It is not easy being a teenager, under any circumstances. Being a teenager in public can seem like cruel and unusual punishment. Who would wish such a thing on a child? Tennis players get to act out their raw emotions with the crowd screaming and the television cameras blinking. And they do it essentially alone, at an early age. It's a wonder more of them don't self-destruct. 'There were a lot of moments I didn't understand, days I was confused by, scared by,' Andre Agassi recently recalled. 'A lot of times I wanted to hide from facing it. But I'm still in process.' Agassi came out the other side as a complicated and giving person, but there are no guarantees. The young players -- particularly the women -- are exposed to the world at an early age. Scandal and gossip are almost tame compared to the horrible experience of having one's sex debated in public. Recent reports suggest that Caster Semenya, the South African who won the 800 meters at the world championships in Berlin in August, has internal male sexual organs that would account for a high amount of testosterone. In South Africa, there is highly understandable concern about the impact on Semenya's life. This most intimate scrutiny is horrid but unfortunately is necessary since many athletes will take potent illegal drugs to give them an edge. Speculation about sexuality is something else. Some female tennis players have known the joy of a news conference at Wimbledon, in which one of the Beastie Boys from the tabloids inquired about a new ring visible on a finger and whether it came from a new girlfriend. Sometimes the fuss is not even about the player, but falls on her shoulders nonetheless. As her stirring run to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open ended last Wednesday, Melanie Oudin had to deal with a public revelation that her parents are divorcing, and that her father is saying her mother and her coach were involved. Whether those allegations needed to be made public, first by SI.com, is open to debate. If Oudin had remained a 17-year-old hopeful back in suburban Atlanta and not started knocking off Russian players daily at the Open, these unproven charges among adults would probably not have come out. 'Her tennis game didn't happen overnight, but it seemed that way because it happened at the Open,' said Martina Navratilova, who left Czechoslovakia for the United States at 16. Currently broadcasting at the Open for the Tennis Channel, Navratilova said, 'There is no way to prepare for this.' Most tour players in their teens are eager for the competition on the tour, said Elise Burgin, who joined the tour after playing for Stanford University and is broadcasting the Open for overseas networks. 'I do not know a tennis player who does not have self-imposed pressure,' Burgin said. 'They are all Type A. I felt pressure until the day I retired at 31. But tennis players need guidance.' The women's tour currently has a sliding scale for activity by players from 14 to 17, making it less possible for girls in their early teens to turn professional. Burgin was there when Jennifer Capriati reached the final of a tournament in Florida, three weeks shy of 14. Within a few years, Capriati faced shoplifting and drug charges, but she returned to have a respectable career. Capriati's bad few months could have happened to many teenagers -- but if she were not a teenage tennis pro her highly unflattering police photo would not have been published around the world. Martina Hingis played a few tournaments at 12, and Navratilova -- for whom Hingis was named by her Czech mother -- joked that Hingis was not even a teenager yet. In 1999, Jelena Dokic beat Hingis, by then the No. 1 player in the world, but Dokic lost years from her career as she fended off the abusive presence of her father, Damir, from whom she is now estranged. 'Now and forever, there is nothing, no way that I would ever reunite with him or ever have a relationship with him,' Dokic told reporters who relentlessly pursued her family history at Wimbledon last June. 'This is the last sentence ever you guys will hear from me, and that's the way it is,' Dokic added. A stance like hers is applauded by Pam Shriver, who at 16 was a finalist at the U.S. Open in 1978. Shriver got the maximum out of her willowy frame and was one of the most positive personalities on the tour. Now a broadcaster at the Open, Shriver endorsed limits on just how much 'head-spinning stuff' tennis players should have to discuss. 'You've got to learn if you're going to take this road,' Shriver said Friday. 'Some things are out of bounds. Your family situation. Your boyfriends. Talk about school. Talk about tennis. Some things you can't control, like court records, but I had stuff that I learned not to talk about.' Shriver said she noticed Oudin was showing stress for her quarterfinal match and warned the pressure would get worse 'in her sophomore year' when Oudin realized the weight of sponsor expectations. 'She has chutzpah,' Burgin said of Oudin. 'She was having fun out there.' The fun is on the court. Many teenagers can handle that. The real problems start when their lives, and their families' lives, and the madness of celebrity, hurtle into their existence like a 200-mile-per-hour serve. 