Wimbledon asks Roger Federer to switch shoes
Roger Federer wore these shoes in his first-round match at Wimbledon. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
WIMBLEDON, England -- Seven-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer was asked to shelve his orange-soled Nike shoes because they violated the All England Club's dress code of predominantly white tennis attire, according to The Daily Mail.
ESPN.com confirmed the report and quoted a Wimbledon spokesperson as saying that Federer was one of "a few players with minor infringements who were advised to make changes for the next round." It wasn't immediately known which players besides Federer were cautioned about their clothing, but Reuters reported that all of the warnings were related to shoes.
Federer played his first-round match Monday on Centre Court in an all-white kit accented by bright orange Nike swooshes. The dimpled soles of his shoes were a slate of bright orange, which ran afoul of Wimbledon's guidelines for its "prominently white" clothing rule:
• No solid mass of colouring
• Little or no dark or bold colours
• No fluorescent colours
• Preference towards pastel colours
• Preference for the back of the shirt to be totally white
• Preference for shorts and skirts to be totally white
• All other items of clothing, including hats, socks and shoe uppers to be predominantly white
Here was Federer's entire kit from Monday:
(Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Serena Williams took the court Tuesday with bright orange tennis shorts under her white dress, which is a more visible flash of color than the soles of Federer's shoes. (She also wore these shoes.) Same with Alize Cornet's red shorts under her white dress.
(Julian Finney/Getty Images)
But a Wimbledson spokesman told Reuters: "The rules state that players can wear any color underwear they like provided it is no longer than their shorts or skirt. Anything else must be white."
Federer faces Sergiy Stakhovsky in the second round on Centre Court on Wednesday.
UPDATE: Here are the shoes Federer wore for his second-round match:
(Reuters)