Jack Kramer has never been a man revered in female tennis circles after his assertion – born, it has to be said, out of frustration at being delayed in starting a match – that women should never be allowed on Wimbledon’s Centre Court.

However, Amelie Mauresmo, arguably more introspective than any of her racket-wielding peers, might do well to heed another Kramer assertion: “The less you think as a tennis player, the better off you are.” Mauresmo, who won two Grand Slam titles in 2006, spent 35 weeks as the world’s No 1 female, has gathered more than $13.8m (£6.9m) in prize-money from a career that stretches back further than any of her main rivals with the exception of the resurgent Lindsay Davenport.

But the Frenchwoman is at a crossroads. Like so many before her, she is trying to come to terms with the fact that the emergent and upward path of youth is uncomplicated and relatively trouble-free compared to the resistance that needs to be exerted against the downward spiral that is inevitable with age.

With her 29th birthday four months away, she is a veteran of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour. It does not matter that she plays the game with a panache that is so different from the stereotypi-cal baseliner. It is irrelevant that she has been one of the game’s elite for the best part of a decade, amassing 24 singles titles and being a fixture in the world’s top five. She is in a results business, and lately they have not been good; since being relieved of her title at the All England Club last July, she has failed to win three matches in succession and her ranking has slipped to 29.

To Mauresmo, it is futile to be anything other than sincere. She has never been one to hide behind facades – early in her career she was open about her sexuality – and has spent more time than is probably healthy wondering whether the time is coming when it would be better to concentrate on what she might achieve with the rest of her life. “I am emotional, I am sensitive, I am extreme,” she admitted, holding her hands up, almost in submission. “Also, I am aware that I am intelligent and that’s why I am asking myself questions. Unfortunately I have been struggling to find clear answers and for months it was agony to play tennis.”

The former Australian Open and Wimbledon champion is sitting beside a swimming pool at the Aviation Club in Dubai. There are a lot worse places in the world to be, and her mood is improving. A week earlier, a little further north on the coast of the Gulf in Doha, after losing to a 101st-ranked qualifier, Mauresmo admitted that she would rather be almost anywhere else. Her confession after losing to Thailand’s Tamarine Tanasug-arn made painful listening. “I sometimes ask myself what the hell I am doing, playing in front of half-empty stands,” she said. “In the back of your mind there’s always something wondering if it wouldn’t be better to stop. I want to do well, but there’s always a grain of sand that gets in the works and clogs things up. It’s difficult to take.”

Added to this has been a struggle against depression that has driven her to some desperately dark moods. It all came to a head in the aftermath of emergency surgery a year ago. She felt a twinge in her stomach that she initially put down to nerves when being awarded membership of France’s Legion of Honour by President Jacques Chirac. She had planned to travel to the US the next day to contest the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami. Instead, within a matter of hours, she was being raced to hospital to have her appendix removed.

The pressure of being French and expectations at Roland Garros meant that she rushed her convalescence and rehabilitation in an effort to play the tournament that has long appeared sheer purgatory for a player so vulnerable to her nerves. Since then, nothing seemed right, until she finally spotted light at the end of the tunnel at the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships. She registered a couple of worthy early victories against admittedly inferior opposition before showing glimpses of her true potential against world No 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova. Admittedly, the form was insufficient to beat the Russian – Mauresmo lost 6-1 7-6 – but the second set gave her heart.

Retrospection now can be a little more rational. “In these difficult and frustrating moments, questions will come into my mind,” she says. “For the moment, they are just questions. I don’t feel deep inside of me that it should be the end of my career. But when you have bad match after bad match, it starts to get into your mind. Physically, it was so hard after the surgery, but also mentally I struggled. For weeks after the operation I was depressed. I could not work out any reason for feeling the way I did, but I was very down and couldn’t seem to snap out of it. People were telling me it was normal, but I still wasn’t recovered by the time I got to Wimbledon.

“I made a mistake. I underestimated what the surgery had done to me. It was silly trying to play the French Open. That was when the doubt started to creep into my mind. Would I be able to come back at the level I expected? Compared to other players , I am far more introspective and self-searching. I want to be on the right track and doing what is right for me. I want to be happy out there on the court. I want to be comfortable. I don’t want it to be painful and a struggle. But for a long time that is exactly what it has been.”

Mauresmo hopes she has turned a corner. She will head to the big events in the US without her coach, Loic Courteau, because they agree that a little self-sufficiency will probably do her good. If she needs Courteau’s guiding influence, he will be at the end of a telephone with bags packed. The next few months up to the French Open and then Wimbledon will be crucial to Mauresmo, and although it goes against her natural mindset, one thing she will try not to do is think too much.