WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND — Venus Williams clobbered an opponent and barged onto the Wimbledon fashion medal stand Thursday, displacing Maria Sharapova in the latter and vital competition.
Before Williams' 6-2, 6-2 win over 170th-ranked Hana Sromova, Sharapova's swan get-up had seemed to hold the bronze level of attention next to Roger Federer's elegant ensemble with the silver and Tatiana Golovin's red undershorts with the gold.
Then Williams turned up for her second-round match in white shorts that posed no threat to the world's thread supply, jostling the list so that Sharapova fell off and Federer's Jay Gatsby bit dipped to third, while Golovin's red undershorts remained insuperable at No. 1.
"I really haven't played in shorts before," Williams said, "but my skirt was so big, I couldn't fit it, so I had to move to the shorts immediately."
That pivotal verdict wound up making Williams' legs look even longer, presumed an impossibility. It also lent more stir to the stir of late afternoon, when the unassuming Court No. 18 went all Times Square as the Williams sisters played doubles at a Grand Slam for the first time in four years -- against a British tandem.
Fans stood four-deep on the overhang that provides a downward view. Other fans lined up 20-deep hoping for vacated seats even as every seat filled. As the Williamses brought their racket bags and their big gold pocketbooks onto the court, fans strained for a glimpse through the slats in a side fence.
At least two lads looking down from the roof garden atop the broadcast center used their zoom lens on Williams' outfit in an isolated reminder of Wimbledon's glorious absurdity.
The six-time Grand Slam doubles champion team of Williams and Williams, a wild-card entry, throttled Claire Curran and Anne Keothavong, 6-1, 6-3, and also may have indulged in gossip, which Serena Williams listed among their doubles techniques.
"We're always so positive with each other," said Venus Williams, who very well might combat a swan in a fourth-round doozy, and who did field two questions about her shorts.
The 17th-ranked Golovin fielded 17 questions about, on, of or clearly related to the undershorts, including, "Do you get the chance to shop a lot?"
Answer: "I'm from Paris."
In London circles, i.e. tabloids, her red undershorts from her first-round win vaulted her immediately into the pantheon of Wimbledon garb that includes Gussie Moran's phantasmagorical lace panties from 1949 and Anne White's white bodysuit from 1985.
