Serena Williams' tutu was a personal triumph – but I still wince when I see women playing tennis in dresses and skirts

Let’s face it. Serena Williams’s victory was guaranteed the minute she stepped on to court on Monday night at New York’s Arthur Ashe Stadium for her first US Open match.

“Let the world watch us conquer,” Williams tweeted ahead of the match.

And true enough, the 23-time Grand Slam champion sailed past her opponent, Poland’s Magda Linette, in straight sets, but I wasn’t talking about the tennis.

No, Williams’s triumph was over the stuffy world of tennis, where men still make the rules, seemingly for the benefit of other men.

Just days after the – male – president of the French Tennis Federation (FTF) criticised Williams for wearing a black catsuit for her comeback game in Paris earlier this summer, she opted this time to play in a one-shouldered black tulle tutu.

Reverting to feminine type in such style – check out those frills! – was Williams’s way of reclaiming the dress code debate while making a mockery of outdated notions about women’s tennis. Notions, lest you forget, that preclude women from playing the same number of sets as men - presumably because, despite Williams reaching a Grand Slam final just months after giving birth by emergency C-section, she still belongs to the “weaker sex” – or earning the same amount of prize money at most tournaments.

It is these outdated notions that meant French player Alizé Cornet was given a code violation on Tuesday for quickly changing her top on court during her first round match against Johanna Larsson – despite male tennis players frequently taking off their shirts between sets with no problems.

The issue here is the different treatment ladled out to male and female players generally, and more specifically to Serena Williams.

When Bernard Giudicelli, the FTF president, pledged in an interview with Tennis Magazine just days ago to introduce a dress code for players, what’s the betting he wasn’t planning on making it universal? Singling out “Serena’s outfit” this year, which “would no longer be accepted”, he declared he believed “we have sometimes gone too far”.

I’m sorry? “Gone too far” in allowing a woman to play tennis in the sportswear most people, amateurs like myself included, find offer the most comfort and support? This is namely some skin-tight trousers and a long top, which in Williams’s case were attached.

Given the male domination of the tennis world’s highest echelons – with the exception of the US Open, which is chaired by Katrina Adams – it’s not hard to assume Giudicelli had men like himself in mind when he made his statement. “You have to respect the game and the place,” he added.

Leaving aside the fact that Williams’s suit was designed specifically to improve circulation and help prevent the blood clots she suffers from, which almost killed her during the birth of her daughter, Alexis Olympia, in September last year, you have to wonder who might have felt disrespected by Williams’s choice of outfit.

Not me. Personally, the sight of female players still wearing skirts and dresses makes me feel disrespected, reminding me of the days when women were only allowed to compete in sports provided they covered their legs in long skirts. It suggests that even when a woman is powering serves at 120mph, she still has to look pretty and feminine by male standards – and that means wearing a skirt.

As it happens, women don’t have to play tennis in a skirt or dress. The Grand Slam rulebook requires only “clean and customarily acceptable tennis attire as determined by each respective Grand Slam tournament”.

In choosing an asymmetric tutu, designed by Virgil Abloh for Nike, Williams was subverting what she thinks the tennis world deigns “customarily acceptable” for female tennis champions.

And for that visual statement alone, regardless of what happens in the rest of the tournament, Williams has already won this year’s US Open.