AMERICA AT LARGE: A bit over a week ago, with appropriate fanfare, Penthouse magazine published what were purportedly topless photographs of the Russian tennis player and international ice hockey groupie Anna Kournikova.

Kournikova protested that the photos in question were not of her, a stipulation to which virtually anyone owning a computer would have immediately attested. One of the most widely-circulated photos on the internet was taken of Anna at Wimbledon a few years ago, when, about to receive serve, she leaned so far forward that she fairly spilled out of her tennis dress at the moment the photographer snapped the picture.

And as any teenage boy in America could have told you, if those were Anna's breasts, then the ones in Penthouse plainly were not.

A few days after the issue had hit the stands, Penthouse was forced to issue an apology. The magazine now faces two lawsuits, one from Kournikova and the other from the clothing heiress to whom the bosoms represented as those of the tennis player actually belonged.

Should Kournikova prevail in court, she will collect considerably more money than she's been earning on the tennis circuit of late, although events in Rome earlier this week indicate that her career may at last be on the upswing.

We don't know if you were paying attention or not, but Kournikova registered her biggest win in years this past Tuesday when Venus Williams defaulted her second-round match in the Italian Open.

Venus, it turned out, had injured her right wrist . . . while picking up her racquet bag.

The injury indisposing Williams will doubtless take its place alongside, say, that of Wade Boggs, the Boston Red Sox third baseman who once wound up on the Disabled List after injuring his back attempting to pull off his cowboy boots in his hotel room.

Come to think of it, I recall a colleague mentioning that the most surprising aspect of that particular injury was that Boggs (later the defendant in a celebrated palimony case) didn't have a companion on hand to remove his boots for him.

Roger Craig, the old Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Mets pitcher who later became a successful major league manager, once cut his hand on a bra strap. (And it wasn't even Anna Kournikova's.)

Last fall place-kicker Bill Gramatica knocked himself out of the play-offs when he leaped to celebrate a successful field goal and strained a groin muscle, putting himself in the company of Atlanta Braves catcher Terry Harper, who once separated a shoulder high-fiving a team-mate.

The Braves, in fact, deserve their own subsection in the Stupid Sports Injuries Hall of Fame.

Pitcher Tom Glavine once broke a rib while vomiting airline food on a team charter flight. Another pitcher, John Smoltz, suffered severe burns when he tried to iron a shirt he was wearing at the time.

I WAS in the New York Mets' clubhouse the night outfielder Vince Coleman unpacked a new set of irons he had just had delivered. Demonstrating his golf swing, Coleman whacked Doc Gooden, that night's pitcher, in the back, knocking him out of the start.

I was also at Busch Stadium in St Louis the night Coleman was doing pre-game stretching exercises in the infield and didn't notice the approach of the automatic tarpaulin-roller. The dastardly machine rolled right over his leg, putting Coleman, who had stolen 110 bases that year, out of the 1985 National League Championship Series.

Denver Broncos quarterback Brian Griese suffered a concussion last year when he tripped in team-mate Terrell Davis' driveway and knocked himself out. (Cold sober, they claim.) Florida Marlins' second baseman Bret Barberie once missed a game because he accidentally rubbed chilli juice into his eyes.

Early in his Seattle Mariners career, Ken Griffey Jr was forced to sit after a game when he put his protective cup on wrong and incurred a pinched testicle.

Glenallen Hill, then an outfielder with the Toronto Blue Jays, wound up on the Disabled List from cuts incurred when he smashed a glass table in his sleep. Hill turned out to have been a closet arachnophobiac: he subsequently explained that he had woken from a dream in which he was being attacked by spiders.

The Baltimore Orioles' Mark Smith injured a hand by sticking it in an air conditioner to see why it wasn't working.

Rickey Henderson, the well-travelled future Hall of Famer now with the Red Sox, missed a game as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays when he contracted frostbite . . . in August.

Irving Fryar, then with the New England Patriots, was injured at half-time of a game in which he wasn't even playing. Inactive for the game, he decided to drive home at half-time, and when he came to a fork in the road decided to go neither left nor right but straight, running into a tree and knocking himself out.

Fryar was also injured during the 1984 NFL play-offs when he cut his hand in a "kitchen accident," which, while true, turned out to only have been part of the story. It subsequently developed that Fryar was indeed in the kitchen when he tried to take a knife away from his wife, who was trying to use it on him.

Which doesn't mean kitchen accidents can't be self-inflicted. At a "Texas Welcome Home" luncheon celebrating the onset of a new season, Rangers outfielder Oddibe McDowell sliced his hand open attempting to butter a dinner roll.

While with the Houston Astros, Nolan Ryan once missed a game when he was bitten on his pitching hand by a coyote.

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Steve Sparks dislocated a shoulder trying to tear a phone book in half, and the Rangers' knuckleball reliever Charlie Hough once broke a finger while shaking hands.

Two years ago Florida pitcher Ricky Bones was placed on the disabled list after he hurt himself changing channels on the television set in the Marlins' clubhouse.

All of which places Venus Williams in good company. Not to make light of her injury, but just imagine what might have happened if, instead of her racquet bag, Venus had tried to lift, say, her wallet.