Radwanska's photo shoot had her sitting naked by a swimming pool filled with tennis balls. She had her arms covering her front and she was smiling.
But the 24-year-old Radwanska comes from Poland, a heavily Roman Catholic country, and her naked posing caused an uproar. She had been an ambassador for a campaign called, "I'm not ashamed of Jesus," which is run by a group called the Youth Crusade. The group took away her ambassadorship, it said in a statement, because of "immoral behavior."
It was a relaxed and smiling Radwanska who spoke Monday in Carlsbad in advance of her first match later in the week.
Radwanska said she didn't have a second thought about doing the photo shoot when ESPN approached her and never expected the reaction it received back in Poland.
"It was a great thing to do, I thought," she said. "I had never done that kind of photo shooting before and it was great, really fun. And it was for a sports magazine and the whole interview inside was about my tennis, so why would anyone mind? That's what I thought."
She isn't the first tennis player to have appeared in that issue.
Radwanska comes here after what she called "a pleasing" start to the summer hard-court season. She lost Sunday in the final of the event at Stanford, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, to Dominika Cibulkova.
Etc.
Fifth-seeded
CoCo Vandeweghe, a 21-year-old from nearby Rancho Santa Fe, beat Olga Savchuk of Ukraine, 7-6 (3), 6-3, Monday to qualify for the main draw. Vandeweghe is ranked No. 199 in the world and has won only four
Her biggest win came in Monterrey, Mexico, where she upset eventual
Vandeweghe said she has been concentrating hard this summer on fitness work and thinks that by being in better shape she can avoid all the injuries that plagued her last season and early this season. In 2010, Vandeweghe had made it to the quarterfinals here.
In an all-Italian marathon,
