Paris hadn't been this excited about a sporting event since France won the World Cup last year, but French heroine Amelie Mauresmo was unable to lift the city on her broad shoulders on Wednesday when her nemesis, No. 1 Martina Hingis, rose to the occasion and mesmerized Mauresmo in a 6-3, 6-3 second round victory at Roland Garros.

Possibly due to the tremendous amount of attention that has been showered on her since her feud with Hingis at the Australian Open in January, Mauresmo's stylish, athletic game collapsed under the pressure, as she committed 51 unforced errors in the one-hour, 18-minute match.

Mauresmo came out roaring to open the match, bludgeoning heavy crosscourt forehands and exposing Hingis' weaker side. For her part, Hingis was consistently framing forehands and was unable to muster enough strength on her normally deep groundstrokes.

At 2-3, the Swiss 18-year-old managed to fight off four break points before the Frenchwoman crushed a forehand down-the-line return of serve that Hingis could only wave at.

But in the next game, the five-time Grand Slam title owner lifted her small but muscular frame off the clay and broke back to 3-3 when Mauresmo couldn't control a low backhand volley. The 20-year-old Mauresmo became unsettled after that and became caught in Hingis' web. The heady Hingis rolled off six straight games, intelligently mixing up her serves, retrieving like a demon and converting on sharply-angled groundstrokes.

Down 0-3 in the second set, a desperate Mauresmo righted herself by regaining her aggressive posture and breaking Hingis to 1-3. Mauresmo powered through the next game, but at 2-3, a motivated Hingis took charge of the net on crucial points and went ahead 4-2.

The pony-tailed Mauresmo, who donned a backwards white baseball throughout the contest, battled gamely in an attempt to break Hingis back at 3-4, but the Swiss came up with an effective serve every time she appeared to be in trouble.

Hingis broke Mauresmo at love to close out the match 6-3, 6-3 when a Mauresmo forehand went wide. Hingis screamed out, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," and pumped her first in delight.

Mauresmo wasn't the only French hopeful to fall on Wednesday, when No. 12 Sandrine Testud was stunned 6-3, 6-2 by South African Marianne De Swardt. "I was sort of empty," said Testud, who is on the mend from injury. "I've never had such a match but you have to have one like today, I suppose."