"I'm your Venus. I'm your fire."
-- Venus, by Shocking Blue, 1970

NEW YORK -- Women's tennis has never been deeper.

Martina Hingis has been No. 1 for four years now. Jennifer Capriati won the first two Grand Slam tournaments of the season. Lindsay Davenport has won three Slams herself. Monica Seles and Serena Williams also know the feeling of holding a major trophy aloft. The two young Belgians, Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin, suddenly are ranked No. 5 and No. 6 in the world.

One woman, however, has beaten them all this year. One woman stands, indisputably, at the top of the tennis ladder: Venus Williams.

The WTA rankings insist that Venus is the No. 4 player in the world. Forget the rankings -- they are based largely on quantity, not quality of play. After brushing aside her sister Serena in straight sets in Saturday night's oddly anticlimactic U.S. Open final, Venus has now won four of the past six Grand Slam singles titles. Moreover, she has defended her Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles -- the two that matter most.

Is she a cut above the rest of the field?

"Well, winning four out of the last six, I guess you could say she is," Serena said. "I don't know. I think she's beaten everyone."

Venus is 2-0 against Serena this year and 5-2 overall. Hingis? Venus avenged an Australian Open semifinal loss with a straight-sets victory in the Ericsson Open semis. Capriati? She's never beaten Venus, including three losses this year alone. Davenport, too, is 0-3 against Venus this year.

Venus has won 15 consecutive matches and three tournaments, giving her six titles and a record of 46-5.

"I guess I've had the most amount of titles," Venus said. "But for me, I've almost done my personal best. I would have loved to have won some more Grand Slams, but that wasn't the case. Someone else was more deserving of the first two. So it wasn't me."

It was Capriati, whose comeback is one of the great stories in sports. Williams was listless in a 6-1, 6-1 loss to Hingis in the Australian semis, but Capriati prevailed in the final. Venus beat them both at the Ericsson Open.

Venus was stunned in the first round of the French Open by Barbara Schett and Capriati, who beat Hingis in the semifinals and Clijsters in the final, was the champion again.

Historically, Venus has been a slow starter. Last year she missed the first four months of the 2000 season with tendinitis in both wrists, but she put together a 35-match winning streak that encompassed nearly four months and six titles, including the Olympic gold medal.

She's on that kind of roll again. After losing to Schett, Williams has won 23 of 24 matches. She's played only five more sets than the minimum over that time.

While Capriati is this year's sentimental favorite for Player of the Year, she has had three chances to beat Venus this year and failed in each increasingly futile attempt.

Capriati held an amazing eight match points before losing in the Ericsson final. In the New Haven semifinals the week before the U.S. Open, Venus beat her in straight sets. The second set came down to a tiebreaker, but the score at crunch time was a devastating 7-1. In the U.S. Open semis, Venus dispatched Capriati with ease, 6-4, 6-2, giving her six of seven sets against Capriati.

Not only does Venus have prodigious physical gifts -- she hits the ball harder and covers more ground than anyone in the woman's game -- but at 21 she has developed a court savvy that has put her over the top.

Listen to Serena: "I think Venus actually has taken a lot of power off her ball, and she's actually making less mistakes, using more tactics in her game. So power-wise, I think she's definitely taken a lot off. She tried something different this whole tournament, and I think it worked."

Much has been made of Venus' edge in mental toughness over her younger sister. The irony is that this relatively new attitude came from Serena herself.

"This was like in '98 in Sydney," Venus remembered. "Serena was playing a top player, was down 1-6, love-five. She was fighting like there was no tomorrow, like it was her last day on Earth. After that, I reconsidered. I wasn't such a fighter.

"After that, I became a fighter, too. That's what I took from her game."

It was Serena who supplied her sister's ultimate motivation to win a Grand Slam, as well. Venus was in the stands with her parents, Richard and Oracene, when Serena won the family's first major singles title, the 1999 U.S. Open. Oracene has called it a wake-up call for Venus.

Since then, the older sister has won four Slams, the last one over the younger sister.

Now, Venus says, she is going to get serious. Last year, she played only 45 matches in an injury plagued season. This year's she's already played 51. Next year?

"Next year, I believe, I'd like to play more in the beginning of the year, maybe less at the end. So I'm going to look at the calendar and see what suits me best."

How about the Australian Open? Perhaps the French Open? The No. 1 ranking?

"I'd like to, of course, improve my game," she said.

Of course.