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In praise of the DIY haircut

Andy Murray likes cantaloupe and a little stretch. Drew Brees likes to lick and suck his fingers. Rafael Nadal, meanwhile, tugs on his shorts at 15-second intervals. The rituals of sportspeople vary wildly – one man’s melon is another man’s ticket to victory – so what should we make of Svetlana Kuznetsova’s decision to hack off her own ponytail courtside during the WTA final against Agnieszka Radwańska last night in Singapore.

Eleven shaves her head

However, this was less a ritual and more an act of desperation (and one that ranks with Gary Lineker’s incident during the World Cup in 1990 in terms of both viral potential and ghoulish voyeurism) – the Russian tennis player claimed her ponytail was hitting her in the eye. “Every time I would hit a good shot, it would hit my eye every time and I had [to] struggle,” said Kuznetsova, who requested a break and a pair of scissors. “I thought, “OK, what’s more important now, my hair, which I can let grow, or the match?”


A model on the Raf Simons fashion show in June. Photograph: Estrop/Getty Images

Impromptu haircuts can go either way, as those of us who have Bic’d their own hair know only too well. For famous people, it tends to go well, mainly because it makes a good story provided you’re not the one doing it, adding a bespoke, punkish quality to both the tale and the celebrity. In the 1990s, Linda Evangelista cried after cutting her hair off at Peter Lindbergh’s request, but it elevated her career immeasurably. We all watched in awe and fascination as Millie Bobbi Brown got her hair shaved off for her role as Eleven in Stranger Things helped, of course, by the fact it was filmed. Incidentally, Kuznetsova won the match and ended up with a dismantled bob not dissimilar to Patti Smith’s which, incidentally, popped up in Raf Simon’s collection. Double win, then.

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