Australian Open – Helmets when entering the court: protective bubble or “disrespectful attitude”?

This July 8, 2015, the very venerable Center Court of Wimbledon witnessed an unprecedented scene. Opposed in the quarter-finals, Victoria Azarenka and Serena Williams arrive on the field with two headsets aimed at their ears. Shocking: the episode does not go unnoticed in the heart of the temple of tennis tradition and decorum. On the BBC, Martina Navratilova protests: “I think it's a lack of respect for the game, for the public. You go out to connect with the audience, not to disconnect from them.“

Ten years later, however, the practice has become largely democratized. Coco Gauff, Arthur Fils, Naomi Osaka, Frances Tiafoe, Ben Shelton, Ugo Humbert, Iga Swiatek or Nick Kyrgios, to name but a few, enter the court very frequently with earphones or headphones on and for good reason, nothing in the regulations do not prohibit them. The fashion for gigantic helmets was popularized by footballers getting out of their bus when arriving at the stadiums but it never occurred to them to enter the pitch with them.

This is precisely what upsets our consultant Nicolas Mahut in the case of tennis players: “You no longer need to isolate yourself at this point since you enter the arena and the battle has begunhe points out. I find that there is a bit of a disrespectful side towards the public. When you enter a court and you have 10,000 people applauding you but you don't even hear them… It bothers me that the players don't pay attention to that. They mechanically greet the crowd. There is a slightly played side that I don't like.” But then why do they cut themselves off from an energy that could galvanize them?

The reasons are diverse. A pioneer in the field, Serena Williams sought to awaken the lioness in her by stimulating herself through music: “This puts you in the right frame of mind, in the “zone” and prepares you for the match“, she confided. A theory which did not convince Roger Federer at the time: “We could take the headphones off two minutes earlier, exhibited the Swiss. I don't think those two minutes make the difference in whether you hold your serve or not in the first game.“

Others, on the contrary, use headphones to isolate themselves from the external environment as long as possible. Coco Gauff, for example, needs to stay in her bubble: “Some people don't know this but, before entering the court, I like to play loud musicconfided the American last year in Indian Wells while her audience encouraged her each time she entered the court. I don't like hearing you when I go on court because it makes me nervous.“

Cut yourself off from others in order to somehow find yourself. A theory that does not hold for Pier Gauthier, mental trainer and former coach of Sébastien Grosjean and Gaël Monfils: “To say that an athlete must stay in his bubble is a total aberrationhe reacts. We hear this expression all the time but believing that an athlete will stay in his bubble is a total illusion. I have no problem with wearing headphones when entering the court but if he listens to music to stay in his bubble, he is making a mistake because he will exhaust himself mentally.“Yet Gauff is not the only one to use headphones as protection.

Naomi Osaka, known for being notoriously introverted, also uses her headphones as a screen to protect herself and ward off unwanted social interaction. “Anyone who knows me knows that I'm an introvert, and anyone who has seen me at tournaments will notice that I often wear headphones, as it helps alleviate my social anxiety“, she explained in 2024 during the Brisbane tournament.

Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic never entered a court with music in their ears. It must be said that the Majorcan has a very precise idea on the question: “I feel much better and more respectful of the crowd if I am with them and not with myselfhe confided in comments relayed by the New York Times in 2015. It's more a question of respect than anything else.“

Ana Petkovic, former opponent of Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka, went even further: “Part of you belongs to the people who paid to see you play, and I think you should give your all to them once you step on the court.“

Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka have another thing in common that could perhaps more easily explain their tendency to wear imposing headpieces when all eyes are on them. The two young women are the faces of two major headphone brands: Bose for Gauff, the highest paid sportswoman in the world in 2023 with $25 million earned thanks to her extra-sporting income, and Beats by Dre for Osaka, 6th in the ranking according to Forbes. A partner that she shares in particular with Frances Tiafoe. “Maybe there are commercial interests behind it and we don't really know what makes them feel good for their performance and what is communication to justify a partnership.“, laments Mahut again.

From now on, Osaka even displays her helmet during press conferences, where the connection with her interlocutor seems necessary, while Frances Tiafoe did not take the trouble to remove hers during the American anthem in the Davis Cup. . An indelicacy which triggered the ire of Adriano Panatta, winner of Roland-Garros in 1976: “He's rude. If I were his captain, I'd kick his ass“, he posted on

“I know that when a player enters the court with such concentration, that they are in that “zone” that allows you to win a Major, I will see beautiful tennis.” The observation was signed in 2015 in the columns of the New York Times by Omar Johnson, marketing director of Beats by Dre. A conclusion that is too biased to be completely honest. “Nadal has never worn a helmet and, yet, we can hardly doubt the intensity of his concentration at the start of the match“, notes Nicolas Mahut. No study has yet been carried out on the question.

An ardent user of Beats by Dre headphones, of which he is also one of the headliners (well, well…), Nick Kyrgios is undoubtedly the male player to have most often entered the court with headphones. The whimsical Australian has even, several times, broken the sacrosanct rule of “all white rule” at Wimbledon with pink or red models.

But for his last Australian Open at home, he left the helmet in the locker room. For what ? “I didn't listen to any music today, he confided after his defeat in the first round against Jacob Fearnley. I walked, I wanted to hear the crowd.” Live the moment to the fullest in short. But Kyrgios lost. Is it the fault of the absence of a helmet or more surely his physical condition? The debate continues.