"I don't really think I can say how it feels for me," Davenport told the crowd minutes later during the awards ceremony. "I never thought I'd win it here."

Who did? Women's tennis had inspired plenty of overheated expectations for 1998, but few saw the Grand Slam season ending this way. This was the year when Hingis was supposed to consolidate her reign as the next Chris Evert, when Venus and Serena Williams would begin their loudly proclaimed conquest of the world, when Anna Kournikova would break out as a supermodel in sneakers. This year's Open was supposed to be the playground for the look-at-me generation, not a 22-year-old woman whose wish for the longest time was to go unnoticed. "I wasn't a perfect thing at 17," Davenport said last Saturday evening. "I didn't have confidence. I was hunched over and real embarrassed, and I didn't want to be in the limelight. But it changed over time. The last couple of years I've gained a lot of confidence. That's the most exciting thing: how much I've had to change to win."

Believe it. Before this summer Lindsay Davenport was nobody's idea of a tennis champion, much less a carefree force who could bull through the draw without dropping a set, prove herself cooler under pressure than the usually icy Hingis and threaten to make the rest of 1998 a battle for No. 1 with all the intrigue of the men's dogfight (Davenport trails Hingis by 146 points; Rafter is within 440 of Sampras). When Davenport was a child, no one dubbed her America's next great player, but here she is now: the first U.S.-born woman to win the Open since Evert in '82. "No one ever said anything about me," Davenport said after dismantling Venus Williams 6-4, 6-4 in the semis. "I was never a prodigy."

Standing 6' 2 1/2" and en route to eventually tipping the scales at 200 pounds, Davenport broke onto the scene late and large in 1993, a 16-year-old baseliner with refreshingly balanced priorities but neither the mobility nor the will to challenge for major titles. The product of 6' 8" Wink and 5' 10" Ann Davenport, Lindsay was at the time still adjusting to a nearly six-inch growth spurt over the previous two years. She'd transferred from Chadwick High in Palos Verdes, Calif., to Murrieta Valley High that year, but it wasn't until she beat Gabriela Sabatini a few months later in the Virginia Slims of Florida that anyone at school knew she played tennis. "I always tried to hide the fact that I was an athlete," Davenport said. "I just wanted to be normal."

Tennis being the closest thing sports has to a gossipy, clique-ridden high school, players made fun of Davenport's body behind her back. She hunched over, bent a knee, wore flatsanything to look shorter. Ann would poke her in the back to remind her to stand up straight. She was a fine volleyer, but nothing draws more attention, and risks more humiliation, than patrolling the net, so she stuck to the baseline. Opponents learned to drop shot heras Hingis did at match pointbecause they knew she wouldn't come in. "I was embarrassed to," Davenport said. "I wouldn't have gotten that ball a couple of years ago."

By the end of 1995 she was miserable. She envied the way Venus, 6' 1 1/2" and proud of it, carried herself. Her parents' 28-year marriage had crumbled, her coaching was in flux, and when, heavier than ever, she lost a first-round match in the WTA Tour Championships that November because of back trouble and dropped out of the Top 10, Davenport knew it was time to get in shape. She hired former tour pro Robert Van't Hof, a longtime adviser, to travel with her and oversee her training regimen. She began running sprints. She dropped 30 pounds over the next two years, and as her self-consciousness diminished, she found herself closing out matches instead of panicking. She began picking up big wins this yearagainst Hingis in Tokyo and Graf at Indian Wellsthen went on a blistering roll through the hard-court season, winning three tournaments and becoming the tour's hottest player.

"Before she would be very moody; you would just see on her face that she was not happy with what she was doing, and she would give up much easier," Hingis said last Saturday. "She's mentally so much stronger."

It's a startling reversal. Davenport dictated play throughout the final, attacking constantly, pinning Hingis behind the baseline with deep, powerful strokes, pressuring with an unexpected command of her volleys. When she lost three straight games and a 4-2 lead in the second set, there was every reason to expect an old-time Davenport collapse. Instead, Hingis fell apart. Serving to send the match into a third set, she fell to 0-40 and then double-faulted with a second serve that dropped into the net like a brick. Davenport handled things from there, holding her serve and then breaking Hingis, but that break at 4-5 only confirmed what had been suspected all summer: With underwhelming results here and at the French Open and Wimbledon, the Hingis-led youth movement has stalled.

"Last year everything was like a game for me, new and fun," said the 17-year-old Hingis, who nearly won the Grand Slam last year but now hasn't won a tour event since May. "I was still like a kid. This year was more like work. I think my body changed, and I'm not moving as well. It's not only me. Everybody has to go through that stage. Mirjana [Lucic] and Anna, also Venus and Serena, are having problems with their coordination. You feel like you can do something, but you can't anymore."

The oddest part of all this is that the player most comfortable in her own skin right now may be Davenport. Yes, she would still love to be three inches shorter, and, yes, she turned down a guest shot on David Letterman because, she said, "he'll make fun of me." But the fact is, when she began to lose weight, Davenport was determined to shed the big-girl mentality, too. She still drops her shoulders at times, but then it will hit her: I look good, I look better, I should be happy to be tall.

She's working at it. She's even getting a little cocky. Davenport long had a superstition: Never hold a trophy over your head. Whenever she won a tournament, she held the plate or cup against her ear or chest. Over your head was for the big time, she thought, not doubles or some rinky-dink tournament. Over your head was for Grand Slam singles. Only her coach knew this.

So when she took the Open cup on Saturday, the sunlight glinting off the silver, Davenport stepped toward the scrum of photographers for the obligatory photo op and looked up. There in her box were Van't Hof, Ann, her two sisters, her niece. She began to raise the trophy above her head, but before she could extend her arms, Van't Hof dropped his face in his hands, and Davenport's eyes went blind with tears. Still she pushed the trophy high over her head. The crowd kept clapping, and she stood up straight, the biggest woman in New York. *