Fit For A Gentleman: Brooks Brothers and Roger Federer

By Matthew Longcore

Each summer, the incoming inductees at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island  are welcomed into the esteemed club with the presentation of their official custom-made Brooks Brothers blazers. This year’s blazer presentation will take place during the Fit for Fame event on Friday, August 28. This event includes a cocktail party and a seated dinner, complete with the incoming ITHF Class of 2026 and appearances by past Hall of Famers.

I have had the honor of joining my friends from Brooks Brothers at this event for the past two years. This year will mark my third appearance at the celebration weekend. I am especially looking forward to the blazer presentation ceremony, which will include twenty-time major champion Roger Federer who will be inducted in the Player Category, along with sportscaster and journalist Mary Carillo who will be inducted in the Contributor Category.

Roger Federer is one of my favorite athletes of all time. His contributions to the sport of tennis are legendary. According to the International Tennis Hall of Fame:

“Federer is one of only eight men in tennis history to achieve a career Grand Slam in singles and was the first male player in tennis history to win 20 major singles titles. He held the world No. 1 ranking for a record 237 consecutive weeks, ultimately holding that spot for 310 total weeks throughout his career. During his ATP career, he captured 103 singles titles, received the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award 13 times, and was voted as ATP Fan Favorite for a record 19 consecutive years. Federer captured an Olympic gold medal in doubles in 2008, led Switzerland to the 2014 Davis Cup title and created the Laver Cup to honor Hall of Famer Rod Laver’s global legacy.”

It is entirely fitting that Roger Federer – the ultimate gentleman of the tennis world – should be presented with a Brooks Brothers blazer on the hallowed grounds of the legendary Newport Casino. In many ways, Federer – like the seaside resort of Newport itself – is a throwback to a bygone era.

Federer is known for his sportsmanship, grace, and humility both on and off the court. During his career, he played the game of tennis beautifully, making outstanding athletic achievements look effortless. Federer is widely admired for displaying composure and self-control under pressure, and for his respectful treatment of rivals, officials, and fans. His philanthropic efforts include the Roger Federer Foundation, which supports early childhood education.

Federer is the epitome of a “sporting gentleman” as described by the late E. Digby Baltzell. Baltzell was a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who popularized the acronym “WASP” and famously chronicled the American upper class. Baltzell, from an old money Philadelphia family, was very much a member of the class that he wrote about.

Baltzell’s work frequently intersects with the history of traditional Ivy League menswear and institutions like Brooks Brothers, representing the cultural and sartorial codes of the 20^th century American establishment. In his book The Protestant Establishment Revisited (1991), Baltzell references Brooks Brothers – founded in 1818, America’s oldest retailer – as the definitive establishment clothing brand of the mid-20^th century. Baltzell recalls that during his time as a doctoral student at Columbia University in the early 1950s, “ambitious graduate students still looked to Brooks Brothers rather than the local Army and Navy Store for their sartorial standards.” (Baltzell 1991: 210)

Ivy League students dressed in tweed jackets, oxford button down shirts, and bow ties. And they did not necessarily come from upper class WASP backgrounds. For members of the upper class, like Baltzell, this style of clothing was a birthright. For others, it became an aspirational style.

Ivy League style, as an aspirational style, would reach a crescendo of popularity with the publication of Take Ivy (1965), the stylistic blueprint for Japanese youth interested in “American Traditional” or “Ametora” style. However, this would all change by the late 1960s, with the arrival of the anti-establishment counterculture and the hippie movement. Whereas college students of all socioeconomic backgrounds had once aspired to dress like their privileged classmates from private preparatory schools, this became unfashionable in the countercultural hippie era. Baltzell writes, “And very soon everyone gave up trying, as the Brooks Brothers dress code was replaced by the blue-jean-and-backpack campus culture of the 1960s.” (Baltzell 1991: 223)

Baltzell lamented the late 1960s as a time when high standards of propriety and decorum disappeared from American culture. This was evident to Baltzell not only in the decline of proper dress, but also in the decline of proper behavior. In his book Sporting Gentlemen: Men’s Tennis from the Age of Honor to the Cult of the Superstar (1995), Baltzell covers the origins of the sport with a focus on the tennis code of honor rooted in the cricket code of the Anglo-American upper class in the late 19^th century.

The book explores how by the late 1960s and 1970s, a genteel honor code of sportsmanship was replaced with a vulgar superstar culture of showmanship. Gentlemen tennis players in the mold of Arthur Ashe fell out of fashion, eclipsed by “bad boys” like Jimmy Connors. Known for his frequent arguments with umpires and obscene gestures, Connors was just one of many professional tennis players who changed the game from the polite country club sport it had once been.

Digby Baltzell passed away in 1996, the same year that a young Roger Federer – at the age of 14 – joined the ITF junior tennis circuit and played his first match there at a grade-2 tournament in Switzerland. I believe Baltzell would be greatly pleased to see that in the decades since his passing, men’s tennis has once again become a place for sporting gentlemen.

Roger Federer has certainly not been alone in forging this upward trajectory. Players such as Pete Sampras, Rafael Nadal, and Jannik Sinner all exhibit gentlemanly qualities – and are all worthy of the International Tennis Hall of Fame (Sampras was inducted in 2007). But Federer, more than anyone, epitomizes the virtues what Baltzell calls a “sporting gentleman.”

Federer was born in Basel, Switzerland on August 8, 1981.  The Federer family is an old Swiss family which originates in Berneck, St. Gallen. At age eight, his mother, Lynette, enrolled him in the elite junior program of the Old Boys Tennis Club which was established in 1927 in Basel. Federer’s first Grand Slam win came at Wimbledon in 2003, when he defeated Pete Sampras.

Suzi Petkovski included Roger Federer in her profile of the most influential players in the history of tennis stating:

The world’s most recognised sportsman in his glorious heyday, Federer switched the globe onto tennis with his beautiful game, record-breaking feats and sportsmanship. Almost 20 years since E. Digby Baltzell’s Sporting Gentlemen – a lament for how far professional tennis had strayed from its Victorian values of honour and civility, the Swiss maestro has restored tennis to a game of sporting gentlemen. The bad boys have been banished. Federer has made nice the new normal.

Tennis has not had a more eloquent spokesman than Federer, who submits to press conferences in three languages. The onerous load speaks of his responsibility to the game but also affords him a global reach unmatched by any other champion. Federer’s character and good deeds off the court have brought honour to tennis as much as his brilliant record. No champion has been more admired and adored.

In an article for the Tennis Channel, Steve Tignor writes about the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, named after the great Australian tennis champion who “was, in many ways, the Federer of his day.” Tignor adds that “If Baltzell were writing today, he might have compared Brookes to our own Roger Federer.”

Sigrid Neubauer describes Federer as “the ultimate gentleman of sports” stating, “In the grueling world of professional sports, where the space for mistakes – professional or personal – is ever shrinking, Roger Federer not only stands out as one of the greatest tennis players of all time but has also distinguished himself as a gentleman on and off-court.”

Federer has been the recipient of the prestigious Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award a record 13 times, voted on by his own peers on the ATP tour. During his career, he was famous for correcting missed baseline calls in favor of his opponents, waiting patiently for crowd disruptions to settle, and routinely applauding great shots hit against him. Always gracious in defeat, Federer maintained a reputation for treating his rivals with dignity and addressing the public with humility.

A navy blazer from Brooks Brothers has long been a staple of a gentleman’s wardrobe. I look forward to joining my friends from Brooks Brothers in Newport on August 28 to watch them present this blazer to the ultimate gentleman of tennis.