Nick Kyrgios gave the crowd quite a show during the men's singles final Sunday at Wimbledon. The show wasn't over, however, after the 27-year-old Aussie lost to Serbia's Novak Djokovic, as he took part in a "final act of defiance." Kyrgios received a second-place trophy, handed over to him by the Duchess of Cambridge, at a special ceremony after the match. But before he accepted his runner-up honors, he threw a red Nike Air Jordan baseball cap on his head—a big no-no at the tennis tournament, where a rigid dress code demands all-white attire, per Sky News.
That means all outerwear, undergarments, shoes, and caps, and when they say white, they mean white—"white does not include off white or cream," the rulebook sniffs. In other words, that definitely rules out the bright-red hat that Kyrgios sported, which News18 calls akin to throwing a "regal tantrum." The duchess wore her poker face while handing Kyrgios his trophy, not seeming to react to his flouting of almost 150 years of Wimbledon tradition, per the Washington Post.
The paper notes that the reasoning for the all-white mandate stretches back to when Wimbledon started in 1877, a time when sweating in public was frowned upon; white clothing was believed to be an effective way of masking it. This wasn't the first time Kyrgios broke the dress code at this year's Wimbledon: He showed up to an interview last week in a pair of red-and-white basketball sneakers with a matching cap, and he didn't seem fazed when he got pushback on it from a reporter, who asked why he would do such a thing. "Because I do what I want," Kyrgios answered, per Sky. "So you're above the rules?" the reporter fired back. "No ... I just like wearing my Jordans," Kyrgios replied. Read more here on how others have challenged the dress code. (More Nick Kyrgios stories.)
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