my opinion BY ERIC MEDITZ
What’s the Story With Wearing All White? rowing up on Long Island, I had a reputation that I was a good tennis player. Much like many people with similar reputations, I was asked constantly throughout the summers of my youth if I could participate in Member/Guest Country Club Tournaments all throughout the area. For those of you who don’t know what they are, they are tennis events where male country club members go out and try to bring in the best doubles partner they can find. Then when play starts, the member stands 3-ft. off to the side of the doubles line and their guest goes out and tries to do all the winning. Occasionally throughout a match, the member puts away an easy overhead because of their guest’s efforts. This is usually followed by everyone making a big deal that the member hit one of the best shots anyone has ever seen. Now I know this all sounds pretty bizarre, and an outsider
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who never heard of Member/Guest Tennis Tournaments probably would have a tough time comprehending all of this lunacy, but for me, this filled many weekends of my summers growing up. Despite all of this, I always accepted this dysfunction for what it was and enjoyed the free meal that usually accompanied it. But there was one thing that always left a bad taste in my mouth.
“For as long as I can remember, I never understood the purpose of wearing all white. What does a clothing color have to do with anything?” Many times after I accepted the invitation to participate as a guest in one of these
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Long Island Tennis Magazine • January/February 2011 • LITennisMag.com
tournaments, the member who invited me to play casually mentions in passing, “Oh, by the way, when you show up on Saturday, you have to wear all white … and also a collared shirt.” For some reason, a lot of tennis clubs force the people who are playing on their courts to wear all white. Even if you are going on the court to hit for 15 sec., you have to be decked out in gleaming white gear. For as long as I can remember, I never understood the purpose of wearing all white. What does a clothing color have to do with anything? Now when I hear that I have to wear all white along with a collared shirt at a Member/Guest Tennis Tournament, I then have to go through cardboard boxes in my parent’s attic to find something I can conjure up. And we all know that there is no way in hell I’m going to buy anything in the country club pro shop to satisfy these people’s sick rules. So I see what I have in the attic, and it’s usually along the lines of something that would have fit me and was fashionable when I was 12-years-old. You can always tell who the guests are because they are in the absurdly tight tennis clothes from years past that either say, “Ellesse” or “The Lendl Collection” on the side of the sleeve. The reason why we do this is because we don’t want to spend any money on new white collared tennis shirts and white shorts that they will never wear again. Nowadays, if you walk around society wearing all white, people will think that something is wrong with you, or that you are a mental patient trying to make a run for it. And to tell you the truth, I have enough problems at this point of my life try-