FirstCuts: Harkleroad Is Playboy’s Latest Athlete

From what I understand there is a gentlemen’s publication, Playboy, which publishes a variety of All-American teams in various college sports as well as a riveting series of Q and A’s with some of today’s most interesting celebrities. Spliced in between there, from what I understand, there are a few nude photographs of women. Occasionally, one of those women turns out to be an athlete. Meet Ashley Harkleroad.

Harkleroad, 23, will appear in the August 2008 issue of Playboy, joining a long line of female athletes in the last decade.

I was ready to undertake the project of researching exactly how many athletes had appeared in Playboy, but thanks to the diligent research of Chris Olds’ Sports Stuff blog, I don’t have to.

A total of 16 issues – counting the August 2008 issue – have featured athletes of some sort, and that’s counting the women of the WWE, who have shown up far more often than your traditional sport athletes.

Quick research shows the issue with Chyna was one of Playboy’s best-selling issues ever (Really? Really!?). But it was tough to come up with sales figures beyond that. Will Harkleroad, the No. 61 women’s tennis player in the world, drive you to pick up an issue?

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.