Roland-Garros: are certain outfits prohibited for players?

2023-06-01 18:15:54

Serena Williams’ tight jumpsuit in 2018, Stan Wawrinka’s checkered shorts in 2015, Andre Agassi’s denim shorts in 1988… Roland-Garros sometimes looks like Fashion Week.

Between zebra and fluorescent outfits or even wacky patterns, the spectators of the Grand Slam at the Porte d’Auteuil see all the colors every year. However, in a sport sometimes considered sanitized, there are strict rules.

This is particularly the case with Wimbledon, the British Grand Slam, which requires players to be “dressed in appropriate tennis attire, almost entirely white, from the moment the player enters the court”. Inside the cap, underwear, laces, soles… everything goes and there’s no question that the white is off-white or cream.

Following players’ anxiety to wear white underwear when playing during their menstrual cycle, the Wimbledon dress code could be changed as early as 2023 to no longer be required to dress in white for undergarments size. pic.twitter.com/yU6jpvbocU

— Benoit Maylin (@BenoitMaylin) November 11, 2022

At Roland-Garros, this is not the case. Players are free to dress however they wish, despite the controversy surrounding Serena Williams’ outfit in 2018.

The American player had presented herself at Porte d’Auteuil with a tight black jumpsuit, adorned with a red belt. An outfit that did not please the president of the FFT at the time, Bernard Giudicelli, who had put forward the idea of ​​imposing a “dress code” following this outfit which bothered him.

The idea of ​​a dress code mentioned in 2018

“I think we sometimes went too far. This outfit will no longer be accepted. You have to respect the game and the place. Everyone wants to take advantage of this setting, ”lamented the manager.

If the director of the tournament at the time Guy Forget had announced the imminent introduction of a “dress code” “more flexible than at Wimbledon”, it never appeared in the end. A few months later, the latter had assured that he had “no intention of prohibiting anything”.

For now, thearticle 7 of the FFT regulations indicates that “players must wear clothes compatible with the practice of tennis”, but specifies that “each competition organizer may define specific provisions concerning the clothing of players, in compliance with the framework defined in the paragraphs “.