WE HAVE been down this path before. There is always a youngest. Tennis has been a succession of child prodigies and Martina Hingis, the sixteen and a half year old doe eyed pouting millionaress has become the latest to jump on the carousel. We have seen it go round before. Austin, Jaeger, Capriati all had a twirl.

There is not a player in the world surprised that the Slovakian born right hander was today officially ranked higher than Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Conchita Martinez, Mary Pierce and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario as the best player in the world.

Her number one ranking comes after her comprehensive defeat of Monica Seles in the Lipton final in Key Biscayne, Florida on Saturday. Hingis won 6-1, 6-2.

When most kids in Ireland were knocking out the hours learning how to distinguish Barney the purple dinosaur from Scooby Do9, Hingis, at five, was hitting tennis balls and had entered tennis tournaments. Two years later she won her first.

When the lunch box with the ladybird on the lid had been put away and tinfoil wrapped their schoolyard sandwiches, Hingis had become the Swiss champion in the under 16 age group. She was 11 years old. A year later she was the youngest ever French Open junior champion, displacing the young American who had formerly held the title, one Jennifer, Capriati.

At 14 when the Junior Cert entered the mind set of academic aspirants, Hingis became the youngest player ever to win a match at a Grand Slam tournament her opening round in the Australian Open. At that time Capriati was being busted in Florida on drugs charges and petty theft.

A doubles title at Wimbledon with Helena Sukova was last year's highlight and Hingis became, at 15 years and 282 days the youngest champion in Wimbledon history, beating 1887 singles champion Lottie Dodd by three days.

Earlier this year at a Sydney warm up tournament, to the Australian Open, Hingis came up against the aging Capriati in the final. The 16 year old beat the 20 year old in three sets 6-1, 5-7, 6-1, before going on to comprehensively defeat Mary Pierce in the Australian Open final, 6-2, 6-2. Hingis did not lose a set in the entire tournament. First ever has regularly prefixed the name of Martina Hingis.

As her career to date has been one of broken records and preeminance, one so far lacking in any obvious conceit or haughty pretentiousness, Hingis is destined to take all in front of her, perhaps even more than Graf, Navratilova or Seles.

Sweet sixteen and never been second best, the tennis world sees the Hingis elevation as a cause for celebration, a triumph of talent in a game, where mediocrity has threatened to dominate and where a teenager supplanting women who are barely into their twenties is seen as hopeful. Navratilova and Sabatini have gone. Seles has been troubled ever since she was stabbed in Hamburg and Graf will go within the next several years. A smiling Hingis represents the new world order.

Look around and the those who will soon flank her are the similarly pubescent Venus Williams, the talented coloured girl from a Los Angeles ghetto, and Russia's Helena Kournakova.

Hingis has earned over $2 million in prize money and signed a deal in January with her clothes sponsor, Serio Tacchini, that could net her 14 million over the next five years.

"She's a very good mind on the court," said Graf during last year's US Open. "She doesn't have the physical ability but she's very clever on what to do on court. You don't see that very often at that age."

Hingis still has weaknesses but it is her strengths that shine through. She looks puny but can generate immense power from her ground strokes and is confident about approaching the net, a quality that may see her as a Wimbledon winner in the coming seasons.

But as Graf points out, her serve is still the weak link in a formidable game. Still waiting for shoulders and back tissue to develop fully before bearing the stresses of gymnasium weights, that seems surely a problem that will be rectified in time.

It would be naive to think that Graf is slipping. She is still the queen. With 21 Grand Slams to her name the 27 year old remains the supreme champion in women's tennis. Her fourth round defeat in Australia to South Africa's Amanda Coetzer was due to her preoccupation with her father's jail sentence for tax fraud as much as injury, heat or deterioration in form.

In the Italian Open last year Hingis beat Graf, who was again totally distracted by her father's trial. But the German has put the, youngster in place three times since, at Wimbledon, the US Open and in Madison Square Garden, New York.

The future should however belong to Hingis.