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      Tennis Bracelet, Anyone?

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      Chris Evert made them famous, and their simple, elegant designs have stood the test of time.In 1978, while defending her three-year streak as the U.S. Open champion, Chris Evert lost her gold diamond bracelet in the middle of the match.“When I competed, I wanted to wear something that gave me confidence and empowered me both as a woman and an athlete,” Ms. Evert, who won 18 major singles titles in her career, wrote in an email interview. “My diamond line bracelet did that for me. It was a nod to my personal style, too.”Ms. Evert asked officials to stop play so she could find it.“I think everyone was confused in the stands because I was walking around the court searching for something,” she wrote.Ms. Evert went on to win the match. In a postgame interview, reporters asked her what she had dropped. “‘Oh, that was my tennis bracelet,’” she recalled saying. “From that point on, it just seemed that the tennis bracelet began to take on a life of its own.”“When I competed, I wanted to wear something that gave me confidence and empowered me both as a woman and an athlete,” said Chris Evert, who won 18 major singles titles in her career. “My diamond line bracelet did that for me. It was a nod to my personal style, too.”S&G/PA Images, via Getty ImagesThe tennis bracelet was once known as the “line bracelet”: a single-strand diamond bracelet distinguished by its straight, sparkly row of diamonds. The traditional line bracelet is set with four discreet prongs (the metal fingers that hold each stone in place), one on each corner of the diamond. This setting allows diamonds to shine as brightly as possible.“But now people have reinterpreted it. Now people refer to any diamond bracelet as a tennis bracelet in the various different settings,” said Elizabeth Doyle, a board member of the American Society of Jewelry Historians. She added that today’s understanding of tennis bracelets accounts for a variety of settings, without strict guidelines.Learn More About Jewelry 4 Indie Designers to Watch: Few major jewelry houses chose to present high jewelry collections in Paris this season, but some independent designers have turned heads. Made in the U.S.A.: A startling variety of gems are mined coast to coast, from Oregon sunstone to Maine tourmaline. Is It Real? Experts say online sales have fueled an increase in fakes, confusing buyers and stymieing makers. A Passion for Pearls: Meet an artisan who is entrusted with stringing, repairing and redesigning some of the world’s most exquisite pearl jewelry. More on Jewelry: Stories on trends and issues in the industry.Ms. Doyle, who is also a founder of Doyle & Doyle, an antique and vintage jewelry boutique in New York City, said the tennis bracelet has long been a popular item.“But what I’ve noticed is the stacking and layering, mixing and matching different colors or less important stones in with the diamonds,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be so serious.”Monica Rich Kosann, a Connecticut-based jewelry designer who, in August 2022, launched a line of tennis bracelets with Ms. Evert, echoed this sentiment in a phone interview.“I do think a woman would probably wear her tennis bracelet by itself. I remember my mom having a tennis bracelet, and I remember she wore that with her watch and that’s what she wore,” Ms. Kosann said. “Whereas now, my daughters, they wear it every day. They never take it off, and they mix it in with all their other bracelets, and it’s just become another layer on your wrist.”A tennis bracelet from the brand Dorsey.Dorsey“Does it have to be real?” asked Roxanne Assoulin. Her cubic zirconia tennis bracelets cost under $170 and are meant to be stacked.Stuart TysonHer collection features an emerald that pays homage to the U.S. Open’s former green court, with a diamond droplet of sweat to represent, as Ms. Evert described to Ms. Kosann, “the perspiration of competition.”Roxanne Assoulin’s sparkling iterations are also designed for everyday wear. In 2020, Ms. Assoulin, a longtime jewelry designer, began craving a casual version of the diamond tennis bracelet she wore in the late ’70s (and later disassembled to make earrings).“I didn’t want them to be big and flashy,” she said. “I wanted them to be really small and fine and delicate.”When Ms. Assoulin’s son asked her about a tennis bracelet for his wife, she began to wonder, “Does it have to be real?” Her Tennis on the Rox bracelets are made of cubic zirconia, cost less than $200 and are designed to be stacked.A diamond tennis bracelet from the brand The Last Line.The Last LineThe rainbow sapphire tennis bracelet from the brand MATEO.MATEOFor those who may just be discovering the tennis bracelet and looking for a more traditional design, The Last Line’s petite white diamond bracelet is a miniature nod to the classic. Or, for something less on the nose, Nakard by Nak Armstrong’s series of tennis bracelets are made of tiled onyx, scalloped opals and scale-shaped labradorite, with each stone defined by a prominent black, rhodium-finished frame. For the maximalists, MATEO makes eye candy tennis bracelets out of box-linked rainbow sapphires, as well as pink sapphires in buttercup settings. And for those who tend toward a Phoebe Philo-esque style of unfussy luxury, Dorsey offers a beautiful single strand of lab-grown white sapphire for $240.For more affordable options, all five colors of Anthropologie’s Baguette Tennis Bracelet come in under $30. J.Crew’s square crystal interpretation — currently $49.50 — is so chunky that if it happened to fly off the wrist, mid-pickleball serve, you’d see and hear where it landed.Anthropologie’s pink tennis bracelet costs less than $30.AnthropologieJ.Crew’s chunky tennis bracelet is more in line with costume jewelry.J.CrewDiamond bracelets, in the broader sense, have been popular since the Georgian Era; line bracelets have been around since the Art Deco era, and styled casually with jeans or on the court since the ’70s — at least, if you’re Chris Evert. More

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      Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Brings His Friends on Ride to NBA Stardom

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      Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard, is having a career season as one of the N.B.A.’s top scorers. He’s had a little help from his childhood friends.Mark Daigneault thought he had his first day in Hamilton, Ontario, all mapped out: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the star guard he coaches on the Oklahoma City Thunder, would make his morning rounds to shoot hoops and lift weights, and Daigneault would ride along.There was only one problem.“I don’t have room in my car,” Gilgeous-Alexander told him, “because I pick up all my friends.”Sure enough, once Daigneault hopped out of his Uber at Gilgeous-Alexander’s preferred gym in nearby Burlington, Daigneault found him working on his shooting as several young men in matching Thunder T-shirts rebounded for him.Gilgeous-Alexander soon introduced Daigneault to his “super close homies,” five childhood friends whose coordinated outfits that morning were no coincidence. They knew Daigneault was in town.“We wanted to make a good impression,” said Sunday Kong, a former high school teammate.In Oklahoma City, Gilgeous-Alexander, 24, has established himself as one of the N.B.A.’s most dynamic players. On a young team with promise, he ranks among the league leaders in scoring, averaging a career-best 31.4 points a game, while shooting 50.5 percent from the field — supercharged numbers that hint at his abilities as a 6-foot-6 guard who can absorb contact at the rim and create space on the perimeter.Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging a career-best 31.4 points per game while making about half of his shots. That puts him among the N.B.A.’s elite scorers.Garett Fisbeck/Associated PressBack home in Hamilton, a small city about 40 miles southwest of Toronto, five of Gilgeous-Alexander’s pals — a crew that also includes Mark Castillanes and Maurice Montoya, two of his best friends since elementary school, and Vincent Chu, who sat next to him in ninth-grade homeroom — practically fall off their couches whenever he crosses up a defender.“Anytime I see him do something on the court, I’m like, ‘Hey, we practiced that!’ ” said Devanté Campbell, who played youth soccer with Gilgeous-Alexander.Gilgeous-Alexander is always trying to improve, said Daigneault, now in his third season as the Thunder’s coach. That makes him an ideal fit for Oklahoma City — the same place where a young Russell Westbrook became a triple-double machine, Kevin Durant honed his perimeter game and James Harden crafted his step-back jumper. Each summer, Gilgeous-Alexander devises his own to-do list.“Shai’s got every resource available to him,” Daigneault said. “If he wanted to hire a staff and move to Hawaii in the off-season, he could do it. Instead, he parks himself in Hamilton and works with friends who have been in his life forever.”In Gilgeous-Alexander’s self-styled basketball lab, where a sneaker salesman and a restaurant manager throw defensive traps at him, and a college student and an aspiring doctor feed him passes, he prepares for his future by returning to his past.“Those guys give me a sense of home,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “They give me back a piece of myself that feels like so long ago.”‘I’ve got to get better’Before he was getting buckets at Madison Square Garden and walking the runways at fashion week in Paris, Gilgeous-Alexander was someone else: the new kid at Regina Mundi Catholic Elementary School.After moving to Hamilton from Toronto when he was 11, Gilgeous-Alexander met Montoya and Castillanes on his first day of sixth grade. Castillanes recalled showing him around.“Kind of quiet,” Castillanes said. “But once you got to know him, he became himself.”Gilgeous-Alexander impressed on the basketball court, Castillanes said, by being able to dribble and make layups with both hands. But as an undersized ninth-grader at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School, Gilgeous-Alexander was cut from the equivalent of the junior varsity and wound up on a team of other freshmen.“I wasn’t hurt by it,” he said. “It was more a feeling of, I’m not good enough, so I’ve got to get better.”From left, Sunday Kong, Maurice Montoya, Vincent Chu and Devanté Campbell on the outdoor court at Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School, Gilgeous-Alexander’s former high school in Hamilton, Ontario.Cole Burston for The New York TimesIn his spare time, Gilgeous-Alexander would hoop with Montoya and Castillanes at their Filipino basketball league — the start of a basketball odyssey. Gilgeous-Alexander spent his sophomore year at Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School on Hamilton’s west side before he transferred again, this time to Hamilton Heights Christian Academy in Chattanooga, Tenn., as he sought better competition.Gilgeous-Alexander eventually landed at the University of Kentucky, where John Calipari, the team’s coach, knew he needed to be tough on him. Otherwise, Calipari was going to hear about it — from Gilgeous-Alexander’s mother, Charmaine Gilgeous, a former Olympic runner for Antigua and Barbuda.“When he played well, she would call me and say, ‘Don’t you let up on him,’” Calipari said.Gilgeous-Alexander had arrived at Kentucky with a hitch in his jump shot — Calipari compared it to Charles Barkley’s herky-jerky golf swing — and spent the early weeks of the season mostly coming off the bench. By the middle of January, he was blossoming as a starter. By June, he was the 11th overall pick in the 2018 N.B.A. draft, headed to the Los Angeles Clippers.Gilgeous-Alexander played so well as a rookie that the Thunder put him on their wish list. That summer, when the All-Star Paul George wanted to be traded to the Clippers from Oklahoma City, the Thunder insisted that Gilgeous-Alexander be included in the deal.Now in his fourth season with the Thunder, Gilgeous-Alexander is the face of a franchise that should come equipped with training wheels. Although Chet Holmgren, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2022 draft, is out for the season with a foot injury, the Thunder have a core that includes Josh Giddey, 20, and Luguentz Dort, 23. Even amid his emergence, Gilgeous-Alexander has never sought to separate himself from his teammates.“I might have sworn at Lu before,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, “but me and Lu lived together, and we’re like brothers so it doesn’t count.”Luguentz Dort, left, and Gilgeous-Alexander bonded as teammates and roommates in Oklahoma City.Alonzo Adams/USA Today Sports, via ReutersGilgeous-Alexander and Dort, who are also teammates on the Canadian men’s national basketball team, are candid about their bromance. When Gilgeous-Alexander was vaccinated against the coronavirus, Dort held his hand. (Gilgeous-Alexander is afraid of needles.) When they were roommates, Dort accepted the perils of sharing space with someone who was recently voted GQ magazine’s Most Stylish Man of the Year.“I don’t want to say his clothes are everywhere,” Dort said. “But he has a lot of clothes — clothes that have a lot of volume to them.”But while life in the N.B.A. is rewarding — Gilgeous-Alexander is in the first year of a five-year contract extension worth about $180 million — it can also be disorienting. So he dodges complacency as if it were a traffic cone, supplementing his time with the team by working with Olin Simplis, a high-profile skills coach.And, of course, he heads to Hamilton at the start of each off-season to work out with friends who neither expect nor ask for anything in return.‘Just something that friends do’After his first season in Oklahoma City, Gilgeous-Alexander wanted to make his summers more structured. So he hit up his buddies: Would they help him out five mornings a week?“It wasn’t even something that needed to be said,” said Campbell, who works full-time at a Kids Foot Locker and assists with a girls’ basketball league. “It was just something that friends do: If we want to see this guy grow and succeed, we need to be there for him no matter what.”Last summer, Gilgeous-Alexander would text his friends a few minutes before 7 a.m. to let them know that he was leaving his house — his hoops-centric version of flashing the Bat-Signal.“You get that text, and you know you have about 15 minutes to get ready,” said Chu, a student at Toronto Metropolitan University.Gilgeous-Alexander’s friends help him with shooting and passing drills during the summer in Ontario.Cole Burston for The New York TimesGilgeous-Alexander would retrieve his friends, one by one, in his pale brown Mercedes-Benz G-Class. Castillanes was typically the first stop.“He always got the front seat,” Chu said.Once assembled, they often had enough time during the ride to Burlington to cram in a homespun version of “Carpool Karaoke.” In June, Jack Harlow’s album “Come Home the Kids Miss You” was on repeat. By July, they were tearing through Burna Boy’s latest tracks.“It’s a refreshing start to the day to see all your friends,” Chu said, “even when you’re mad tired.”At the gym, they would warm up and stretch, then Gilgeous-Alexander would polish his shooting for about an hour as his friends rebounded for him. He usually filled the second hour with drills — footwork, defense, passing — before transitioning into half-court games of 3-on-3 with a lopsided feel.“Shai takes all the shots,” Campbell said.His court work complete, Gilgeous-Alexander would drop his friends off so he could lift weights — in another buddy’s two-car garage. Nem Ilic, 27, who describes his work as “athlete development,” spent last summer building Gilgeous-Alexander’s lower body: lunges in the garage, weighted sled pushes in the cul-de-sac out front. (The neighbors always knew when Gilgeous-Alexander was around.)“Guys in my position, you usually have to work your way up from high school to college to the pros,” Ilic said. “And I have a unique timeline. It went straight to Shai.”In their own way, the friends are a part of it all.A poster of Gilgeous-Alexander is seen on the doors of Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School.Cole Burston for The New York Times“I think the N.B.A. is so crazy that he wants to come here and feel grounded,” Chu said, “and we’re all so grounded up here that we want to hear about N.B.A. life.”They can see Gilgeous-Alexander’s progress — and feel it, too, whenever they try to defend him on those early summer mornings.“I want to say it’s never really that much of a fun time,” Campbell said.They have busy lives of their own. Montoya, for example, manages a Hamilton-area restaurant. Castillanes recently relocated to Oklahoma City after Gilgeous-Alexander asked him if he would help manage his day-to-day life. And Kong works in public health while he prepares for medical school.“You know how they say commitment will pay off if you improve by 1 percent every day? It’s something you see in real time with Shai,” Kong said. “And it’s something I can apply to my own life.” More

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      The Inside Story of N.B.A. Players and Their Socks

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      BOSTON — Several years ago, Kevin Porter Jr., then a high school basketball star in Seattle, made a profound decision, one that would affect his life. He was creating his own team for the video game NBA 2K, and he decided to outfit one of the players in super long, over-the-calf socks.“I really liked it,” Porter said, “so I tried it in real life. And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my new look.’ ”Porter has remained loyal to the style. Now a fourth-year guard with the Houston Rockets, he often complements his high socks by covering his knees with compression sleeves that are designed for his arms.“So my legs can stay warm,” he said. “A lot of people make fun of having high socks. But honestly, it’s kind of like a ’70s or ’80s look. I’m different, and I like expressing that.”Kevin Porter Jr., of the Houston Rockets, first experimented with high socks by putting them on players in a video game.Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesClad in their oversize sweaters, avant-garde scarves and bespoke suits, N.B.A. players have long moonlighted as style-conscious trendsetters. Before games, arena corridors double as fashion runways. And once fans find their seats, the league’s stars function as billboards for the hottest sneakers on the market.The N.B.A., though, has seldom allowed players much wiggle room when it comes to an undervalued component of their in-game attire: socks. Players, after all, are required to wear those manufactured by Nike, which has been the league’s sock partner for six seasons.But even within that relatively confined world, players are constantly finding ways to tailor their approaches. Some pull their socks high, while others scrunch them low. Some want a brand-new pair every game, while others are fine cycling through the same laundered pairs for weeks.There are even a few players who purposely take their Nike socks, which are labeled left and right, and wear them on the wrong feet — a practice that has always puzzled Pat Connaughton of the Milwaukee Bucks.“I’ve asked, and nobody’s given me a good answer,” he said.And while it seems most players prioritize function, some favor fashion — perhaps illustrative of a generational divide.“I think there’s a culture change with the younger guys,” said Tony Nila, who has spent 30 seasons with the Rockets, including the last 16 as the team’s equipment manager. “I don’t know if they have so many sock routines or pet peeves. I think they’re more about looking good.”For decades, most players simply wore the socks that teams gave them — sometimes lots of them. Mel Davis, a forward for the Knicks and the Nets in the 1970s, was known to throw on six pairs — six! — before lacing up his sneakers, which was a source of intrigue for opponents and teammates alike.“When I hear sock stories, he’s the first one who comes to mind,” said Kenny Charles, 71, a former guard with the Buffalo Braves and Atlanta Hawks. “Everyone was responsible for their socks. And if you lost them on a road trip, you didn’t say anything. You’d just wait until shoot-around and take a pair out of someone else’s bag.”Sock protocols became more formalized in 1986, when the league created a line of products that included socks, replica jerseys, shorts and warm-ups. It did not take long for the league to mandate that its players wear socks that were produced by its sock licensee, a company called Ridgeview.In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the socks were basic. Some had a couple of stripes around the ankle. Others had the team name running up the side. In 1999, the league began using an Indiana-based company called For Bare Feet, which made socks that were easily identifiable: plush and white with a small N.B.A. logo.A Denver Nuggets player wore socks bearing stripes and the N.B.A. logo during a game in 2005.Brian Bahr/Getty Images“Great sock,” said Eric Housen, Golden State’s vice president of team operations. “Guys loved those.”Before the 2015-16 season, the N.B.A. dropped For Bare Feet in favor of Stance. The Stance socks, though more playful and vivid, were not nearly as popular.“Stiff,” Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics said. “Hurt your feet. Wasn’t too big on them.”The Stance experiment lasted just two seasons. Philadelphia 76ers forward P.J. Tucker was not enamored with the brand. So, he procured several dozen pairs of thick, padded socks from his favorite sock purveyor, Thorlos — “Most comfortable socks ever,” he said — along with several dozen pairs from Stance, and had them delivered to a tailor for surgery: She cut them all in half, then stitched the tops of the Stance socks to the bottoms of the Thorlos socks.The result was that the Stance design and the N.B.A. logo were still visible while affording Tucker the comfort of his Thorlos down low, where it mattered. It was an ingenious way of skirting league rules.“Socks are super important, bro,” Tucker said.Nike, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, does offer some selection within the margins of its game-sock cosmos. Its socks, which are a polyester, nylon, cotton and spandex blend, come in four lengths: no-show, quarter, crew and tall. (Housen could not think of a current player who wears the no-show socks; the last player who did, he said, may have been Luke Ridnour, a journeyman guard who announced his retirement in 2016.) Players can opt for a type of sock called “Quick,” which is thinner, or “Power,” which has more padding.And there are different sizes. When Boban Marjanovic, a 7-foot-4 center, joined the Rockets in an off-season trade, Nila, the team’s equipment manager, was grateful that he had some size XXXL socks on hand.When Boban Marjanovich was traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Houston Rockets, the Rockets’ equipment manager was ready with the right socks.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesZion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans flips down the tops of his socks so the orange stripe will show.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesBut while there is flexibility in terms of the style and fit of the socks from game to game, teammates must wear the same color. As they rotate through different uniforms, some franchises mix it up: purple socks one game, black the next. Others keep it simple. Keen observers of foot fashion may have noticed, for example, that the New Orleans Pelicans strictly wear white socks, which forward Brandon Ingram prefers. Zion Williamson, Ingram’s teammate, adds pizazz by flipping down the sock tops to expose a colorful thread that runs along an inside seam.“I like the orange stripe,” he said.Of course, getting players to color-coordinate their socks can cause the occasional complication. One N.B.A. equipment manager, who requested anonymity to protect the sock-wearing behaviors of the team’s players, recalled a long-ago playoff series when the team busted out black socks for the first time. During an early timeout, one of the players opined that they must have been made of burlap: Why are we wearing these?The player was so irritated that he removed his black socks in the huddle and replaced them with white ones. The equipment manager panicked, then lopped off the top of the player’s black socks and slid them over the white ones like wristbands to obscure the clashing color — all in the middle of a playoff game.Lest anyone think the N.B.A. is lax about its sock policies, consider Smart’s experience at the start of the 2017-18 season, when Nike was the league’s new partner. For the season opener, he folded the tops of his socks down because they felt more comfortable that way, he said. The problem was that he wound up hiding the Nike swoosh.“I got a call from the league, and they said that Nike said I did it on purpose,” said Smart, who was sponsored by Adidas at the time. “So they were like, ‘You’ve got to wear your socks the right way or you’ll be fined.’ ”How much? “I didn’t want to find out,” said Smart, who now has a deal with Puma.Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics once folded down the tops of his socks, obscuring the Nike logo. He said he was threatened with a fine.Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty ImagesTeams typically order their socks from Nike about a year in advance. Last month, Housen ordered about 2,500 pairs of socks for Golden State — about 150 per player — for next season. Each team gets an annual stipend for Nike gear.“But based on the amount of product we need, it only covers about 20 to 25 percent of the overall spend,” said Housen, who added that game socks tend to last “as long as you launder them well.”Golden State has a warehouse in San Francisco where Housen houses heaps of team gear for players like Stephen Curry, a star who sometimes opts for crew-length socks but usually wears quarters under his ankle braces.A decent segment of the league wears two pairs. But within that subset are variations. Connaughton said he began doubling up when he was in high school because he believed it helped prevent blisters. Jabari Smith Jr., a first-year forward with the Rockets, wears a pair of Adidas socks underneath his Nike ones.Sometimes, it depends on the sneaker. Larry Nance Jr., a forward with the Pelicans, said one pair of socks typically sufficed when he wore LeBron James’s signature Nike shoes. But he wears two pairs whenever he reaches for his Air Jordan 10s, which are “a little flimsier,” he said.Tucker, who has an enormous sneaker collection, gets why all of this may sound so strange. Most people can get away with wearing crummy socks, he said. But professional athletes are different.“Your feet got to feel right,” he said. “If your feet don’t feel right, forget it.” More

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      Isabella Escribano Is the Teen Baller Behind the Brittney Griner Hoodies

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      Isabella Escribano, 14, is popular on Instagram for her basketball skills. She’s using her design skills in the public campaign to free the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner.For more hours now than she can remember, Isabella Escribano sat on the orange couch inside her garage, iPad in hand, crafting clothing designs that she hoped would aid one of her favorite basketball players.That player, Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, was arrested in Russia in February after customs officials said they found hashish oil, a cannabis derivative, in her luggage at an airport near Moscow. In May, the U.S. government said that Griner had been wrongfully detained, but on Aug. 4 she was convicted on a drug charge in Russia and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony. She has appealed her conviction.Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, reached out to Escribano in March to collaborate on apparel that she hoped W.N.B.A. players would wear to bring awareness to Griner’s situation. Kagawa Colas said she had chosen Escribano for two reasons: Escribano, 14, is a popular girls’ basketball player with over 100,000 Instagram followers, and she has her own clothing brand of W.N.B.A. streetwear called Break The Curse.Escribano, who is in the eighth grade, said she “wanted to make the shirt for Brittney Griner as loud as possible.”Operating from the garage at her parents’ home in Santa Clarita, Calif., Escribano and her older brothers, Marco Escribano and Anthony Lizarraga, landed on a colorful design that has been sported by players across the W.N.B.A. this season.Isabella Escribano earned the nickname Jiggy because of her ball-handling and shifty moves on the basketball court.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesThe front of the design, seen on hoodies and T-shirts, features a smiling Griner in her Mercury jersey with a basketball that reads “WEAREBG” — the phrase that has become the rallying cry in the public campaign for her release. Griner’s jersey number, 42, is wrapped around the left side, and on the back, her first and last name are printed in capital letters.“I wanted to make sure that the shirt meant something,” Isabella Escribano said. “Like, when you see it, it’s something big. It’s basically a statement.” She added: “What we want to do is start a conversation, like whoever wears it is supporting her, basically saying, ‘Free Brittney Griner.’”Sydney Bordonaro, who styles outfits for several W.N.B.A. players, including Las Vegas Aces guards Kelsey Plum and Chelsea Gray, said the distinctive look of the Griner clothing made it attractive.“It’s just super fly,” Bordonaro said. “Like, you could wear it out to the club or to an event. It’s not like it’s a jersey or, you know, just a corny T-shirt.”Connecticut Sun point guard Jasmine Thomas packs the T-shirt or hoodie for every game. Having Griner’s face on the front gives the items an intense and emotional aspect that makes them stand out, she said.“I think for someone that’s not even a W.N.B.A. fan, they automatically see her face, and then if they don’t already know what’s going on, they research B.G. to get to know her, what she’s about, who she is, why she’s so important and why she needs to come home,” Thomas said.“I wanted to make the shirt for Brittney Griner as loud as possible,” Isabella Escribano said.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesMarco Escribano, 24, said 215 T-shirts and sweatshirts had been sent to W.N.B.A. players, other professional athletes and coaches for free. Break the Curse and Wasserman, the agency that represents Griner, split the manufacturing costs ($75 for the T-shirts, $80 for the sweatshirts) and share some of the shipping costs.Break the Curse also sells the T-shirt for $120 and the sweatshirt for $150 on its website. The proceeds are used to cover the company’s portion of the production and shipping costs for the clothing sent to W.N.B.A. players and others. About 250 total T-shirts and sweatshirts have been sold; that hasn’t been enough yet to cover Break The Curse’s costs, but having players wearing the design has increased the website’s traffic significantly and led to other merchandise sales, Marco Escribano said.The quick turnarounds for some requests have been a challenge, like when Phoenix Suns guard Chris Paul wanted a shirt during his team’s playoff matchup with the Dallas Mavericks in May.At the time, only two shirts were made, and they were samples. One was shipped to Paul overnight, but it never made it to him, somehow lost in the delivery process. So the brothers washed the other one — which they had planned to keep for themselves — and shipped it to Paul, who wore it to Game 5 of the series.“I just was like: ‘We’ll just send him this, bro. Spray some cologne on it and just let it go,’” Marco Escribano said while laughing. “It’s crazy that Chris Paul was wearing our shirt.”Phoenix Mercury guard Skylar Diggins-Smith, left, and Phoenix Suns guard Chris Paul, right, are two of the many athletes who have worn the Brittney Griner apparel from Break the Curse. Isabella Escribano, center, worked on the design with her brothers.Jeff Haynes/NBAE via Getty Images; Meg Oliphant for The New York Times; Kate Frese/NBAE via Getty ImagesNone of the family had experience in manufacturing clothing before last year, and Marco Escribano said they learned new aspects of the fashion industry with every design.Isabella Escribano’s celebrity has drawn athletes and others to the brand. Her YouTube videos show off the tight handle and shifty moves that earned her the moniker Jiggy. She has a larger social media following than some W.N.B.A. players, and many professional men’s and women’s basketball players have followed her journey since she was 10 years old.Utah Jazz guard Jordan Clarkson wore her first-ever design — a Chicago Sky-themed hoodie — last year, and Chance the Rapper wore it onstage at a concert. Plum, the Aces guard, wore an unreleased jacket that Escribano worked on for four months to Game 2 of Las Vegas’s playoff series against Phoenix this month. The jacket featured different W.N.B.A. team logos and had “STOP WNBA HATE” in red on the interior.Thomas, the Sun guard, remembered meeting Escribano years ago after a game, so when she found that “little Isabella” was behind the Griner design, she felt more inclined to support the brand. “I’m just super proud of Isabella for being able to understand how important her platform is and using it at such a young age,” Thomas said. “That’s exactly what we want to see from young girls, and she’s really a role model and a leader in so many ways.”Isabella Escribano said she was still focused on basketball as her clothing brand grows. Her goal is to make it to the W.N.B.A.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesBut as the brand grows, Escribano’s primary focus is still on playing basketball and making it to the W.N.B.A. When she’s not creating designs, she spends most of her time in the gym, where she trains with Phil Handy, a Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach, among others. She said she would keep the brand going as long as she had a passion for it.“There’s a lot of girls like me or other people that love the W.N.B.A. and want to support the W.N.B.A., but there’s not a lot of clothes to do that,” Escribano said. “So, I just want to give the opportunity for anybody that loves women’s basketball to be able to buy and wear it.”She added: “Most of the time, I think about when I’m in the W.N.B.A. and how I won’t have to go buy clothes. I could just wear my own stuff.” More

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      in Tennis

      With Tennis Style, It’s Hard to Ace the Classics

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      While Grand Slam season often forecasts men’s wear innovations, the elegance of a crisp white look is tough to beat.For at least some watching Novak Djokovic win his seventh Wimbledon title and 21st Grand Slam crown on Sunday (surprising almost no one), there was one largely unacknowledged pleasure in the experience.Sure, there were his bulletproof defensive skills and wizardly return of serve. Add to that the eye-candy thrill of watching Mr. Djokovic, a 6-foot-2 Serb, flaunt his Gumby-like flexibility and shredded physique (achieved with a no-gluten diet and a state-of-the-art training regimen) in a three-hour, four-set final. Yet for those who care about these things — fashion critics, for instance — the elegance of Mr. Djokovic’s play benefited from an anachronism dating to the tournament’s beginning in 1877. That is, the strict white dress code still enforced by the storied All England Club.Modern players tend to bristle at the tennis whites that were originally conceived to curb or conceal evidence of perspiration — considered unseemly among the society sorts who long had the lock on this sport — and that are required to be worn by players at Wimbledon from the moment they enter the court area. Andre Agassi famously so disliked the Wimbledon dress code (“Why must I wear white? I don’t want to wear white,” he wrote in his 2009 memoir) that he refused to play in the tournaments from 1988 to 1990, holding out for his preferred raucous, colorful sportswear before caving and then going on to win his first and only Wimbledon title in 1992.Far from obscuring players on camera, regulation whites outline their moves more crisply, as Novak Djokovic proves in the Wimbledon final on July 10.Alastair Grant/Associated PressRule creep is common. A degree of pushback is understandable in light of a rigid dress code that forbids nonwhite elements except in trim on outseams, necklines and shorts legs, as well as in logos that are wider than a centimeter. Even cream or ivory is considered beyond the pale, and orange-soled sneakers landed Roger Federer in trouble when he wore a pair to the 2013 tournament.Tradition trumps comfort at Wimbledon. Look to the controversy that greeted Rafael Nadal when he wore one of his trademark sleeveless white quarter-zip tops in 2005. Gentlemen, the thinking goes, don’t show off their guns. (For present purposes, it is the male athletes who are the focus.)Still, what fascinates this observer is the question of why — aside from paid branding opportunities or a dubious assertion that took hold in the late 20th century that color reads better on TV — an athlete would want to deviate from a uniform that is simultaneously practical and sartorially foolproof, one with a rich history of influence on style outside the sport.Even a cursory survey of its 20th-century history demonstrates how potent an effect tennis has had on fashion. From the 19th century on, the courts have been both a laboratory for innovation and, more often than you might imagine, a mirror of social change. Take the elegance of players like René Lacoste, the French tennis player of the 1920s nicknamed the Crocodile, who replaced the woven or woolen tennis whites that were then customary with cooler and more efficient long-tailed, short-sleeved cotton polo shirts with the ubiquitous crocodile monogram. The shirts would become a popped-collar staple of preppy wear.Fred Perry, left, looking runway ready in a signature polo, in 1935. Popperfoto/Getty ImagesRafael Nadal flexes his big guns in a controversial sleeveless top at Wimbledon in 2005.Phil Cole/Getty ImagesConsider, too, the unfortunate case of Fred Perry. A stylish former world No. 1-ranked player, Mr. Perry won eight Grand Slam singles titles in the 1930s, including three consecutive Wimbledon titles from 1934 to 1936. He went on to found a brand best known for white polo shirts trimmed with a yellow and black band, and the company came perilously close to foundering in 2020 when its polos were co-opted as a militia uniform by the far-right Proud Boys and it was forced to withdraw sales of its polo shirts in the United States and Canada.Paragons of tennis elegance appear in every era. At one end of the 20th century, there is, for example, an International Tennis Hall of Fame fixture like Budge Patty — one of only three Americans to win the French Open and Wimbledon men’s singles championships in the same year (1950) — and a sophisticate renowned for his easy tailored style both on and off court. Further along the arc stands Arthur Ashe, the only Black man to have won the singles titles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open, and a canny image manipulator who underscored his cerebral style of play with a Black Ivy cool — tailored shorts, snug polos, horn-rimmed glasses or oversize shades — intentionally engineered to counter racial stereotypes that still plagued the sport in the ’70s.Always restrained, Arthur Ashe brought graphic flourish to his tennis white at the U.S. Open, circa 1978.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesStyle in that bad old era tends to get an unfair rap. And yet, while it is true we’re unlikely to see the lawn-trousered, Fred Astaire elegance of an athlete like Bill Tilden — an American champion whom The Associated Press once voted the greatest player of the first half of the 20th century — that is no reason to forget or dismiss the contributions of players as well remembered for their sex appeal or wild antics as for their sartorial savvy.We are talking here about John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg, rivals both on center court and in the ’80s fashion arena. With his bum-hugging short shorts and banded track tops, Mr. McEnroe became a poster boy for the Italian sports apparel maker Sergio Tacchini; Bjorn Borg, the sexy Swedish longhair in a headband, helped put another Italian heritage label, Fila, on the map. And suddenly, those retro looks and those brands — with their taut proportions and overtly sexy celebration of the athletic male anatomy — look fresh again both for sports aficionados and for those who wouldn’t know an ace from an alley.Once deemed the greatest player of the early 20th century, Bill Tilden is style personified at the Davis Cup in 1927. Bettmann/Getty ImagesBjorn Borg, here defeating Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon in July 1978, snuck color onto center court in wristbands striped like the Swedish flag.Leo Mason/Popperfoto – Getty ImagesAt other Grand Slam events, Messrs. McEnroe and Borg both pushed their Fila-Tacchini looks to the limits, with banded sleeves, tone-on-tone jackets, pinstriped patterns, colored tab waistbands, terry wristbands in national colors or details that may never have passed official muster at the All England Club.The truth is, though, that nothing additive was really needed. Whether on clay, grass, synthetic or cracked urban concrete, it is largely pointless trying to improve on tennis whites. More

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      in Basket

      From Tattoos to Malcolm X T-shirts, N.B.A. Hopefuls Talk Style

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      Three top draft prospects — Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams — explained their approach to fashion. “I feel like I don’t really miss when I put fits on,” Holmgren said.Paolo Banchero lifted the right sleeve of his black hooded sweatshirt to point out the green tattoo ink on his forearm. His long arms make up most of the 7-foot-1 wingspan that positioned him as one of the top prospects in the N.B.A. draft on Thursday, but they also tell a story.His right arm is packed with tattoos that depict crucial parts of his upbringing and make statements about his style: the Space Needle and the rest of the skyline of his hometown, Seattle, sit on his right shoulder; “19th and Spruce” is written on his inner biceps as a nod to the Boys and Girls Club where he began playing basketball; and on his inner forearm is the logo for his friend’s Seattle-based Skyblue Collective clothing brand, which he sports often and says is “a part of him.”Banchero has a tattoo on his right arm that reads “19th and Spruce,” a nod to the Boys and Girls Club in Seattle where he grew up playing basketball.Bob Donnan/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBanchero, 19, who led the Duke men’s basketball team to the Final Four this year, uses his tattoos and outfits as a form of self-expression, a subtle way of sending messages. At a pre-draft style event at a Brooklyn barbershop on Tuesday, he wore an all-black luxury designer outfit, which he said was tame compared to what he would put together on draft night.On Thursday, he wore a bright purple suit as the Orlando Magic selected him with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.Banchero and many of the top players in the 2022 draft class already have a public persona, but it will be boosted immensely if an N.B.A. team signs them. While playing well and winning championships are paramount in how an N.B.A. player is perceived, style and image are a close second. After all, this is the league in which Los Angeles Lakers forward/center Anthony Davis made his unibrow a celebrity in its own right, even trademarking the phrase “Fear The Brow” in 2012.N.B.A. athletes have made it easy for fans to appreciate their fashion sense, turning their pregame entrances into their own version of the Met Gala. Fans on social media quickly share photos and videos from players’ 30-second walks to the locker rooms from cars or team buses at N.B.A. arenas. GQ magazine crowned Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the N.B.A.’s most stylish player of 2022, over Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker, because “the guy cares about getting dressed.”Jalen Williams, a forward from Santa Clara University and a potential first-round pick in the draft, is looking forward to the pregame catwalk. On his cellphone, he has multiple search tabs open for different clothing brands. He laughed and pointed at Jaden Hardy from the G League Ignite, another potential 2022 draft pick, when he saw that they were wearing the same black sweatpants from the brand MNML at the event on Tuesday.Williams said he tried to balance being conscious about what he wore while having fun with his style, because he knew that he would be judged by his outfits and appearance. He incorporates clothing from less popular brands into his wardrobe to encourage those who may look up to him to be “comfortable in their own skin.”Jalen Williams said fashion was important to him — even in video games.Young Kwak/Associated PressWilliams at the N.B.A. draft on Thursday.Arturo Holmes/Getty Images“I think that’s the biggest thing that gets misunderstood in fashion,” Williams, 21, said. “You feel like you have to please whoever or look a certain way, but whatever you like is what you like.”Williams said he also tried to support small brands and promote social-justice issues through his clothing. He sported a jacket from Tattoo’d Cloth, which made custom embroidered jackets for some draft prospects, and tagged the brand in an Instagram story. On Juneteenth, he wore a shirt featuring Malcolm X, and he frequently wears different kinds of apparel supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. “I think as athletes, it’s important to inspire people and kind of spark a change and use our platform,” Williams said. “Sometimes, not even saying anything but wearing the clothes is really important.”Williams’s style goes beyond his outfits, too. As a high school sophomore, he decided to don a single braid while keeping the rest of his hair unbraided, hanging the braid at eye level. That has become a popular style in the N.B.A.“I’m not going to say I started it, but I might’ve started it,” he said jokingly.Fashion has long played a significant role in Williams’s life, back to his childhood when he began using the My Player mode in the N.B.A. 2K video game, in which users create players and can style them for hanging out in a virtual park. He is serious about the fashion choices of his My Player.“You can’t pull up to the park in brown and gray,” Williams said, mocking the generic outfit given to the created players. “No brown shirts!”The Oklahoma City Thunder selected Williams with the 12th pick in the draft on Thursday. He wore a dark pinstriped suit and large sunglasses with his famous single braid draped over them.Chet Holmgren, who is seven feet tall, said it was hard to find clothes that fit his long and lanky frame when he was younger.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersHolmgren at the N.B.A. draft on Thursday.Arturo Holmes/Getty ImagesFor the seven-foot center Chet Holmgren, who played at Gonzaga and was expected to be a top-three pick on Thursday, being fashionable was a challenge growing up. He could never find clothes that fit his long and lanky frame, and he could not afford the custom-fitted outfits he adored. He ridiculed his most impressive childhood outfit: Nike socks, basic T-shirts, basketball shorts and basketball shoes. In high school, Holmgren said, his style skyrocketed as he turned to resale websites and brands that had clothes in the large-and-tall sizing. Now, he is confident that he is the most fashionable prospect in this draft class.“In my opinion, I’m the swaggiest dude beyond just what I am wearing,” Holmgren said. He further explained that fashion was about more than just the pieces a person was wearing.“You could spend $10,000 on an outfit, but you might have a trash outfit on,” he said. “You might have the right pieces, but if you can’t put them together, the outfit’s not going to be great.”Like Williams, Holmgren is looking forward to the N.B.A.’s pregame runway, and he isn’t apprehensive about his style choices.“I feel like I don’t really miss when I put fits on,” Holmgren said. “So whatever I’m wearing, I’ll be all right.”Holmgren was drafted second overall to the Oklahoma City Thunder. His diamond chain, which featured a pair of dice, shone in Barclays Center as he walked to the stage. He chose dice for his chain, he said, because he was “big on betting on himself.” More

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      in Soccer

      Nigeria Adds Up the Costs of Missing the World Cup

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      Failure to qualify for Qatar has condemned Nigeria to a humbling summer instead of months of World Cup hype. Then there’s the fate of its famous jersey.In those initial moments of agony in March after Nigeria was eliminated from qualification for this year’s World Cup, the most immediate thoughts of Amaju Pinnick, the president of Nigeria’s soccer federation, were of the disappointment being felt by his 200 million countrymen in Africa’s most populous nation.He needed only to look down on the scenes unfolding inside Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja, Nigeria, to see what it meant. Thousands of angry supporters had poured onto the field after the final whistle to vent their anger, knocking over the advertising boards, chasing the players from the field and clashing with security officers. “My first thought,” Pinnick said, “was to resign immediately.”But his mind quickly drifted elsewhere, too. In those first days after Nigeria’s elimination in a home-and-home playoff against Ghana, Pinnick said he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about another group feeling the sting of the team’s failure.“Oh what have we done,” he said, “to Nike.”For any country accustomed to attending the World Cup, the consequences of missing the tournament are substantial. The United States Soccer Federation stumbled through just such a soccer catastrophe in 2017, and Italy has now done it in two World Cup cycles in a row.For Nigeria, a leading light of African soccer that until this year had failed to qualify for the World Cup only once since 1994, the emotional and financial cost of elimination may be best told through the demise of a single deal: the carefully calibrated plan, worth millions of dollars and priceless publicity, linked to the release of a new national team jersey made by Nike.Nigeria’s jersey for the 2018 World Cup had been a breakout star, creating a frenzy and the type of buzz more expected from an appearance by one of the game’s star players than the arrival of a piece of apparel. Brightly colored and featuring a design that set it apart from the more staid, conservative offerings of most of the other teams at the tournament in Russia, Nigeria’s jersey became a must-have that summer, selling out almost immediately.Nigeria national soccer gear in London in 2018. It didn’t stay in stores for long.Frank Augstein/Associated PressNike received at least three million orders for the $90 shirt even before it went on sale. Lines formed at the company’s flagship stores in London and other cities on the day of its release. When it was finally made available online, it sold out in three minutes.Four years later, Nike and Nigeria — whose federation officials have sought to take full advantage of their brand through their relationship with the company — were hoping to build on that success with a new design this summer.“Nike has been very religious about us,” Pinnick said. “I feel very, very bad — I feel like crying when you mention Nike. They went all the way to bringing out what would have been the best jersey again in this tournament.”The World Cup is a major sales moment for Nike, which outfits some of the tournament’s most prominent teams, including the current champion, France, but also the United States, England and Brazil, which has won more titles than any other nation.Designing and manufacturing World Cup jerseys is not a short process, either; it typically takes about two years before the products appear in stores. Pinnick’s reaction, then, was understandable: Nigeria’s failure to qualify will mean a colossal loss in what the soccer federation could have expected to reap from its share of sales, he said. (Fans of the shirt will still get a chance to own one: The shirt will be released, presumably amid much less excitement, in September.)Pinnick estimated that as many as five million jerseys might have been sold after qualification, though it is unclear how many jerseys Nike was planning to produce; the company declined multiple requests to comment for this article.Joe Aribo and Nigeria lost to Ecuador, 1-0, in a friendly on Thursday in New Jersey. It was the team’s second defeat in a week on its United States tour.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesThrough its contract with Nike, Nigeria was entitled to a royalty of about 8 percent of each sale, Pinnick suggested. It would also have received a further $1 million in bonus fees from the company for making the World Cup. Those payouts, as well as additional eight-figure paydays from FIFA just for playing in the tournament, most likely would have meant a doubling of the Nigerian federation’s annual revenues of $20 million — a figure that was less than a tenth of what the biggest national soccer associations in South America and Europe generate.Shehu Dikko, the vice president of the federation, said a significant amount of the money earned through qualification would have been allocated before the tournament, on items like player bonuses, tuneup matches and training camps. (The team is currently in North America: It lost to Mexico on Saturday in Texas and again to Ecuador at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey on Thursday night.) “It is a huge financial blow for us,” he said, “and we have to recover.”There is another element of Nigeria’s failure, though, that is much harder to quantify. Over the decades, the Nigeria men’s soccer team, particularly when it is performing at major tournaments, has become a rallying point like no other for a population cleaved by social, ethnic and religious differences.“Football in Nigeria is life — it’s more than anybody can explain with words,” Dikko said. “You have to feel it. Nigeria has over 500 tribes, so many traditions, but football is the only activity that breaks through all of our fault lines. Once there is a football, everybody is a Nigerian. Nobody cares who you are, what you do or what language you speak. So football is more than just a game for us. It’s what binds this country together.”“Football is more than just a game for us,” one Nigerian official said of the sport and the national team. “It’s what binds this country together.”Afolabi Sotunde/ReutersThat level of interest and passion, though, means there also is a sharper focus on the performance of the federation.Under Pinnick, who assumed the role in 2014 and is the longest-serving soccer president in Nigeria’s history and who is also a member of FIFA’s governing council, Nigeria has had a mixed record. While he claims credit for modernizing the federation and attracting new sponsors, his tenure has failed to yield any major titles. A round of 16 elimination in the most recent edition of the Africa Cup of Nations — months before the team’s World Cup ouster — was its worst performance in that event since 1984. That came after a third-place finish in the previous edition and two consecutive catastrophic qualification campaigns in which Nigeria missed the competition in 2015 and 2017.Despite his initial impulse to resign in March, Pinnick now says he will stay on through the end of his term later this year. Not everyone supports the decision.Days after its World Cup exit, with Pinnick at his lowest, dozens of placard-holding protesters gathered outside the Nigerian headquarters in Abuja, calling for his ouster. Pinnick said the protest was not what it seemed; he suggested the crowd had been assembled — and paid — by opponents who have been trying to stymie his efforts since the day he first stepped into office.“They are professional placard carriers — you employ them, you rent them,” Pinnick said of the group that called for his ouster. “If you ask the guy why they are carrying the placards, they say they don’t know. They rent them for as low as 10 cents, 20 cents. People are hungry.”A few days later, there was another demonstration, more placards. This time the messages were different. They called on Pinnick to stay on. More

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      in Golf

      Golf Shoes Are Getting a Makeover Thanks to Streetwear and Sneaker Culture

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      If you’ve seen golf shoes on the street, it is because one of the world’s most conservative sports has been getting a fresh look on the course.Streetwear — long the provenance of New York hip-hop and California surf culture — has been making its way to the green grass of golf courses.“Golf has started to get cooler, and it’s become less standoffish because there are parts of the sneaker community that have embraced it,” said Jacques Slade, a sneaker YouTuber and golfer who has been vocal about the need for more golf shoes that reflect sneaker culture.Hip-hop culture and sneakers have always had a close relationship, but the tie between hip-hop and golf might not be too far of a stretch, said Ankur Amin, an owner of the New York streetwear boutique Extra Butter. He said golf’s aspirational appeal has helped its style connect with his customers.“So much that we do in street culture is about pursuit of the good life,” he said, “and so much about golf represents that, the same way Moët & Chandon or Louis Vuitton does.”Tiger Woods, a Nike-sponsored golfer, brought a lot of new fans to the sport in the late 1990s, but dwindling interest in his products during the 2010s paved the way for a streetwear crossover into golf. Nike and a subsidiary, Jordan Brand, began releasing collectible silhouettes as golf shoes, such as the Air Max 1 and the original Air Jordans.Sneakerheads salivated. “You have people that’ve grown up with the Jordan Brand,” said the rapper and golf entrepreneur Macklemore, who has done sneaker collaborations with Jordan. “It makes sense that people are going to go nuts.”Brooks Koepka wore Nike while playing in the 2019 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnd sneaker culture’s grip on golf has only continued to grow. While the pandemic has devastated a number of institutions, it has also boosted participation in golf, as well as other activities conducive to social distancing like running, hiking and cycling, according to the NPD Group, a market research company.“Once golf courses started opening up again, the business just took off,” said Matt Powell, the vice president of NPD Group and an analyst for the sports business, who said participation was also slightly up before the pandemic.Many people bought golf sets at entry-level prices in 2020, he said, an indication that newcomers were picking up the sport. “Any of the beginners who are buying $400 golf sets are not going to drop $120 on golf shoes,” he said. “They’re going to play in sneakers.”Sneakers have always been an overarching part of the millennial generation’s fashion choices, but now some adults in their late 20s and 30s have the disposable income to play golf — or, at least, to try it. Locations of Top Golf and Five Iron Golf, in some ways the sport’s equivalent to bowling alleys, have also opened across the country, which has made elements of the sport more accessible in urban areas where courses are harder to find.“Golf is a game that’s very traditional, but if you look at millennials and all the generations that are following them, they’re never afraid to do something a little bit different,” said Gentry Humphrey, the former vice president of footwear at Jordan Brand who led the company’s entry into the sport.Gentry Humphrey led Nike into the golf market before he retired from the company last fall.Charley Gallay/Getty ImagesBefore Humphrey retired last fall, he also spent time leading Nike’s golf business. Part of Humphrey’s philosophy has been to transform Nike and Jordan sneakers that collectors covet into shoes that can actually be used on the fairway. “Kids are wanting to go out there,” he said, “and they’d rather go out there in something fresh.”Although producing these golf sneakers may seem as simple as adding high-traction soles, there are also other considerations like waterproofing and modifying the cushioning.“We didn’t want it to just be a basketball shoe that moves to the golf course,” Humphrey said, adding that Nike had developed new shoe technologies like the integrated traction bottom — a rubberized outsole without hard spikes that players could wear all day.Another part of Humphrey’s strategy has been to provide a wider platform to start-up golf brands through product collaborations. For instance, Eastside Golf, a brand started in 2019 by the professional golfers Olajuwon Ajanaku and Earl Cooper, who played together at Morehouse College in Atlanta, aims to increase diversity in the sport and introduce younger to it.Earl Cooper, left, and Olajuwon Ajanaku are the founders of Eastside Golf apparel.Julio Cortez/Associated Press“Who said you can’t play golf in a T-shirt?” said Cooper, the first African American all-state golfer in Delaware. “When they created these rules, minorities weren’t even allowed to play. People are trying to hold on to a tradition that was already broken or flawed.”Ajanaku, who designed the trademark for Eastside Golf’s clothing line, which features a Black man in bluejeans wearing a gold chain and baseball cap while swinging a club, said the prominent placement of a person of color on the company’s products was a milestone.“For us to actually have a logo of a Black man playing golf on our clothes speaks to everyone that has not felt welcome in the sport,” he said.Eastside Golf’s logo was shown prominently on the tongue of their Air Jordan collaboration, which used the silhouette of the original Air Jordan IV, a retro sneaker that is highly regarded among sneakerheads. The golf spikes were removable so the sneakers could also be worn off the course.Shoes that are convertible or can transition easily from the green to the clubhouse are one of the key innovations that have helped open up sneaker culture within golf. For fashion-minded individuals, half-inch spikes on the bottom of a sneaker can significantly alter the aesthetic of the shoe. So, brands are increasingly opting for subtle traction on the bottom of their golf shoes instead of straight spikes.“There were so many people buying the golf product collaborations, but didn’t even play the game,” Humphrey said. “My phone was ringing off the hook more for the Eastside Golf collab than for some of the projects we did with Christian Dior. The sport is looking for another shot of energy, and this was a great way to introduce something new to it.”Daniel Berger wearing Adidas during a practice round at the 2022 Masters.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn tour, eagle-eyed golfers or sneaker collectors may have spotted these shoes on the feet of Bubba Watson, 43, or Harold Varner III, 31, but even younger pros are also bringing a different swagger to the PGA Tour, Slade, the sneaker YouTuber, said. A lot of the players on the tour now, he said, “grew up listening to Travis Scott or Tyler the Creator. They’re coming into this world with a totally different perspective.”Last summer, Extra Butter, Amin’s boutique, collaborated with Adidas on a streetwear golf collection inspired by the film “Happy Gilmore” that included golf shoes, sneakers, balls and putter covers. The store is also introducing new golf-based brands to its inventory, like Radda, Whim and Manors Golf.“From the beginning of hip-hop culture, there’s always been this air of wanting to represent what you aspire to,” said Bernie Gross, Extra Butter’s creative director. “We come from backgrounds that don’t represent this, but this is what we hope to achieve one day. Golf is part of that.”Rappers are also getting into the golf business. Drake launched a 10-piece golf collection with Nike that was worn by Brooks Koepka, a four-time major champion. And Macklemore, the Seattle-based rapper, launched his own golf line — dubbed Bogey Boys — in February 2021.Musician Macklemore, wearing a ‘Bogey Boys’ hat and clothing, played in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Monterey Peninsula Country Club last month.Orlando Ramirez/Getty ImagesMacklemore started playing just two and a half years ago while on vacation, and was immediately hooked. But even before he hit his first 5-iron out of the fairway bunker, he was thrifting for classic golf looks from the 1970s. He started his independent golf brand because he saw a market in new players who wanted to bring a unique style to their on-course looks.Since its launch a little over a year ago, Bogey Boys, whose looks are inspired by the swag of golfers like Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino, has sold out of its first collection of limited-edition products, partnered with Nordstrom and opened its first retail location in Seattle in September.Still, beyond collectability, style and functionality, Eastside Golf’s founders believe there are bigger takeaways for the conventionalist sport.“Golf can learn from the sneaker culture,” Cooper said. “Sneaker culture is all about individuality. That’s what golf has been missing.” More