TRIVIA: Like fellow tennis player/swimsuit model Anna Kournikova, Ana has inspired a song. “Hurricane Ana” is the creation of Serbian rapper Filip Filipi (aka “Sin”).
Here we have Marisa Miller, Monika Schnarre, Kathy Ireland, Hilary Rhoda, Alicia Hall, and Anna Kournikova. (Though I have to say, listing Anna Kournikova as a “model,” especially in a Sports Illustrated photo gallery, seems a little disrespectful. And during National Tennis Month, too! For shame, SI.)
Marisa is pitching at Wrigley Field, and Hilary is at U.S. Cellular. That’s one SI model per Chicago baseball team. Who will be the tiebreaker?
Cubs win.
The world demanded an encore, so exactly one year later, Brazil gave us the sultry Ana Beatriz Barros.
When SI assembled seven Brazilian models in 2007, the two birthday girls found their way into the same picture a few times.
Parabéns, moças.
Have they found a new career in swimsuit modeling? Probably not, according to this video: 
She had two teams she was rooting for eliminated from the playoffs in quick succession. So let’s cheer her up.
I'll have to feature that tummy another day. Happy birthday, Molly!
By the way, I guess she has a pretty intense rivalry with Patty Schnyder, and Patty's husband kicked over Daniela's water bottle after a controversial match.
And her hotness/skill intersect in this absolutely kickass Nike commercial:
TRIVIA: The sisters have met head-to-head 23 times. Serena has the edge in those matches, 13-10.
This tweet from last Friday, by rookie-in-waiting Jessica Perez, takes up the cause of one-piece swimsuits. I don’t agree 100% with the assessment (it’s not so much what a one-piecer hides as what it clings to that I find alluring), but I appreciate the sentiment.
And if you’re not yet convinced of the allure of tennis players, take a look at this viral ad for a video game called Top Spin 4.
Serena and some random model, both of them in postapocalyptic S&M outfits, volley against each other while a pulsing beat is punctuated with the sounds of a woman engaging in some kind of passionate, sweaty exertion, like tennis.
There’s something I find deeply erotic about her. She has that sweet/naughty thing going on that normally doesn’t do much for me, but here it really trips my trigger.
Those brunette tendrils, those perpetually parted lips, those sensuously bared front teeth. She seems a little dangerous.
Except now she's a well-scrubbed good girl with a line of environmentally friendly cosmetics:
…so a bit of her badass chick quality has drained away.
When she posed for a bizarre Sisley fashion campaign back in 2001, she bared it proudly. (And drank milk directly from an udder.)
Do not mess with Josie Maran.
I believe it was!
ilovesigirls thinks he's ID'd who she is. They look like Brooklyn's hips, but she just cut her hair. So he thought it must be Esti Ginzburg, but a deeper analysis of the waist-to-hip ratio led him to believe it's brand-new SI girl Jessica Perez.
(I've heard a rumor that Carolyn Murphy has also posed, but I couldn't find an image...)
If I didn’t know she was a tennis player, I would probably not have blinked at her presence in the swimsuit issue.
Ladies, snatch one up if you want to wear a piece of history.
This is a pretty incredible picture. Look at that body—it’s not the body of a model, it’s the body of an athlete. The superhero pose, and thighs you could bounce a brick off of...