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Novak Djokovic, putting another nail in Rafael Nadal's coffin at the U.S. Open on Sept. 12 Chris Trotman/Getty Images
After his third-round victory at the 2011 U.S. Open, Novak Djokovic, the eventual champion, slouched in a chair wearing a navy blue T-shirt stamped with “Authentic Club Staff” on the front and the logo of the apparel maker, Sergio Tacchini, on the sleeve.
It was a friendly affair, as these press conferences usually are. (“You play so well on the big points,” began one questioner. “Is that something that’s come over the last year or so?”) At one point, though, Djokovic was put on the defensive. “Around this complex, Roger [Federer] and Rafael Nadal have their own store, Andy Roddick has a huge picture over the Lacoste store. You’re not quite as visible despite being the No. 1 player,” said a reporter. “Do you care about that at all?” Djokovic smiled. “Well, I think I have to talk to my sponsors about it.”
Djokovic, who recovers as well as anyone in the game, cheerfully added, “But, look, you know, I care mostly about, obviously, the game, to win on the court, and everything else I leave to the people who are responsible for that.” The moment was revealing. Having won three of the sport’s four major championships and compiled a match record of 64-3, Djokovic has enjoyed arguably the greatest season in tennis history. His rise also marks a return to prominence for Sergio Tacchini, the 45-year-old brand that pays Djokovic to wear its clothes. Tacchini, worn and then discarded by the best, is worn by the best once more. But that is only part of the story.
Sergio Tacchini was an Italian tennis player, and he founded the company in 1966, toward the end of his career. Tacchini was tired of wearing white. He experimented with stripes and color, and soon started paying other players to wear his designs. In 1972, Ilie Nastăse, the future Hall of Fame player, signed with Tacchini for $5,000. By the end of the decade, John McEnroe was, according to media accounts at the time, getting around $400,000 to wear Tacchini during his epic matches against Björn Borg at Wimbledon. Jimmy Connors and Vitas Gerulaitis wore Tacchini. Tracy Austin and Chris Evert sported the brand’s red, white, and blue warm-ups when the U.S. won the 1980 Fed Cup.
Tacchini representatives traveled around the world, aggressively courting junior players and building the company’s roster of future Hall of Famers. By the early ’80s, Tacchini had expanded into skiwear, beach clothing, golf apparel, and weekend wear. It was a brand for the moment, offering an aesthetic that suggested at once leisure and aggression. The company called its iconic tracksuit “the Dallas.” It also knew how to spot future greats on the rise. In the late ’80s it signed a promising American teenager, Pete Sampras, to a three-year deal. It was extended to five years just before Sampras won his first major title, the 1990 U.S. Open, wearing a Tacchini polo emblazoned with a large yellow archer. Tacchini also outfitted the women’s winner that year, Gabriela Sabatini. It was the brand of champions.
Then it began to fade. By the mid-’90s bigger sports gear makers such as Nike and Adidas were aggressively poaching Tacchini’s clients and eating into its market share. (Sampras jumped to Nike in 1994.) But the company’s biggest headaches came from one of its own: Martina Hingis.
Hingis dominated the women’s tour during the second half of the ’90s. She seemed to fit well into the Tacchini firmament, appealing to wealthy, casually athletic, European-oriented fans. It didn’t work out. Three years into Hingis’s five-year deal, worth $5.6 million, Tacchini fired her, accusing Hingis of not wearing the clothes as contracted. Two years later, Hingis sued, claiming that the “defective” Tacchini shoes she wore had wrecked her feet and ruined her career. (Hingis had surgery in 2001 and 2002 to repair ligaments in her ankles.) A New York court dismissed the suit, ruling that the case should be heard in Milan, where Hingis had signed the contract and where another suit was pending. In 2006 her manager, Mario Widmer, told a German newspaper that “the Tacchini problem is resolved. We have come to a compromise and at the same time have agreed to keep silence on both sides.”
