Kournikova loses out to Venus again

Agassi was the biggest earner in the game for the third consecutive year, despite having his mind on other things.

During the course of one week in October, he married fellow tennis legend Steffi Graf and then she gave birth to son Jaden Gil.

His sponsors are solid as a rock, with Nike way out in front and Head, Schick, Twinlab and Canon, for whom he is now a spokesperson, supplying the small change. Agassi's earnings in sterling have also benefited from a slightly stronger dollar then in 2000, which accounts for the increase from £11.75m to £12m.

But the impoverished Brits could only manage the sort of income which Agassi regards as shrapnel. Tim Henman earned £2.6m while British No2 Greg Rusedski doesn't even feature in the world's top 10.

It should have been Henman's year to break through into the big-time, care of a win at Wimbledon, with Pete Sampras waning and Lleyton Hewitt not yet shining. Instead his moment was stolen by Croatian Goran Ivanisevic who wasn't even ranked in the top 100. But on a brighter note, Henman topped up the coffers with wins at Copenhagen and Basle and his total prize-money for the year added up to £650,000.

Men's No2 top earner Hewitt has overtaken Sampras both on and off the court.

The changing of the guard on court came at the US Open when he thrashed Sampras, now the men's fourth-highest earner, in three sets.

In Australia, you can actually sign up for the Lleyton Hewitt credit card. We haven't even done that for David Beckham yet.

The Manchester United star has just been named the world's second highest-paid footballer behind Zinedine Zidane - with total income estimated at a paltry £6.6m a year, according to a top 20 table compiled by France Football.

Schumacher rules off the track as well