Wearing a nondescript T-shirt and an icepack on her right forearm, Ashley Harkleroad looked rather unbabe-like.

She'd just won her first match at the U.S. Open, but there was nothing glamorous about it. The ice was for a torn ligament that kept her from four tournaments this summer.

So this is the young lady nicknamed Kourni-Copy? She looked more like the Braves' John Smoltz after another save.

"It's not a big deal; it's a little tear, tiny," Harkleroad said of her injury. "I'm just now coming back. It's a lot better."

Harkleroad is trying to get noticed for her tennis skills these days, but her looks keep getting in the way.

At 18, she's no longer a tennis babe with a lowercase "b." The New York tabloid the Daily News capitalized the word in Sunday's editions with a photo spread entitled Babes of the Open.

There was Harkleroad, long blond hair down, included among a group of female tennis players distinguished by long legs and short outfits.

"I guess I just take it as a compliment," said Harkleroad, the rising tennis star from Flintstone, in northwest Georgia.

"Right now, it's just tennis that I focus on. I take everything else as compliments that people, you know, like to say things like that. That's really nice."

Not that she's trying to get noticed or anything. The biggest memory of her first Open experience two years ago: "Just of me in my nice little outfit, you know, just having a good time and playing."

Oh, yes, the outfit. The Daily News remembers it this way: "Harkleroad made jaws drop and lenses snap at the 2001 Open with a form-fitting, skin-baring blue lycra outfit. 'Do your parents know you're wearing that?' the reporters asked."

Two years later, and she still doesn't understand the fuss.

"I am just 18 years old," she said. "That's fun for me. I just kind of wear whatever I feel comfortable in."

Those outfits and her looks are getting her noticed around the world. A paper in New Zealand called her the Britney Spears of tennis. "I like Britney Spears, and it's nice when people say things about me," Harkleroad said, "but I can't carry a tune."

She has also been called "Kourni-Copy," as in a lookalike for the similarly blond and attractive Anna Kournikova, the most overexposed female tennis player never to win a tournament.

Again, Harkleroad says she's flattered by the comparisons.

With Kournikova and the Williams sisters out of this year's Open with injuries, the tournament has lost a little star power. That would be available on the Web site www.ashley-harkleroad.com, where readers can vote for Most Beautiful on the WTA tour.

All of this attention is more attributable to tabloid journalism than any grand plan, according to Harkleroad's agent, Jill Smoller.

"It's certainly not a product of our marketing plan," Smoller said. "Right now we're just letting Ashley focus on her tennis. Obviously, one of the reasons I signed her four years ago when she 14 was because she was the All-American total package. But we focus on letting her develop as a person and as a tennis player and let the rest fall into place as her results continue to grow.

"Compared to her U.S. Open last year, she's really grown up over the past 12 months. I think her tennis speaks for itself now."

Last year at the Open, like the year before, Harkleroad was out in the first round. Monday's 6-4, 6-2 win over Russia's Vera Douchevina put Harkleroad into today's second round against another Russian, 13th-seeded Vera Zvonareva.

"I was extremely happy with the way that I played," Harkleroad said. "Being here at the U.S. Open, sometimes there's so much going on that it's kind of difficult for me to focus and just stay within myself.

"But I think I have matured a lot since last year."

It has been Harkleroad's breakthrough year. She made it to the third round of the French Open and crashed the top 40 (ranked 39th) before falling back to her current ranking of 52nd.

"I just think a lot of it is maturing and growing into my game," she said.

"Ashley can go as far as she wants to," Smoller said. "Top 15, top 10, top five. It's all in front of Ashley."