PARIS -- She looks out from the cover of Roland Garros Magazine wearing a cryptic smile.

	Amelie Mauresmo is playing her best in Paris this year.

There are a thousand contradictions in Amelie Mauresmo's smile, recalling Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa, which hangs only a few miles from here in the Louvre.

And so, when she coldly dispatched Spain's Magui Serna 6-1, 6-2 on Sunday to advance farther than she ever had before at the French Open -- her French Open -- the adoring crowd at Court Philippe Chatrier gave Mauresmo a standing ovation.

"Yes, of course, it's very emotional," said Mauresmo, who was born in St. Germains en Laye, France, about an hour by car to the west of Roland Garros. "I was very much relieved to see the volley go in the court. I never reached the quarterfinals here, so I'm very satisfied.

"I think it proves that I manage everything that happens around me perhaps better and that I've been doing good work."

More than almost anything, the French yearn for a champion of their own. Twenty years ago this week, Yannick Noah lifted the collective heart of a nation with an unlikely title.

	“	I have the same approach to the tournament, but I might be playing differently now than I did two years ago. The tension is always there. It's a fact of life. It will always remain like that. Tension is with me. But it depends how you control it. I think it's up to me to control it better. ”
		— Amelie Mauresmo

In 2000, Mary Pierce won at Roland Garros. Technically, she was a French citizen. And while tennis fans applauded her achievement, it wasn't completely from the heart. Pierce was born in Montreal, Canada, but her mother is French. She changed her citizenship, but still speaks French with a heavy accent and has never been fully accepted.

If Mauresmo, 23, manages to win her last three matches here, hearts will soar again.

That's a degree of pressure hard to imagine.

"I have the same approach to the tournament, but I might be playing differently now than I did two years ago," Mauresmo said. "The tension is always there. It's a fact of life. It will always remain like that. Tension is with me. But it depends how you control it. I think it's up to me to control it better.

"I'm trying to learn that. I'm trying to draw lessons from what happened two years ago."

Mauresmo came into the 2001 French Open ranked No. 5 in the world. She had already won the indoor tournament in Paris and sentiment ran high that she would challenge for the title. And then she lost to Jana Kandarr, an anonymous German, 7-5, 7-5 in the first round. It was a devastating defeat.

"I know things have changed in my game, maybe in my mental attitude," she said last week. "Maybe I'm facing things very differently, or at least I manage to control them much better.

"There's a certain serenity, a certain calm."

Mauresmo has played with flair and confidence after missing the first four months of the season with a cartilage inflammation in her right knee. Clearly, the break crated some space in her mind. Since then, she withdrew from Antwerp with a strained groin muscle and Indian Wells with a sore throat.

She won at Warsaw, defeating Venus Williams in the final, when Williams retired after trailing 3-0 in the third set. It was her first ever win against Venus. She reached the final at the Paris Indoors, the Berlin semifinal and a week ago, the finals at Rome. Although she lost, in order, to Serena Williams, Justine Henin-Hardenne and Kim Clijsters, she has been in the matches.

Before falling to Clijsters in the Rome final, Mauresmo beat Serena Williams in the semifinals -- after losing the first set 6-1. That, too, was a first.

	“	I think if she plays her best tennis ever and with no mistakes, no, I cannot win that. But, obviously, she cannot do that every day all year long, even though she does it very often. So again, I take my chances here. ”
		— Amelie Mauresmo, on her chances against Serena Williams

She is beginning to believe in herself.

Her match with Serena Williams in the quarterfinals will be an important milestone in her career.

"Yeah, yeah," Mauresmo said in her post-match press conference with convincing vigor. "I like the idea of playing here at the French Open and playing against Serena, yeah. That's for sure."

Mauresmo was brutally candid about her chances.

"It's not because I beat her once that I'm going to beat her everytime I'm going to play against her," she said. "So, you know, we'll see.

"I think if she plays her best tennis ever and with no mistakes, no, I cannot win that. But, obviously, she cannot do that every day all year long, even though she does it very often.

"So again, I take my chances here."

Even with four wins here, her worst record for a Grand Slam is, by far, at the French Open, where she's 13-8. She hopes that is going to change. She aches to join the names of French champions -- Suzanne Lenglen, Jeanne Matthey, Simone Mathieu, Francoise Durr -- carved in the three stone stadiums here.

"I'm enjoying the tennis I'm playing," Mauresmo said. "But the day I will play here in Roland Garros and really not give a hoot about it, maybe I can ask for a wild card when I'm 35 or for my jubilee ... something like that."

And maybe, it was suggested, she could play doubles with countryman Arnaud Clement, or something like that.

And Mauresmo smiled her Mona Lisa smile.

"Something like that," she said.

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.