Bethanie Mattek-Sands rarely does anything low-key.
Not content with the stir caused by knocking out seventh seed Ana Ivanovic last night, the American then raised the stakes by branding Wimbledon’s all-white dress code “excessive”.
Mattek-Sands has been known to take to the court in a jacket decorated with tennis balls or a straw hat with her hair dyed but it is the strict level of enforcement at this year’s Championships that has prompted her criticism.
Eugenie Bouchard narrowly escaped censure for wearing a black bra under a white dress during her defeat by Chinese qualifier Ying-Ying Duan and after Mattek-Sands comprehensively beat Ivanovic 6-3, 6-4, the world No158 said: “I think it’s gotten a little excessive.
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“I actually packed in my bag some of the skirts with the coloured underwear and obviously that’s a no-go this year. I’m upset about that.
“You could wear the colours before, I thought that looked cool.
“It was funny because I was actually Googling some players like when John McEnroe played, Arthur Ashe, they had colour everywhere.
“They had colour on their sleeves, big stripes, they were coming out in coloured jackets. So I feel it’s actually gotten stricter.
“I think it’s a little much when Ivo Karlovic had to paint a little bit of his shoe white.”
