Dress or success for Venus Williams?

The calls of "What a shot" against Date were a change from the usual reaction to Williams' Grand Slam matches these days, often played to exclamations of "What is she wearing?" And Grand Slams are pretty much where we've seen the elder Williams lately -- until she played Eastbourne last week, Venus' past four tournaments were the four majors themselves. She hadn't played since the Australian Open in January, where she retired in the third round with a hip injury.

Despite being past the age at which most players are winning the big events, Williams still looks dangerous enough to challenge for a little while yet. It took eventual champ Kim Clijsters three tough sets to oust Venus at the U.S. Open, and she was looming as a potential threat at the Australian Open before getting injured. But she takes just as many puzzling losses, like the one last year at the All England Club to Pironkova. It seems likely that injuries have played a role in some of those defeats, but the extent remains unclear because Williams makes it a point never to say anything about how she's feeling physically.

But she insists that here, she has come back fully recovered. "This time I couldn't come back too soon or I'd be in the same situation as I was in Australia. That was very painful, is not something to go through twice," said Williams. "So I tried to come back this time when I felt like I was a lot stronger and not injured."

There's always an air of mystery around big sis Venus, but nothing is as puzzling as her recent string of outfits. Like her sister, Serena -- the defending Wimbledon champ -- Venus is known as a fashion aficionado, taking courses in the subject and designing the "EleVen" line she owns and wears on the court. But though avant-garde style may work on the catwalk, it rarely translates directly to the street, let alone a tennis court.

Her present outfit has been described as everything from a toga to a cleverly improvised pair of curtains. To add to the confusion, she is describing it as a "jumper," which in England means a sweater. It was not built for motion. The shorts are a little too short for receiving serve, and the draped shoulders balloon out when she serves. For someone who has been the best-dressed player at Wimbledon in the past and remains one of the most statuesque figures on the tour, Williams is not cutting a graceful figure in the photos so far this fortnight.

The fashion critics (OK, the press) have not been kind, and the outfit dominated reports of her first-round win. "First things first -- the dress," began a column in the Times, while the Telegraph suggested that it "appeared to be the closest that anyone has ever come up wearing a cut-off toga to this garden party" and that Williams looked like "she had come dressed in net curtains ripped from the windows of her Florida home.

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