Good Kit/Ugly Kit: Madrid

It’s Monday, you know what that means. Good kits. Ugly kits. This time, it’s a review of Madrid where Carlos Alcaraz continued to roll with a successful defense of his title in singles. In doubles, it was a singles surprise with Karen Khachanov and Andrey Rublev combining to win their first doubles title as a duo. This is another tournament where I found way more good than ugly! Since I have chosen not to include the psycho doodle Nike garbage that Alcaraz is sporting still as an ugly choice, you’re getting just one ugly entry this week. Bon appetit!

GOOD KIT

This is my favorite one from Madrid and it’s from one of the surprise packages of the tournament in Zhang Zhizen. The 26-year-old from China took down seeds Denis Shapovalov, Cameron Norrie and Taylor Fritz en route to his first Masters quarterfinal. And he did it all in this superb kit from K-Swiss. The color combination on the shirt is exquisite. If you told me there were four or five different colors on a shirt, I’d expect a potential fiasco. This one however works very well with the simple horizontal stripes setting things off. The choice of solid gray shorts and gray shoes to match complete a really sweet kit.

UGLY KIT

Adidas usually puts out solid kits, but now and again they slip in some very iffy selections. This shirt on Felix Auger-Aliassime is one of those for me. It looks like somebody practiced on the clay in Madrid and then stepped all over Felix’s shirt. The black for the rest of the kit is perfectly fine of course, but the shirt really ruins this look.

GOOD KIT

My love of orange not withstanding, this is a gorgeous kit by Lotto for Bernabe Zapata-Miralles. The burgundy highlights on the sides of the short are a perfect compliment to set up the shorts which have just a hint of orange to match the top. It’s a great choice by the designers not to complicate this kit with stripes or any weird patterns as the solid colors play really well together. You toss in the orange wristbands and those sweet shoes, and this kit is really doing it for me.

GOOD KIT

This is a simple, yet solid kit by French company Le Coq Sportif that also outfits Richard Gasquet. The soft pink as the main color is delightful. I think a brighter pink would be too harsh, so using this more muted version is perfect. The white as the complimentary color is a very nice choice and again, staying simple with the stripes on the sides leading down to the white shorts is splendid. Gasquet had white shoes with his version of this kit which might be a better option, but I don’t think Baez’s mess this up for me. All in all, a very nice kit and I’ll have to pay a little more attention to this company and their kits. Most of Gasquet’s that I recall from the past have been solid, so I’m intrigued to see more.

That’s it for Madrid. Join me on Twitter again this week as I dissect the good and ugly in Rome. Will this be the last week that we have to see the psycho doodle shirts from Nike? I sure as hell hope so.