Venus Williams at the French, Oooh La La!

Bonjour! Nothing like Paris in spring, and especially nothing like the the deep red clay here at Roland Garros. The French Open is one of my favorite of the big four tournaments, as the food and flair are everywhere.

Speaking of flair, of all the four major tournaments that make up the Grand Slam, the French Open is always known as the most colorful. The Australian Open is too early in the year for a lot of new ideas, and it's still winter. The fashion industry doesn't have its first big show until a couple of months later.

The range of color and style here at Roland Garros, especially on the women's side, goes from cute to bizarre. Usually, you find the bizarre on the bodies of players known for a little shock, like Bethany Mattek. Or in this case, Aravane Rezai of France this year. Her gold lame outfit just didn't work for me, but it is clearly in step with what happens here. I'll call it a failed attempt at putting fashion together with function.

You will also find the newest in melding fashion with athletic apparel, like the feminine yet functional top worn by Maria Sharapova. Partnered with a tennis skirt of layers of chiffon, and you have feminine yet functional. Or maybe what I believe is the best women's outfit of the tournament, Jelena Jankovic's yellow tennis dress. A masterpiece, with its lightly pleated and fitted bodice with a softly layered skirt and matching tennis short, looking both classic, feminine, and professional.

Fashion and tennis have been linked since the earliest days of the game. Men wore white cotton dress shirts, ties, and poplin slacks from the beginning, with women wearing long dresses with all the trimmings of the Victorian era. Then men dropped the tie, which was controversial for then, and wore the long sleeve shirt with slacks until a man named Henri Lacoste invented the pique knit polo shirt. Now you can't walk down any street in the world without seeing one. The Lacoste alligator is the most known brand on a polo shirt in the world. Not long after, men started to wear shorts, along with the white t-shirt. Those styles continued until the beginning of open tennis. The advent of open tennis brought the game back to the popular masses, and it was not long after that the fashionistas would come calling.

By now, you all know where I am going with this. I'm sure you have all seen the latest "design" by Venus Williams. And of course, you know that I won't let Venus Williams' outfit pass without comment. I will give Venus this, she did accomplish what she apparently was aiming for: attention and shock value. She got tons of that. But she once again took the game down the wrong path.

As I said, the close relationship of tennis to fashion has always been there, but tennis is and has always been a more genteel sport, a highly professional and classic game. Born on the grass of aristocrats' lawns, the game we know today has always been more of a high society avocation. You would find it very hard to associate anything low brow or gutter snipe with anything about the game. Nurtured in the country clubs of the world, it is a game that grew with pleasantries and manners.

What other sports do you know that when you win a point by accident you are supposed to apologize to your opponent? In what other sport do you know that if you know a call is wrong, you can give the point to your opponent or correct the call in their favor? And in what other sport do you know that at the end of the game the winner runs to shake the hand of the loser and congratulate them for a well-played match? Only tennis.

Venus stated emphatically that "lace has never been done in tennis before." Well, Venus, maybe you should do your research before stating that. I will say that lace has never been done like that in tennis before. The outfit, as one reporter on French television put it, was between flamenco dancer, french maid, and mistress. I'll categorize it more like boudoir lingerie. In many of the pictures here, it looked like she was not wearing any underwear, and from most parts of the court, it was hard to tell if you could detect the flesh colored short underneath or not.

The first use of lace in an athletic way, not counting the Victorian era garb, actually started with French tennis great Suzanne Lenglen. In the roaring '20s, she shocked the world not only with her athletic and graceful style, but also her soft tennis dresses and outfits that combined lace and silk. Yes, Venus, that's in the 1920s.

Then along came famous fashion dress designer Ted Tingling, a former Wimbledon player and long-time Master of Ceremonies at the All England Lawn Tennis Club. He caused a stir in the late 1940s by putting a colored hem on a tennis dress (at that time, tennis clothing was supposed to be all white). His colored hem angered the tennis establishment so much that they banned all color on tennis dresses and clothing.

So in protest, he did the one thing that was up to this week the most famous use of lace in tennis. He designed a pair of delicate purple lace panties that Gertrude "Gorgeous Gussy" Moran wore underneath her all white outfit and that were clear to all whenever Gussy moved across the courts to hit her shots. It was a move that got Tingling removed from the Wimbledon committee for nearly three decades.

If you look at pictures of Moran's outfit today, you see maybe a perfect use of lace. Her tennis dress was feminine yet functional for the times, and the use of lace was fashion-forward for the time, yet not too risque. It was the color more then the material that was at issue.

So Venus, lace has been done in tennis before, in so many ways. Tennis is a sport, and last time I checked, the French Open was an athletic event, not a fashion show runway. In my opinion, this time she line was crossed in a big way, and not in one that is beneficial to the game nor to the reputations of the women who play it at its highest levels. This is tennis, a game played by professionals. This is not the NBA, where tattoos have become more of the uniform and fashion than the actual team uniforms that are supposed to be. One of my friends actually said that Venus' outfit would look more appropriate on Dennis Rodman than on Venus. Ouch!

Women have a hard enough time getting recognition as athletes. Unfortunately, a women's athleticism is always paired with her beauty, especially when it comes to endorsements and the trappings usually associated with world-caliber play. To this day, Anna Kournikova still makes more in tennis related endorsements then Svetlana Kuznetsova and Martina Navratilova combined, yet was never as accomplished on the court as either of them and didn't play nearly as long. That is truly a shame, as this is not true on the men's side.

The outfit is more appropriate for Playboy magazine then for the tennis court. Heck, the outfit worn by Ashley Harkleroad in Playboy was less risque, at least when she had it on. I am sure that Venus would not wear a similar regular dress to a black tie affair where she was being given a prestigious award. (I might be wrong there, given this event.) Nor would she wear it if she were to meet the Queen of England or the President of the United States. Yes, she might wear it to a nightclub, or to bed, but both of those are not athletic events. The outfit didn't enhance her game, nor did it enhance the women's game. Nor did it really advance tennis fashion.

I am not a prude, and I appreciate good fashion on both men and women. I worry about what comes next, especially given tennis. Video games have gone in just a generation from cute blips on a screen like Pacman to extremely violent like Grand Theft Auto. Music has gone from songs you could actually sing in public with stories to tell to hip-hop beats laced with profanity and vanity. Professional sports, especially the NBA, NFL, and MLB, have gone from contests of skill and class to contests of bravado and thuggery. No, this one outfit of Venus will not take tennis there, but it should start to sound the alarm. It is only a short step from an outfit like this to playing naked, honestly.

Granted, the play here in Paris has been relatively uneventful, with the exception of Jo Wilfried Tsonga's epic first round five-setter and Andy Roddick's three-set fall to Teimuraz Gabashvili. If you are French, then Gael Monfils five set loss to Fabio Fagnini in the second round was heart-wrenching. There have been plenty of good matches, but no big surprises.

So I guess you could say that the most excitement so far is Venus' outfit. No pun intended.