Jannik Sinner has a rule for his team, and it has nothing to do with tennis. He was asked directly why his box always turns up dressed in matching colors for his matches. Sinner finally addressed one of the quieter running mysteries of his career. The Italian admitted there is exactly one thing he insists on avoiding.

“You need to ask my team. Not me,” Sinner said during the press conference, when asked who actually picks the colour each time. “No I’m not in charge. The only color I don’t like is a white hat for a certain reason. We don’t have a good win percentage when they have a white cap. But the rest they choose.”

It’s a trend that has been going on with Sinner for a long time, though he’s been very candid about it this time. He was spotted rushing his team around mid-match at last year’s US Open semifinal against Felix Auger-Aliassime because he wanted white towels, not dark blue ones that were provided at the start of the match. 

No one has been able to explain outside his camp why white is so important to him. His outfits have followed a similar logic at times too, with a blue cap deliberately matched to blue shorts at last year’s French Open, extending into the long-sleeve top he wore off court afterwards. 

This shows that Sinner is very particular about the color of towels, hats, and clothes around him. In tennis, players frequently exhibit specific habits with their equipment, such as bouncing the ball a consistent number of times before serving or avoiding stepping on court lines during points. 

One of the clearest examples was Rafael Nadal. He had a set routine for everything he did on court, bottles kept around his chair with the labels facing the court, a routine before serving, and much more. He has said over the years that routine helped him cut out the noise around him and play the sport while being in the moment. But for Sinner, Clothing seems to be one of the easiest places for that instinct to show up.

Almost all athletes have their superstitions; not wearing a white cap in the box is Sinner’s. Those kinds of details help him perform better on the court, without any blockage, and that same belief has followed him into another semifinal at Wimbledon. 

Sinner’s title defense rolls on without dropping a set since round one

The superstition talk arrives at a good time for Sinner, who has continued to look every bit the defending champion through the first week and a half at the All England Club. After needing five sets to see off Miomir Kecmanović in an opening-round battle that also left him bleeding through his shoe following a fall, Sinner has not dropped a set since. He brushed aside Nuno Borges, Jenson Brooksby, and a red-hot Shintaro Mochizuki before beating Jan-Lennard Struff 7-5, 7-6(4), 6-3 to reach the semi-finals.

That run keeps him on course for a tenth career Grand Slam semi-final and sets up a mouth-watering last-four meeting with the winner between Novak Djokovic and Felix Auger-Aliassime. There could be a potential rematch of one of the sport’s most storied rivalries on the grandest stage available. 

Sinner’s own read on his form after beating Struff was characteristically measured. “I started to serve a little bit better,” he said of finding his rhythm after a shaky start, “very happy to be back in the semi-finals here.” 

For a player who has now built a genuine grass-court reputation to go alongside his hard-court dominance, the small ritual over hat colors looks less like an eccentricity. His oddities and specifics have brought him one win away from another Wimbledon final.