Playboy magazine's August 2008 issue came out last week and American tennis player Ashley Harkleroad was featured on the cover and in a nude photoshoot inside.23-year old Harkleroad is the first tennis player to bare all, although after a recent sexy FHM photospread with Ana Ivanovic draped in barely enough clothing to make up a tennis dress, one wonders if there are others poised to follow suit. Cast your mind back to February 2006 for a moment and you can also recall that innocent yet oh-so-erotically charged Sports Illustrated Swimsuit spread with Russia's Maria Sharapova. Naturally, Sharapova was always blessed with model looks, but prior to that she seemed to steer away from such frivolities and maintained that she wasn't in the least interested in flaunting her goods on display.
Of course, the difference between the likes of Harkleroad and Ivanovic and Sharapova is that the latter two are actually Grand Slam champions with a slew of tournaments to their name. Harkleroad, who was once billed as the American Anna Kournikova, is currently ranked 65th in the world and hasn't made it past the 3rd round of a major to date. Maybe this says something about her naked ambition offcourt.
Harkleroad did the shoot while recovering from surgery from an ovarian cyst. “I was just laying there for three weeks, and an offer came to me," she says. "I thought, well, I'm not really doing anything right now. I'm proud of my body. I was representing a female athlete's body."
The problem is that she may not be doing anything right now or ever as far as her tennis career goes. Considering she doesn't have the star power either of Sharapova or Ivanovic, her celebrity status might not exactly skyrocket either.
I'm not against tennis stars doing glamor shoots if they choose, but in Harkleroad's case, has her Playboy pictorial served her at all or will it simply be an interesting minor highlight in a rather mediocre tennis career?
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