Associated Press

Sydney, March 3:

Australian tennis player Mark Philippoussis is engaged to his American model girlfriend, a newspaper reported on Thursday. A spokesman for his management company, however, says they don’t know anything about it. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph said Philippoussis proposed to Alexis Barbara, an 18-year-old New York-based model and part-time actress, while the two were in the United States. The engagement comes five months after he broke up with Australian singer-actress Delta Goodrem, whom he had been dating for nine months.

A spokesman for Philippoussis’ agent, Brian Cooney of International Management Group in Melbourne, said they were not aware of any engagement plans — “at least we weren’t told anything about it.” The Daily Telegraph quoted unidentified friends of the 28-year-old Philippoussis as saying that the engagement had surprised them, “but Mark is very much in love with Alexis.” Philippoussis’ ranking in world tennis has slipped into the 200s after a run of poor performances in 2004.