What Do Tennis Players Do When They're Not Playing Tennis?

In this photo, Spanish tennis player Fernando Verdasco is advertising underwear. At least, that's one of the things he's showing off.

Admittedly, professional tennis players, with their eleven-month season, don't have a lot of spare time. But they know how to make good use of the spare time they do have. One of the things they do is appear in advertisements. Given their fitness and toned bodies, it's not unusual for tennis players to go shirtless in ads, as is the case with Fernando Verdasco (left). Of course, you can find just about anything on Youtube, and there is an almost 10-minute video there of shirtless tennis players, including Andy Roddick, Feliciano Lopez, Dmitri Tursunov, Tommy Haas, Robbie Ginepri, and Rafael Nadal. In fact, current number-one player Rafael Nadal goes shirtless in a commercial for Nike. On the other hand, he covers up for a Spanish commercial for a milk drink called Cola Cao. This is a bit more reminiscent of the many ads of tennis players, including Pete Sampras, Venus and Serena Williams, Andy Roddick, and, Ana Ivanovic (2008) sporting their milk mustaches in the highly popular "Got milk?" series of ads.

Although many tennis players take off their clothes in ads, some advertise other products while fully clothed. Top players, like Roger Federer, have many top of the line sponsors, such as Nike, Wilson, Rolex, and Mercedes Benz. For a couple of years now, Federer has been doing advertisements for Gillette with golfer Tiger Woods and French soccer player Thierry Henry. Recently, Gillette has replaced Henry with New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, at least for the American market. This is not unusual. Rafael Nadal makes commercials for Nike in Europe, but up to now they have never aired on American television. Now that he is the number one tennis player in the world and the 2008 Olympic gold medalist, Nike will probably make an ad with Nadal for the American market. Based on this year's U.S. Open series "Road Trip" commercial with Nadal and John McEnroe, Nadal has possibilities, but they will need to clean up his English. But he does a great job driving the bus!

Sometimes the ads take advantage of an aspect of the game that a player is especially known for, such as the Powerade commerical with big-serving Andy Roddick. In one of the great ad campaigns that went astray, Roddick was the subject of a series of American Express commercials for the 2005 U.S. Open in which Andy was looking for his "mojo." Unfortunately for Roddick and his sponsor, Andy lost in the first round. Obviously, he couldn't find his mojo when he needed it. Often, even second-rank players have multiple sponsors and do ads for all of them. For example, American player Robbie Ginepri does ads for Underarmour, a clothing company, as well as for Babolat, the French manufacturer of strings, tennis rackets, shoes, and other tennis gear. Babolat's premier American player is Andy Roddick, who also is sponsored by Lacoste, another French company.

Mind you, sexy commercials are not the exclusive province of male tennis players. Probably the queen of advertising is Maria Sharapova, whose beauty and tennis prowess make her a sponsor's dream. Her sponsors include Colgate, Canon, and upscale clothing and shoe manufacturer Cole Haan. Canon has recently done a series of amusing ads in which Maria is upstaged by her pet Pomeranian, Dolce. Actually, "Dolce" in the commericals is a dog actor named Beowulf, because Sharapova's own pet dog did not respond as well to the camera.

Probably the most notorious advertisement involving a tennis player is the Canon "Image is Everything" ad with Andre Agassi. It took years for Agassi to live down the "all flash and no substance" image it portrayed. Today, with tennis players represented by image-conscious agents like IMG, the Agassi Canon ads probably never would have been made, but that would have been a shame, because they capture an image of "cool" that would be hard to replace. These days, Agassi, who won 8 Grand Slam titles before his retirement in 2006, prefers to be known for his foundation and charitable work, which earned him a spot in Time's list of 100 most important people of 2008. But, you know, those were great ads.