For Backhand and Beforehand

Gussy Moran was just another pretty girl on the tennis circuit, but her fame has outlasted that of several great players because in 1949 she stepped onto Wimbledon's rich green court wearing frilly lace panties under her skirt. Virtually every newspaper in the western world picked up and ran a picture of Gussy's behind.

She liberated women on the court from severe, shapeless white uniforms. Now in the midst of a boom that continues to swell each year, the tennis industry is a billion-dollar business, double the figure for 1973. There are now 21 million tennis players over the age of 15 thwacking away in the U.S., and 40% of them are women. Says Alex Schuster, president of Head Ski and Sports Wear, one of the largest manufacturers of tennis outfits: "In the last three years tennis has accelerated like no other sport. It has come out of the tennis club and onto the public courts."

Some of the more conservative clubs, including about 70% of those in New York's Westchester County, still insist on a whites-must-be-worn policy. But there are now 150,000 tennis courts in the land, 10,000 of them built just last year. At almost all of them the clothes in motion these days are brighter, sexier, easier on the spectator's eye and much more fun to design.

Women are buying an estimated $100 million worth of clothing--not only dresses to play in but all sorts of center-court and apres-set accessories. Warm-up suits are one of this season's hottest items (see color pages). Designers are always ready to rip off a homely, practical garment--the Levi, the overall, the Italian porter's stripes. Now the gray, drawstring-waist sweatsuit has been transformed into a zippy new costume to wear in a market or a bar as well as at the backboard.

Women are becoming as meticulous and sophisticated about how they look around a court as at a swimming pool. Says Schuster: "They want a costume that looks good. They want to look like the stars."

Television--particularly color television--has had an enormous influence on tennis fashion. The networks reasoned that if people had color sets they wanted to see the game in color. The blur of white on green was not enough. The line was broken in 1968 by some top young male pros who appeared on the circuit in different colors of shirts. For a while the sporting palette was vivid indeed. Now, though TV has a strong preference for color, the chic look is somewhat more subdued--pastels or white with colored trimming. "There's a festivity about the whites," notes Schuster. "It reflects the club atmosphere and the affluence that goes with it."

Many women would like to look just like the restrained Chris Evert as well as to stroke like her. The fact is not lost on Chris. She travels with at least 20 different costumes plus matching hair ribbons and endorses her own line of outfits. "I like to talk to the real designers," she says, "and usually we agree. You know, flared skirts, sort of low necks, cute little tops or jackets with the skirt pattern repeated. It's neat."

Chris is not dressed by British Designer Ted Tinling, but she is one of the few top players he has not worked with. Tinling, 66, who was once a couturier in Paris, was present at the creation: it was he who designed Gussy's fancy pants. Now when he surveys the results of the revolution he began, he is not altogether happy. He coolly divides women tennis players into four categories. In Class A, of course, are the stars. He wishes he designed for Evert, but notes, "Anybody can dress a sugarplum fairy. The challenge is Margaret Court. She walks like the Queen of Sheba, but she plays like a gorilla. I have to bring out the Queen of Sheba in her."

Elite Uniform. In Class B are socialite matrons who want high fashion. "It all goes back to a motto we learned in Paris," muses Tinling: "There is no such thing as a fault, Madame, simply a characteristic." Class C, it seems, are "the club players, millions of them. They dress all wrong--skirts too short and pants too tight." Like most elitists, Tinling prefers the proletariat, "the public-park wives," whom he puts in Class D. "They buy out of a catalogue. The clothes are simple and direct"

There is little doubt that one of the simplest and most direct garments made, the warmup suit or sweatsuit, will be highly visible in the coming months. But the distance runner, who might work up a sweat just trying to get out of the old find-the-knot-in-the-drawstring model, may not recognize the glossy new suits. Wearers claim that they are more comfortable than blue jeans, and they are more flattering to most women. Along with modified riding pants, they are expected to be the most influential women's trousers for the fall. And not just for lounging around after skiing, either. Says Deedee Alexander, a buyer for Manhattan's trendy Henri Bendel: "There are some dressy suits that can be worn to the theater. We have them in black and strawberry velour just for that." The summer Olympic Games will give the warmup suit free saturation promotion on television. After the Chanel suit and Gucci loafers, it may just be the next elite uniform to take off.

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