Anna Kournikova pushed the envelope and paved the way for the likes of Maria Sharapova, the Williams sisters, and now Ana Ivanovic to bare a little skin in the name of fashion and marketing. But it’s a lesser-known player who is not only walking through the door, but flinging it wide open.
Ashley Harkleroad – nicknamed “Pebbles” in the early 2000s because she hailed from Flintstone, Georgia – first captured the attention of the tennis world when she turned pro at the age of 15. In 2003, she scored big wins over top opponents at Charleston and Roland Garros, propelling her to the Top 40 in the rankings. The results, coupled with her girl-next-door appeal, had many touting her as the next big American tennis sensation.
Now Harkleroad is joining the company of the real “Girls Next Door” by posing for a nude pictorial in Playboy.
The 23-year-old is featured on the cover of the men’s magazine, wearing little more than a towel strategically draped around her neck and a short pleated tennis skirt, under the tag line “Nude Tennis Anyone?” The issue hits newsstands July 18.
News of the pending pictorial broke during the French Open, where Harkleroad told reporters she had made the decision to appear in the magazine while recuperating from an operation to remove a cyst from her ovaries following the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.
“I thought about it, and it was something that I did,” she said after first round loss to Serena Williams in Paris. “I'm proud of my body. I was representing a female athlete's body.”
The move is not unprecedented in women's sport. Pro volleyball player Gabrielle Reese and Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard have both bared all for Playboy.
“I'll be the first tennis player ever. That's kind of cool,” said the Georgia native, but alluded that there were other factors behind her decision. “There's a few reasons why I did it, but I can't really go into it right now.”
Perhaps it was publicity or the reported $65,000 she was paid by the magazine to appear on its glossy pages.
It caught the attention of London’s Daily Telegraph during Wimbledon, which wrote about her first-round loss to Amelie Mauresmo, a match-up that typically would not have garnered much press in Britain. While taking a couple of gabs at Harkleroad, the article did mention the sum she was reportedly paid and that “The publishers of the magazine claim that she was a natural in the studio, posing easily and confidently in front of camera, not remotely phased by the kind of nakedness she normally restricts to the locker room.”
“I really didn't think it was that big of a deal. I'm proud of my body. I stay in shape and try to stay fit,” Harkleroad said in an attempt to downplay the exposure she would soon receive.
Other female pros have flashed some flesh in the past but stopped short of baring it all. Sharapova, the Williamses and Steffi Graf have all posed for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and Serena provided an eyeful in the name of charity when she posed with nothing more than a flower covering her backside in Jane magazine. Anastasia Myskina's topless photos from a GQ photo shoot were published two years after they were taken. Claiming they were printed without her permission, she sued the magazine. However, Nuria Llagostera Vives did a nude shoot for Spanish magazine Interviu just a few weeks before Harkleroad’s decision made news.
On the men's side, Fernando Verdasco and Tommy Robredo have both posed nude for charity, but in profile shots that covered their bare essentials.
For Harkleroad, the effects – both on and off the court – of doing this pictorial are still unknown, but one thing is for sure: it will definitely get her noticed.
She currently sits at No. 72 (her career high was 39) on the Sony WTA Tour rankings and is 19-10 for the season. This year she reached the semifinals at Hobart, a Tier IV level event, and the round of 16 at Indian Wells, but has yet to win a round at a Grand Slam. Her last event was Wimbledon, where she lost to Amelie Mauresmo.