Serena Williams wasn’t in the pink at Wimbledon 2014 (pic Katherine Shann)
It’s not often I find myself in agreement with Roger Federer, but Wimbledon’s “all-white” rule is cretinous. Of course The Federator was far to polite to actually use that word, but he has spoken out against the All England Club’s decision to eliminate as much colour as possible from the players’ attire.
In recent years competitors have got away with jazzing up their pristine white attire with the odd splash of colour. So tennis queen Serena Williams was able to don a regal purple headband or highlight her posterior with an eye-catching pair of red shorts. Sadly, those hot pants failed to make the same impact as Venus’s infamous flesh-coloured drawers in 2010.
In 2013 Roger Federer was ticked off for taking to the court in a pair of Nikes with day-glo orange soles. They weren’t nearly as offensive to the eye as veteran Radek Stepanek’s banned red and blue footwear from 2012, but still unacceptable to those All England killjoys.
A few years ago I remember commentator Pat Cash saying he would eat his hat if Tim Henman managed to win Wimbledon. Given “Tiger” Tim’s unerring ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I thought Cashie was on pretty safe ground with that boast. But the straight-talking Aussie did come unstuck with his footwear this year during a veterans’ event, after failing to observe Point 8 of Wimbledon’s revised Clothing and Equipment guidelines “Shoes must be almost entirely white, including the soles.”
In a tradition that stretches back to Gussie Moran’s lace-trimmed knickers in the 1940s, there’s nothing the press loves more during Wimbledon fortnight than an opportunity to write about ladies’ underwear. It’s so much more rewarding (and photogenic) than speculating about Andy Murray’s latest cursing outburst.
So editors must have been cheering Wimbledon’s decision to make the ladies and their “unmentionables” even more high visibility this year. If anything is going to show up through that perspiration-soaked dress (or shirt) it “must also be completely white”.
Caroline Wozniacki was able to see right through the All England Club’s underwear fixation, declaring it “creepy”. But ceremonially setting fire to your (non-white) bra, as those pioneers of women’s tennis might have done in the early 70s, is not an option these days. Wimbledon decrees that “common standards of decency are required at all times”.
As you may have detected, I am a tennis fan but I am not an admirer of strict dress codes – either in sport or in any other walk of life. I do not respect institutions who cling on to their precious, and in this case utterly pointless, traditions at the expense of flexibility or common sense.
Has anyone ever felt tempted to walk off Centre Court because a player was wearing red knickers or had an excessive amount of colour trim on their shirt? I’d be much more irritated by the grunting, shrieking and excessive towelling-off that punctuates so many matches these days.
Many of the colour combinations at this year’s French Open ranged from the unflattering (Roger Federer’s grey top with red sleeves) to the downright hideous (Tomas Berdych’s floral ensemble). But at least it was easy to distinguish one badly dressed player from another.
Of course Wimbledon’s “all white” rule is just a dress code. For much of the 20th century a sign that said “Whites Only” had very different connotations if you lived in the US or in apartheid-era South Africa. Wimbledon isn’t being racist – it’s just being annoyingly petty, pointlessly traditional and utterly British. So let’s tear up the rule book and have more stripes, more colour and more fun.
