Maria Sharapova in action against Nuria Llagostera Vives at Wimbledon on Tuesday

Oh, yes, sport can bring you sex and drugs and rock’’roll. But not all at once. Athletics for drugs, football for (bad) rock’’roll ? and tennis for sex.

Tennis is perhaps the only game in the world that was specifically designed for sex. It was invented as a kind of garden pat-ball and it was called sphairistike. If that doesn’t sound quite as sexy as Maria Sharapova’s running, double-fisted drive-volley complete with orgasmic shriek, or Rafael Nadal doing the action-hero stuff in his Jacques Tati trousers, bear with me.

The point is that a chap could play sphairistike with a female sort of chap ? and do so without a chaperone. The net still lay between the couple like the sword of Tristan and Iseult, but there is an intimacy in sporting exchanges and a physicality that beats the hell out of eye contact over the cucumber sandwiches.

Later on, tennis clubs became part of the social life of the country, not just because tennis is a nice game but because it’s a great way to meet girls and get physical. It is at least partly because of tennis’ role in the making of 20th-century sexuality that tennis remains, five years into the 21st, the game of sex.

Wimbledon is the sexiest tournament of them all because of its primness, because of the feeling that all the time the chaperone is lurking around the corner. At Wimbledon, it feels as if we have got away with something. Is sex dirty, then? As Woody Allen famously remarked, only if it’s done right.

So on Tuesday, Centre Court gave us both Sharapova and Nadal: both teenagers, both Grand Slam champions, both bimbos. Why not? You’d be a bimbo, too, if there was 20 million quid in it. People will fling endorsements at those who can do the champion-bimbo double. Especially if they are tennis players.

Anna Kournikova at her peak was comely enough. But the terrific aura of sexiness that hung around her came from the game she was actually, briefly, rather good at. Without tennis, she would have been just another pretty girl. Tennis made her a hyper sexy millionairess. She was still making a fortune when she couldn’t win a match to save her life.

But Sharapova won Wimbledon last year. She arrived on Centre Court Tuesday in a curious coat and stripped this off to show a dress artfully contrived to make the most of her: bare at the shoulders, translucent panels, a little skirt complete with VPL, swirly enough to give every photographer a chance for the Marilyn-over-the-grating shot.

Her body language has changed since last year ? less gauche, less coltish, less inclined to assume ridiculous positions between points. But she still does the double-hair-fiddle every time she serves: bounce-bounce, fiddle-fiddle, wallop. And she walloped Nuria Llagostera Vives, a Spaniard who could just about see over the net and had to jump up to shake the umpire’s hand after she had been dispatched in straight sets.

I don’t wish to spoil the story, but the truth of the matter is that Sharapova is not beautiful. You could find 100 prettier faces in the audience, but the glorious athlete’s body, the champion’s poise and, above all, the tennis: it’s a combination that makes her irresistible.

Without tennis, she’d be pretty; with tennis, at this time, in this place, she’s the sexiest woman in the world.

Meanwhile, everyone’s favourite Wimbledon story is the time they rolled back the covers on Centre Court after a long afternoon of rain and found beneath a sort of lascivious still-life: a bottle of champagne and a pair of knickers.

I’d like to believe that this story is true, but it wouldn’t be funny and it wouldn’t be sexy if it took place at Catford dogs or Stamford Bridge. It’sWimbledon: once again, sex rears its comely head.