kournikova ugly.

They teamed up last April in Miami Beach, and mainly they talked about her head. Not her head of hair, but her head. She needed to care more, to run down one more ball than her opponent, and to put the photo shoots away for a while. She'd always been a marvelous doubles player, and that meant she had the right instincts on the court, because doubles is so much more of an all-court game. She could get up to net in doubles -- why not do it in singles? He made her turn and hit more -- instead of being lazy with an open stance -- and had her spin her serve in safely. The women on this tour do not chip and charge like on the men's tour. She could get away with a 68 mph serve.

	Anna has a new love -- winning.

She's had some minor muscle pulls here and there, because what Solomon is asking isn't easy. But I overheard her on her cell phone after one of her matches last week (a hockey player on the other end?), and she seemed so happy, so content, like she remembered how much fun it is to win.

"I think if I had lost faith, I wouldn't be able to go on the court and practice," she says.

So her ranking is up to No. 38 in the world now, and I'm not saying she's going to win the U.S. Open next month, but I'm saying she'll scare somebody there.

By being ugly.

Who'd have ever thought?

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tom.friend@espnmag.com.