We’ve Misunderstood the Most Famous Gesture in Tennis

We’ve got it all wrong. It’s not about bad underwear.

Over the years, a certain underwear brand has received an impressive number of emails from people convinced they’ve spotted something no one else has ever noticed: “You should send a pair to that left-handed tennis player — you know, the one who keeps tugging at his shorts. He must be suffering.”

They write with concern, or amusement, or the quiet triumph of someone who believes they’ve discovered a flaw in a superstar’s choreography. What they don’t seem to realise is that the entire world has been watching that particular gesture for most of his career. Stadiums full of spectators have watched it. Entire nations have begged it to stop. It never has.

But it’s not discomfort. He’s not in the middle of a textile emergency. And he is not whispering for help. Each time he appears to be adjusting himself, we’re witnessing ritual in its purest form: a small, almost invisible recalibration in a moment too large for words. A gesture that seems to mean nothing and accomplish nothing — except that it allows the person performing it to continue. And sometimes that’s everything.

Humans reach for rituals wherever pressure exists. The violinist who straightens sheet music already aligned; the surgeon who repeats the same sequence before every operation. These gestures may look amusing to an outsider, but they are not jokes, and they certainly aren’t symptoms to diagnose. Rituals exist to remind us that, however chaotic the environment, this moment still belongs to us.

Those who believe the tennis star’s famous tugging would disappear with “better underwear” are missing the point. Rituals don’t vanish when conditions improve. They become sharper. More deliberate. More focused. Rituals are symbols that compress meaning in a way only the person performing them truly understands. A worldview can hide inside a gesture.

Outside the tennis court, rituals have become a kind of theatre. Incense burns, tea steeps, playlists whisper promises of serenity. We count breaths, stretch carefully, and write small aphorisms into pastel-coloured notebooks. All of it earnest, all of it well-intentioned — and none of it capable of rearranging the world waiting behind the front door. When the candle dies, the day is unchanged. When the tea cools, the obligations remain. Rituals were never meant to transform anything except the person performing them. The tennis star’s ritual is his, and it has meaning only for him.

Which brings us to underwear.

For most of us, putting on underwear has always been just a routine. But what if — just once — you treated it as a ritual?

As gestures go, it’s thoroughly unremarkable: mechanical, inevitable, and not remotely ceremonial. Underwear won’t lift you above life’s difficulties, won’t deliver enlightenment, won’t absolve you of responsibility, and certainly won’t shield you from whatever awaits after breakfast.

But that brief moment when you slip into it can symbolise everything that actually matters. It can hold the quiet acknowledgment that you cannot change the entire world today. You cannot control other people’s thoughts or behaviour.

The only thing even vaguely within your control is your own attention — and even that tends to wander.

What you can do is decide how you step into the day, which is far less heroic than most philosophies pretend, and far more powerful than people realise. The tennis player’s small adjustment never won a match, but it helped him focus on the one being played. Every ritual works the same way. They don’t fix the world; they remind us we are not completely at its mercy.

So tomorrow morning, before you begin whatever version of order you’ve chosen — whether it involves candles or caffeine or nothing at all — try turning routine into ritual. Make it your own. Something that doesn’t pretend to change the world but quietly changes you. Think of it as a countdown: ten… nine… eight… a brief moment with yourself before the day accelerates.

By the time you reach one, the world may not be any different, but at least you’ll know how you intend to meet it.

A day tends to follow the underwear you choose.