Christina Kim to Appear in ESPN the Mag's Body Issue

Last month, rumors had Danica Patrick appearing in ESPN the Magazine's Oct. Body Issue, which would feature male and female athletes is various stages of undress. According to Danica's people (via CNBC.com's Darren Rovell), she's "NOT confirmed to appear in the issue, nor has she even been approached."

Still no word on Patrick's intentions, but yesterday, Golf Digest's Ron Sirak wrote that three LPGA players will appear in the magazine and, shockingly, one of them isn't Anna Rawson.

An LPGA executive said Sunday that Sandra Gal, a second year player from Germany by way of the University of Florida, Anna Grzebien, a second year player from Duke, and Christina Kim, who is in her seventh year on tour, will appear in the Oct. 19 "Bodies" issue...

The three LPGA players will appear with golf-themed items -- carts, clubs etc. -- covering strategic parts. But as always happens in these cases, more attention will fall on the female athletes and they will somehow be seen as undermining the credibility of their sports, a charge never leveled at male athletes in beefcake poses.

Ah, yes, sports-themed photography, almost as artistic as those Olan Mills backdrops we all survived in the '70s and '80s.

Forgetting for the moment the three LPGA players who have agreed to appear in the magazine (two women I've never heard of and another who is better known for on-course ebullience*), no way there's a credibility backlash after the issue comes out.

Rawson has been criticized for her inability to think before opening her mouth, but not for modeling career. At least not to the point where it has been bad for the LPGA. And I suspect it'll be similar once Gal, Grzebien and Kim grace the pages of The Mag.

That doesn't mean other LPGA Tour players might disagree with the decision, but they'll get over it. I don't remember a lot of hemming and hawing when David Toms appeared with his bikini-wearing wife in Sports Illustrated. In fact, I'm guessing Kim's antics at the Solheim Cup will have garnered more attention than a couple "golf-themed" pics in a weekly magazine when we look back on the last few months. (Depending on where the photographers "strategically" place the golf carts, anyway.)

* I'll be honest: I seldom follow the LPGA. Maybe Gal and Grzebien are well known, I just don't, well, know them.

via Geoff Shackleford