Bone-ing up on women's tennis.

Ladies, gents and miscellaneous-things-that-are-subject-to-self-sustaining-biological-processes --- it's time once again to pay homage to the bevy of beauties that grace the WTA Tour.

I'm not sure if you are a taking a serious tone here.

No tone at all, you smouldering vixen. But your exceptionally gorgeous self aside, one cannot ignore a salient fact: tennis talent rarely goes hand in hand with visual appeal.

There are, of course, two highly notable exceptions. Ana Ivanovic and Maria Sharapova - both Amazonian beauties. These two saucy ladies show that being born in the Eastern Bloc doesn't mean you have to physically resemble a B-double.

Fancy a dip in my deep end?

Put your hand on my heart and tell me... in fact, quiet please.

In decades gone by, the beauty tap was flowing a bit more freely on the la femme de tennis tour.

• In the 80s - Sabatini had the bod while Graf had the legs.
• In the 90s - Kournikova had it all. And even Hingis had her fans (WSO included!!!). However, Hingis did deteriorate in the end as her penchant for hitting the white lines off-court and well as on led her to an early grave retirement.

And now. We are starved.

However, despite being surrounded in ugly minga-ness, there is light at the end of the ocular tunnel.

Bethanie Mattek-Sands for a start. What a name, what a wardrobe.


As much as she places downward pressure on the stringent sartorial standards of tennis, she plays seriously, with the precision of a surgeon performing a triple bypass, like the lives of orphans in Darfur are hanging in the balance.

But so far... no luck. She hasn't hit a decent winner since 2003. To win points, she tends to rely on her opponent making errors, which should be better recorded as forced rather than 'un' given that her outlandish outfits tend to incite shock that are surely strongly felt by the person on the other side of the net.

As shown in her six happy snaps, she is nurturing a front bum biscuit. It's not her fault. She has to skip training to shop at gypsy markets and fly to LA to exchange clothes with Heidi Fleiss.

In 2005, B.M.S. copped a fine from the US Open - the most liberal of all the slams - that determined her argyle cowboy hat was not appropriate at a tennis tournament.


Hard to see it befitting in any shade of reality, really?

However, she still chose to don the ol' fedora when playing her next game on carpet.


Speaking of carpet, she does tend to double up with our favourite brick factory -ova - Nadia Petrova:

Is it time to unveil my flushing meadow yet?

No. Not yet. It's not until the end of August m'dear.

But I must say, don't knock it till you've tried it. Carpet licking that is. As they say, bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on a Saturday night.

Where were we?

Tennis. Fashion. Fail.

Serena Williams is another one that comes to mind.

Bitch please. I own fashion.

I guess Serena has cleaned up her act from her trailer trash beginnings:

To become a bit more style conscious and turning to her sister-girlfriend, Diana Ross, for inspiration:

This trophy will keep me warm at night.

And this my friends, brings me to today's conclusion and rhetorical question: What's not to adore about the WTA tour?