While these players are busy giving the squeaky-clean reputation of tennis something of a fashion makeover, the rest of culture is busy playing an ace (sorry) with tennis typology. See Challengers, Mr Luca Guadagnino’s film starring Zendaya, Mr Mike Faist and Mr Josh O’Connor as pro players in a very stylish love triangle. Meanwhile, Messrs Andre Agassi and Bjorn Borg are resurfacing as style references on Instagram. Accordingly, the tenniscore trend, first found on TikTok, has exploded. Google Trends report the search term had rose 82 per cent by the end of May.

If tenniscore has chiefly focused on womenswear up until now – think pleated tennis dresses and retro visors – it’s coming for menswear, too. Mr Daniel-Yaw Miller is sports correspondent for The Business of Fashion. He says there are parallels between the tennis aesthetic and “a lot of high-end luxury menswear at the moment”.

“It’s very tennis country club,” Miller says. “Where you’ve just finished playing, and you throw on a smart-looking sweater and you’ve still got some shorts on. That's the menswear look of the summer.”

The clothing associated with tennis – polo shirts, smart mid-length shorts, boxy knits – fit into the wider preppy trend, and that will also ensure these things have relevance beyond just sport. “It doesn't get more preppy than tennis,” Miller says.

This style is explored expertly in Challengers, in costumes designed by Mr Jonathan Anderson. There’s Faist’s neat button-down shirts, luxe athleisure and ON sneakers, or O’Connor’s effortless pairing of polo shirts with perfectly distressed Levi’s. When it comes to the blurring of athletes’ work and play wardrobes, this is a masterclass.

It’s a world familiar to Mr Stuart Brumfitt, editor of tennis style magazine Bagel. He played competitive tennis when he was younger. “You spend all day at a tournament, and you're on and off the court,” he says. “You have to be in this really easy, loungy clothing… It’s instilled in me a love for sun-faded colours and cosy fabrics.”

While Brumfitt hasn’t seen the tenniscore effect on what men in the crowd on the tennis circuit are wearing, he has noticed a blending elsewhere. “In New York, I saw [people] cycling around with this very hybrid look – amateur tennis players who are wearing [the gear] mixed in with a bit of streetwear, or a tote bag with a racket poking out.”

Avoiding the full look is a way to make this work for everyday life. “The brands that do it well, you don’t instantly look at the person and think, ‘Oh, they just come from playing tennis’, or, ‘They're about to go and play tennis’,” Miller says.

See the tennis range from Brunello Cucinelli, which could easily adapt to everyday summer style, or Casablanca, which plays with retro references including The Royal Tenenbaums and Agassi, to bring a hip take on tennis for 2024. “Tennis serves as a framework for us to implement classic design codes,” says Casablanca art director Mr Steve Grimes. “It’s a [way] to reinterpret athleticism into aesthetics.”

The rise of tennis clothing can be seen as part of a wider shift of reinterpreting athleticism into aesthetics in fashion. Sportswear, once siloed in your wardrobe for whatever it was intended for, is becoming more accepted beyond its activity. See the rugby shirt, a current fashion favourite found at brands such as Drake’s. Or the rise of blokecore, which takes the football shirt and gives it a fashion spin, courtesy of brands including adidas Originals x Wales Bonner and Balenciaga. “There’s a lot more style focus on sports than five years ago,” Brumfitt says.

Reigning Champ is a brand that can testify to this shift. Founded in 2007, it sits at the intersection of sport and style – designs are created to move between active and rest days. Mr Mike Belgue, Reigning Champ’s director of brand and marketing, says the tennis pieces are perennially popular: “[it has] always been the sport that has crossed over the most into culture,” he says.

Now that heritage is intersecting with our lifestyles. “Even things like our midweight terry sweats were considered performance apparel a few decades ago,” Belgue says. “[They] still work for that, in addition to hanging out. We love tossing on a classic piece for warm-up, cool-down and recovery.”

However, where blokecore’s football is associated with the working classes on the terraces, tennis has traditionally been connected to the elite. Miller thinks this may be changing, and that leads to the look having more reach. “Whereas before it was only people who grew up with it or had access to it at some point in their life, the accessibility of this new generation of stars has really opened up the sport,” he says.

For Grimes, it’s discovering something in the sport that has been there all along. “The beauty of tennis is that it can be used to elevate the everyday, from a polo shirt to après-sport loungewear,” he says. “L’élégance sportive.”