Tennis Has Seen It Before--From Women

As Pierre Baseline, your widely known authority on tennis fashion, we address the subject today of Andre Agassi in Paris and the skirmish in which he is engaged with tournament officials.

It is the general consensus there that Andre is not dressing in a style befitting the French Open. Under shabby black shorts, he has been wearing hot lava tights. His hair is unkempt and he usually needs a shave.

Folks at the French Open haven’t yet decided how to describe Agassi, but while they are making up their minds, they would tell you he looks like a bum.

Even if he does, the question is raised by Andre whether this is germane to playing tennis. Is it an athletic contest they are running, or are they showing the spring collection?

Agassi isn’t the first to challenge tennis propriety. Women have been doing it for decades, dating all the way back to Suzanne Lenglen in the 1920s.

A daring French type, Suzanne was the first woman in big-time tennis to bare a leg.

In those days, women players didn’t wear bras. They bound themselves with material. Refusing to wear anything under her blouse, Suzanne raced for a ball one day--and out popped one of her upper parts.

Tennis was ready to drop dead.

Then along comes Gussie Moran at Wimbledon, where a famed tennis couturier, Ted Tinling, designs for her some underpants trimmed in Belgique lace. It’s as if someone sticks a finger in Wimbledon’s tea. Shocked officials allow Gussie to stay in the tournament, but her pants are kicked out.

“Why did you decide to wear them?” we once asked Gussie.

She shrugged. “It was a free pair of pants,” she answered.

“Didn’t you know the gods would be offended?”

“A woman’s pants,” she replied, “are her own business.”

Mind you, this is 1949. Those involved today in the feminist movement are reminded they didn’t invent it.

Well, a striking figure named Karol Fageros, tall, blonde, richly tanned, would then one-up Gussie. Karol appeared on the court in underpants of dazzling gold lame, soon to win her the billing of “Golden Goddess of Tennis.”

A signorina from Italy would follow with underpants trimmed in mink, a Brazilian would sport panties of bright cerise and an American would display sequins.

For tennis, it was a spreading brush fire. The game didn’t know which blaze to extinguish next.

At West Side Tennis Club of Long Island, a seat of pomposity, a rule was instituted forbidding spaghetti straps, halter necklines and hip huggers. And if anyone developed the notion he or she could bare a navel, West Side reminded the peasant it was illegal.

Arguments over tournament attire then would generally vanish, reappearing five years ago at Wimbledon when a woman named Anne White turned up in a jogging suit, which she would peel off, revealing a white body stocking.

Anne rose 5 feet 10 1/2 inches. However you cared to describe her construction, she was put together. Jaws of those viewing her in the body stocking dropped.

At Wimbledon headquarters, the alarm sounded, as if someone were trying a break-in. Anne thought they were going to call Scotland Yard.

“I was led to the office like a naughty little girl,” she recalled. “The director told me, ‘I must ask you not to wear that frock.’ ”

Nor was her cause helped by her opponent, Pam Shriver, expressing disgust at such a broach of Wimbledon etiquette. White wanted to slug her. But afraid of being defaulted for improper dress, she abandoned the body stocking.

So what kind of case do you make for Agassi, romping about in his hot lava tights, upsetting the chief of the French Tennis Federation, Monsieur Philippe Chatrier?

A Parisian, appearing in threads bearing the unmistakable stamp of custom tailoring, Chatrier is an old tennis promoter who began working audiences about the time Jack Kramer did. Does Chatrier have a bona fide beef against Andre?

It can be said in the Frenchman’s behalf that other sports embrace dress codes--football, baseball, basketball, hockey. Golfers are impeccable, mainly because they are selling the stuff they wear.

To uplift their profession, once likened to pool, bowlers set forth a rigid code of dress, calling for “neat hair, neat shirt, neat pants--no jeans.”

We ask the head of the PBA whether a guy is allowed to cuss if he rolls a 7-10 split.

“Only to himself,” he answers.

In cricket, you are asked to wear white, and hot lava pants are not permitted in soccer, much less polo.

Do French tennis officials have the right to ask Andre to tidy up, or are his pants his own business, as they were Gussie’s?

Whoever wins this argument is no affair of ours. We just don’t want the kid to misinterpret looking like a vagrant for looking cool.