Men like tennis girls because they play out in the open - by rules men can understand

It must be summer: the papers are chock-a-block with leggy girls in skimpy whites who run, pout, sweat and cheer as they chase a tennis ball. The Davis Cup, the US Open and above all Wimbledon: a whole calendar of events starring sexy fillies cavorting for our amusement on the grass (or clay). A season of tribute to the girls who top the Most Wanted list. Move over, the actress, the nurse, the model: the tennis player has replaced you all as the ultimate male fantasy.

Who cares if they are winners (like those unbeatable Williams sisters) or losers (like the glamorous Anna Kournikova): what matters is that the top tennis totty lives up to men's dreams of a sporty (meaning un-neurotic), high-earning (millions and millions) babe, who doesn't just pout and purr, but actually does something - like pouncing about a court, smashing her opponent the way all good competitors should.

She's the girl who's comfortable doing the male thing, the glamourpuss who doesn't mind sweating buckets and who needs to eat like a horse. Unlike the desperate Bridget Joneses out there, who mope about looking for Mr Right, the tennis girl looks as if she's got a string of men (or, in Kournikova's case, millions of admirers worldwide) whom she must fend off in order to concentrate on her game. Unlike the neurotic, anorexic, bulimic singletons who scheme and manipulate to get their way, and who fill male viewers of Sex and the City with such fear, Miss Tennis has her feet solidly on the ground and plays out in the open, by rules that men understand. Hers is a you win, I lose, kind of logic - simple, familiar reasoning that any man can cope with.

The love affair with the tennis girl goes back to those 19th-century ladies in bloomers who held a racquet like a fan, and worked up only a feminine glow as they gambolled on the grass court. From that decorous beginning, she grew into the Athena poster that every lechy student hung in his room: blonde in tennis dress shows off her bare cheek. Every female tennis ace since (with a few exceptions such as Martina Navratilova) has had to live up to that head-spinning combination of cotton and raunch. Talent is a plus, but - as Kournikova, who has earned £25m but is already out of Wimbledon, proves - it is not a must. The tennis girl's duty, after all, is not so much to win points as to grab men's imagination and hold it for the summer - or until the next babe in white comes along.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website