LONDON, June 27 (US): Nick Kyrgios would prefer to wear all-black when competing at Wimbledon rather than stick to an all-white dress code, with the Australian on Sunday saying the tournament was out of line with what looked “cool”. court.
The grass-court specialist is known for his strict dress code and doesn’t even allow players to wear off-white or cream, while the tape measure goes out to ensure that the color trim on the necklines or sleeves is no more than a centimeter wide.
“I always want to go all black, of course,” said Kyrgios, smiling at a press conference ahead of his first-round match with British wildcard Paul Job.
“But I don’t think it’s something that will change, I don’t know.
“I think it would be nice to allow, like, a black headband or a black headband. I think it would look cool. Wimbledon obviously doesn’t really care about what looks cool… I don’t think it will ever change.”
But the prestige associated with Wimbledon was still enough to lure Kyrgios to compete despite the lack of ranking points this year due to the ban on Russian and Belarusian players, Reuters reported.
The decision essentially turned Wimbledon into an episodic event, but the main organizers are also allocating record prizes of up to 40.3 million pounds ($49.42 million).
Kyrgios, who said he did not agree with the ban because the sport’s top-ranked Daniil Medvedev would not play, added that he did not select tournaments based on the standings points offered.
“As a kid, when I was watching Wimbledon, when I wanted to play it, I wasn’t thinking about the points standings. I was thinking about playing in the most famous tournament in the world. That’s all I’m here for,” he said.
“There are people (saying) ‘I won’t play Wimbledon because of the standings. I will play with a rival this week.”
“When I’m sitting down with my kids in the future, I won’t be proud to say that I played contender instead of Wimbledon. I would choose to play Wimbledon every day of the week.”