THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON Morgan Riddle used to sit on Wimbledons Henman Hill, sipping Pimms and watching tennis on the big screens in peace. Now she cant take a step at the All England Club without being recognized.
I wasnt on social media, so nobody knew who I was, Riddle says during an interview at Wimbledon, sitting in a hideout spot in the media center she uses for downtime.
She is more often in a box seat on a show court these days. Tuesday, she sat on No. 1 Court to watch Taylor Fritz, the American world No. 5, reach his first Wimbledon semifinal with a four-set win over Russias Karen Khachanov.
Fritz is her boyfriend; Riddle, 27, is a tennis phenomenon all of her own. Fritz, also 27, was two points from defeat in his first-round match. Had he lost, Riddle wouldnt have left with him. In the past three years, she has become one of the avatars of the sports cultural takeover.
Im not talking about players or scores or who hits their forehand the best, says the influencer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who has a combined follower count of over one million on TikTok and Instagram.
Instead, her insights into tournament life and the evolution of the relationship between tennis and fashion have become a vital gateway into the sport that tennis at large needs more than ever.
If tenniscore reached a zenith with Challengers, the 2024 film starring Zendaya that is not really a tennis movie but says plenty about the sport, then Riddle was ahead of the curve.
While at Wimbledon, she films a series for the All England Clubs YouTube and social media channels called Threads, which is all about fashion, which now means being all about tenniscore. The fashion trend, which draws from the aesthetic of tennis, sees premium streetwear brands like Kith collaborate with Wilson to refurbish courts, albeit with a big logo as a tag.
Kit manufacturer Asics released a collection with French label A.P.C. Mens world No. 1 Jannik Sinner is a Gucci ambassador; Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen is the face of Dior. Fashion podcasts like Throwing Fits are talking about the sport more than ever. Tennis place in wider culture continues to reach new heights, and Riddle is among those on Centre Court as the rally continues.
Tennis fashion encapsulates this certain preppy vibe. You think of pleated skirts, collars and that sort of thing. But then I like going to all the different tournaments. The way that I dress for Wimbledon is very different from the way Ill dress for a tournament in Tokyo or Stockholm, she says.
In 2023, Riddle launched her own tennis jewellery collection with Lottie NYC, before she and Fritz, who met on the members-only dating and networking app Raya in 2020, appeared on Break Point, the ill-fated Netflix documentary series about tennis.
But it was 2022 when her journey toward tennis fame began. She posted a get ready with me TikTok from the Australian Open, which went viral. She has since documented her life on tour, which follows Fritzs tennis calendar but is not beholden to it, through the medium of fashion. For the first two years of their relationship, she did not know she would be joining him.
I needed to find something that allows us to sort of live parallel alongside each other. Not just coming along on his line. It wanted to be two lines going together, she says.
That has not been without its challenges. A day at Wimbledon often means dinner at 1 a.m. and waking up seven hours later, and all the while, Riddle contends with preconceptions about being the partner of a sports star especially one on an upward trajectory. Fritz has climbed from the top 30 to the top five during their relationship, and as Riddles own renown has grown, she has met with outdated implications.
Sometimes people refer to me as tennis Barbie, she says.
They mean to be offensive but then we fed into it and did a whole outfit inspired by Barbie. Youre gonna call me that, so Im gonna embrace it. I feel the same way about the word WAG too, she says.
WAG is short for wives and girlfriends. It was popularised by British tabloid press when referring to the partners of soccer players in the early 2000s, but has since permeated into American sports, including the NBA and NFL.
When I first started dating Taylor, I accepted I would be called that term either way. Instead of trying to push the term or change it, I accept and embrace it and then try to switch the connotations behind it, so we dont have to think of it as something negative, she says.
Riddle has done that in part by embracing the community that sees her as a way into a complicated and sometimes deliberately impenetrable sport. Her outfits for Wimbledon, and the other Grand Slams, introduce people to tennis fashion. She is constantly re-sharing pictures shared by fans who have been inspired to dress like her.
But she is also part of a developing bridge between wider culture and the sport itself. There are countless fans of Coco Gauff the TikTok star, Aryna Sabalenka the dancer, or Carlos Alcaraz the fancam character. But moving from being a casual fan into understanding the intricacies of tennis can be intimidating. Riddle makes it less so, influencing and empowering a new generation of tennis fans, predominantly girls and women, to not only explore their fashion but to follow and play the sport.
So many of the people who come up to me at tournaments are teenage girls who tell me they have never cared about tennis until they watched my YouTube vlogs, she says.
They say: Now Im obsessed with tennis and I watch every tournament. Getting to hear that while Im at tournaments and being able to talk directly to followers and people who watch my vlogs and stuff gives me a lot of motivation, she says.
Her relationship between tennis and fashion came full circle in the sticky heat of New York summer last year, when Fritz became the first American man to reach the U.S. Open singles final since Andy Roddick in 2009.
Riddle describes it as the best two weeks, but adds that the ease of their mutual success isnt something she takes for granted.
Theres a certain kind of guy that would not like what Im doing or sort of the spotlight thats been cast on me in the tennis world. But I think he likes it, she says.
Speaking ahead of his match against Alcaraz, Fritz said that theres been a pretty constant, I guess, results and ranking rise since weve been together.
I think I would have to say shes been a big help to me just kind of keeping me focused, having someone who cares and just pushes you to just do better.
With so much of her life online, it is important for Riddle to take time for herself. During her stay in London, she practices what she calls her sacred time in the mornings away from social media. A walk to Wimbledon Village for an oat milk latte, headphones blasting a Spotify playlist called Happy Mornings.
She and her stylist, childhood friend Emily Essen, also have a very good problem to solve: What to wear for Fritzs Centre Court date with Alcaraz and the TikTok that will precede it. As ever with Riddle, the decision goes beyond just what looks good.
A lot of the girls that find me through those sorts of videos about the outfits or whatever start watching the matches. Then they start getting favorite players, and then they start learning about the scoring and that sort of thing.
So its kind of a gateway into a true love of the sport.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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