Playing at Louis Armstrong Stadium, the American teen made several nice shots Thursday afternoon despite losing to second-seeded Justine Henin-Hardenne 6-1, 6-2.

Already a tennis pro at 17, the aspiring singer then moved over to Arthur Ashe Stadium hours later and performed "America the Beautiful" before the night matches.

"Walking out there tonight, it really hit me and I got very nervous," she said after her daily double. "I think it went OK."

Standing beyond the baseline in a long brown dress, arms at her sides, King closed her eyes as she hit her early notes.

"That helped me calm down," she said. "After that, I could just sing."

King, from Long Beach, Calif., came into the US Open with a career-high ranking of 70th. She beat Alicia Molik in the first round.

King is a year ahead of her high school class, and has been accepted at Stanford. She'll pass up a chance to join her sisters in college -- one goes to Princeton, the other to Penn -- and keep competing in tennis.

And, she'll continue to sing. She's recorded four songs in a studio, with a bent toward Broadway, and likes a selection from "Wicked."

King said she did not consider the performance her New York audition.

"I'm not expecting anything from this. Not an agent or anything," she said. "I usually sing for myself."

King said she'd never sung the national anthem or any other song at a major sports event. Asked how she got this opportunity, she smiled.

"My mom," she said. "At the Fed Cup, she was going around telling everybody that I sing."

King gave a good account of herself against Henin-Hardenne, adding, "I made her play a lot of balls."

While she kept her composure against a top opponent, the prospect of facing of crowd of New York critics was a bit more daunting. She spent the time in-between fixing her hair and makeup; her mom had picked out the dress.

COMPETITIVE DRIVE
Lleyton Hewitt found out firsthand what a lot of New York commuters already knew: The city's traffic can be terrible.

The 2001 US Open champion got stuck on his way to Thursday's second-round match, and his pre-match practice time was cut in half. The 15th-seeded Australian had little trouble, though, in posting a 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 win over Jan Hernych.

"We had to end up going a totally different way that I'd never been before," Hewitt said. "I got to see a bit more of New York than I probably would have liked to this morning."

Hewitt said his coach, Roger Rasheed, decided to give officers a hand around the Midtown Tunnel leading out of Manhattan.

"He was directing traffic for a bit of it," Hewitt said. "We were at a standstill for 40 minutes, I think. He had to tell the police at the front that there's such a backup of cars that someone had to do something."

Hewitt said his injured knee was holding up OK.

"I'm not feeling 100 per cent out there at the moment," he said. "It's a bit of a psychological battle, as well."

Hewitt will play Novak Djokovic of Serbia in the third round.

QUIET, PLEASE!
In Lindsay Davenport's opinion, what happens in the tennis locker rooms should stay there.

The former US Open champion hasn't read journeyman Vince Spadea's new tell-all book, "Break Point," but said, "I heard that some players were upset."

Davenport said there's a code among players about tattling that shouldn't be broken.

"It's kind of an unwritten rule," she said. "I don't feel like it's secrets and stuff, but you have a mutual respect for all your fellow competitors."

"Even if someone were to ask me, 'Oh, what do you think of this player?"' she said, "I'm always like, 'Oh, they're good.' It's kind of nobody's business."

Davenport also said the women's locker room is not be a prime place to gather intriguing material for a gossipy book.

"Not much happens in ours," she said. "Maybe it's a different story in the other locker room."