Want to play at Wimbledon’s Centre Court? Forget the tennis training and work on your make-up.

When it comes to choosing which women play on Centre Court, good looks count for more than big shots.

While a succession of easy-on-the-eye unknowns have appeared in Wimbledon’s prime arena, the top women’s seeds have been relegated to lesser courts.

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A BBC source said: ‘It’s the Wimbledon play committee, not us who decides on the order of play.

‘But obviously it’s advantageous to us if there are good-looking women players on Centre Court.

‘No one has heard of many of the women now, so if they are pretty it definitely gives them an edge.

‘Our preference would always be a Brit or a babe as this always delivers high viewing figures.’

On Wednesday, Centre delivered exactly that  -  the so-called Battle of the Babes between unseeded Gisela Dulko (world ranking 45) and unseeded Maria Sharapova (ranking 60).

That would be this Maria Sharapova:

I think they may have a point.

UPDATE (7/3/09): With links coming in to this post from Grandpa John’s and No Sheeples Here, and Smitty’s Rule 5 Sunday round-up approaching (check last week’s round-up if you don’t know what I’m talking about), I decided the above picture wasn’t good enough. This post deserves more than that somber picture of her, and she has a terrific smile that should be included in this post:

There. That’s better.

I try not to post anything too risque in my Rule 5 posts, and you have no idea how hard it was to find a decent picture of Maria Sharapova smiling. All the large photos were cheesecake pics in bikinis or other skimpy outfits; the wholesome ones all seemed to be around 90 to 100 pixels on a side. I had to spend at least a half hour of going through cheesecake bikini Google Images results before I found this. It was a chore, but I gladly endured it for my readers. I hope you all appreciate the sacrifice.