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Inside Tennis

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Vamp Counselors  

Young players are pushed to show more than their A game

By S.L. Price

The scene was like something out of a cheesy movie about teenage runaways: A 16-year-old girl sits in a room, trying on clothes, while some leering ghouls keep handing her skimpier outfits. Ah, yes, this one looks so much better on you, my dear.... But this was no B flick being played out in a Manhattan showroom a few days before the U.S. Open. The 16-year-old was a tennis phenom from Flintstone, Ga., named Ashley Harkleroad, and the ghouls were Nike reps.

Nike had a heavy hand in choosing the Open garb of Osterloh and Harkleroad (left). Jamie Squire/Allsport

"I tried on all the clothes, and Nike liked me in that outfit best," said Harkleroad, whose first-round loss to Meilen Tu was treated as little more than a footnote to the skintight tankini outfit -- complete with skirt slit up to mid-hip -- that Harkleroad barely wore for the match. "It was a little revealing, but I like that sometimes. And Nike liked me wearing it."

So there it was: the moment when the panting search for the next Anna Kournikova hit rock bottom. Harkleroad's parents, her handler from Mike Ovitz's Artists Management Group and the folks from Nike can all slap one another on the back over the excitement they stirred up. Cameras clicked throughout Harkleroad's match, and 43 reporters packed a room fit for 10 for her postmatch press conference. (Three showed up for Tu's.) She was the story of the day, but no one mentioned Lolita. "I don't think Anna's worn anything that tight or revealing on court," Tu said later. "There's an age difference too. Anna's what, 20? Ashley is 16."

Harkleroad wasn't alone on the runway in this year's edition of the Glam Slam. During her second-round match, Lilia Osterloh all but spilled out of a Nike outfit that looked more suited for a cocktail party than tennis. Afterward she declared, "I'm very comfortable with my sexuality."

Osterloh, a 23-year-old from Canal Winchester, Ohio, is entitled to wear what she wants, but even a player long out of her teens can be left dizzy by the sexpot merry-go-round. During Wimbledon, Austria's Barbara Schett, 25, allowed her management at Octagon to talk her into a $50,000 arrangement with the London tabloid The Mirror. She was photographed in all manner of sexy poses for the paper, which ran the photos under headlines like BABSI MAKES US SCHWETT. Schett was embarrassed, but Octagon loved it. "They say it was great for me presswise," Schett says, "but I told them that I wouldn't do it again, because I don't want people to see me as a sexy tennis player. I want them to see me as a tennis player."

Issue date: September 10, 2001

For more Inside Tennis see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, September 6. Click here to subscribe to SI.

 

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