The term “men’s tennis style” tends to conjure the classics: short shorts with silver waist tabs, white polo shirt with a discreet logo on the chest, and maybe a terry cloth headband with a navy or green cheat-line through the middle. It’s a look with its roots in the Victorian era, but plenty of places around the world still maintain this traditional image (one big example: Wimbledon, the London-based Slam, requires an all-white dress code).
But peer beyond the surface fuzz, and there’s far more nuance to on-court style. For decades, male tennis players have added their own stamps of flair and flourish to varying degrees, from René Lacoste’s pragmatism in the 1920s (more on him shortly) to Andre Agassi’s rebel-child jorts of the 1990s (more on him, too).
Arguably, while prior eras had their characters, the 2000s were when the diversification of men’s tennis style accelerated. “Since Roger Federer’s dabbling in the world of higher fashion, the floodgates for who gets to be interested in style have really opened in men’s tennis,” says Caitlin Thompson, co-founder and publisher of the tennis lifestyle publication Racquet. “Looking past current brand partnerships—though Lorenzo Musetti for Bottega Veneta and Stefanos Tsitsipas in a Loro Piana cape are elite examples—we now have a larger group of players who feel like they can experiment with style in a more overt way.”
Below, our list of the best, most notable, and most standout men’s tennis style fixtures.
René Lacoste
René Lacoste—oui, of the surname-eponymous, crocodile-emblazoned label currently repped by the likes of Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev—broke the mold in the 1920s. Tired of the long-sleeve shirts and pleated trousers that had until then been the men’s tennis norm, he shortened his sleeves into what would ultimately become the iconic Lacoste polo shirt as we know it today.