Welcome to this website’s off-season sports sartorial content. We are counting down the world’s top 50 most iconic sports uniforms. Only current uniforms apply, we are not including one-off or alternate uniforms. Let’s stick to the basics.
#12
Wimbledon White
People wear shorts and baseball hats to weddings these days without a care in the world so it’s safe to say society looks a lot differently upon dress codes than in the past. In this way, things at the Wimbledon tennis tournament are kind of refreshing. For the last 140+ years or so when you play in The Championship at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club the expectation, nay the rule, is that you must wear all-white from head to toe.
The origin of this dress code is exactly what you’d expect from 1870’s upper-class English folk. As sweat was considered unseemly, the all-white outift hid the stains the most. Plus, the all-white had the added benefit of showing off one’s wealth as it was difficult to keep clean for an ordinary person of the time.
Off-white or cream colors? Not allowed. Something other than white for your training gear or warm up suit? Also not allowed. Too much color on the undersole of your sneakers? You’ll have to change them. A strip of color too wide on your shirt? That too, will not do.
The flamboyant Andre Agassi refused to play at Wimbledon from 1988-90 due to the dress code, but the tournament officials didn’t budge.
Wimbledon has been criticized heavily for catering to the affluent and being closed off to the multicultural and lower socioeconomic people of London, which are all fair issues. Recently, the tournament allowed women to wear dark colored clothing underneath their skirts or shorts in a rare instance of change.
The tradition of all-white still remains, and in many ways defines the ‘look’ of playing tennis all over the world. Looking past the stuffiness, it’s a pretty neat cultural impact for sports uniforms.
I approve of Nadal for this picture. Also holy crap look at his hand position on the slice he’s about to hit. Brian Philips once wrote that Nadal hit topspin forehands “Like he was trying to murder friction.” That’s the vibe I’m getting on how much slice is about to be put on that approach shot with that racketball grip.
If you need a good summer read, highly recommend Agassi’s autobiography Open. He’s open, about his drug habit, about losing the French Open Final because he was worried his wig was going to come loose, how at the very top it’s such a mental game (look up the story of how he beat Becker in his first Wimbledon win by using Becker’s tongue position to read his serve).
Great book, not just for tennis nerds.
Didn’t think of this one, but after reading I would move this up into the top 10
Same. Clearly a lot of thought went into this Top 50. I imagine Eric going down a long list of sports near the end of his editing and saying “did I miss any big ones” and then boom, this gets added and bumps off #51. Or maybe he had it in there from the beginning, but I didn’t see it coming.
Also, looking forward to the discussion guessing #51 and any other honorable mentions.
I would call it more than stuffiness