It isn’t every day in our business that you get to expense the latest copy of Playboy under the extraordinary explanation that it’s needed for research.

But when the world’s premier men’s magazine decided to make our very own Ashley Harkleroad its August cover story, well, what was an inquisitive sports writer to do?

Not that I’ve apparently been the first person in the Chattanooga area to plop down $6.54 (including tax) for the eight pages of color photos and one page of copy profiling the world’s No. 71 tennis player.

“Oh, it’s been unreal,” Tom Fisher, manager of Books-A-Million at Hamilton Place, said Monday morning. “We’ve had to restock the shelves at least once a day since it came out on Friday. We’ve already sold 50 to 60 copies, and that’s probably five times more than we would usually sell over that period of time.”

Barnes and Noble manager Valerie Gogan has seen similar interest at her Hamilton Place store, even if she couldn’t satisfy it until copies arrived Monday.

“Oh, there have been a lot of requests for this one,” Gogan said. “I haven’t seen this much interest in a magazine since Sports Illustrated put the University of Tennessee on the cover a year or so ago. I just wish we’d had the magazine on the shelf this past weekend, but we’ve got it now.”

The object of all this attention seemed to be handling it all quite well from her Malibu home Monday evening. After all, Harkleroad takes the court today against Stephanie Dubois in the opening round of the East West Bank Classic. She’s got more important things on her mind than worrying about the public’s reaction to a Playboy cover whose headline blared: “U.S. TENNIS PRO REVEALS ALL ... Ashley Harkleroad — Nude Tennis, Anyone?”

“They sent me a few copies a couple of weeks ago, just so I’d be ready for the questions,” she said. “So I’ve been bracing for it. I’ve been doing interviews with ESPN and CBS the last couple of days. It’s been fun at times and stressful at times. I’m getting better at my answers, though.”

Stressful is being the parent of a child who takes a payday in the general neighborhood of $400,000 to show off her birthday suit at newsstands across the globe.

“There’s really nothing to say,” Danny Harkleroad, a Fort Oglethorpe real estate agent, said over the weekend. “It is what it is. We didn’t want her to do it, but we support our daughter in anything that she does. We will support her and stand by her.”

Said Ashley: “My parents have been great. They’ve been super supportive of every decision I’ve ever made.”

Danny also said Ashley saw this as a business opportunity, and even the most conservative among us might grudgingly admit that earning a mid-six-figure paycheck to do pretty much anything within the law is a fairly smart business decision.

Put another way, 400 grand would be 40 percent of the prize money the 23-year-old Harkleroad has earned during her eight years on the tour.

Not that Ashley exactly described it that way in the magazine. (Note to Accounting: See, I really did read the article!)

According to the United States’ fifth-ranked player: “The decision to do Playboy came from this newfound pride in my body and in my strength as an athlete. I feel sexy in my skin now.”

We can’t repeat everything she said on page 137, because she said a little something about everything, and we mean everything.

But we can repeat her thoughts on former pro Anna Kournikova, the player she most often has been compared to in the looks department: “Anna is stunning to look at, but she’s probably a bit damaged from what she’s been through. That’s how she acts — a bit damaged.”

She discussed her earlier obsession with diet and exercise that briefly forced her off the tour a couple of years ago: “I was so afraid of gaining weight, I’d go into major competitions having drunk nothing but water. I knew I had to stop.”

Regarding possible steroid use on tour she said, “It’s out there, definitely. If you look at some of these girls and then look at their parents, you can see something’s fishy.”

As for her hometown of Flintstone, Ga., “I grew up in a place with one stoplight, but look at me now. I’m still true to my upbringing, but I’m so grateful to get this chance to show myself as a woman, as an athlete, as someone who has struggled to overcome things.”

So what does she think of her photos now that that they’re out?

“I thought the layout was very sweet and classy,” she said.

And the article?

“Who really reads the articles?” she said, laughing.

(Shhhhhh! You’re ruining my chance to recoup $6.54.)

But the biggest question is this: Would she do it again?

Said Harkleroad with a soft giggle: “Depends on how much they’d pay me.”

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