Eugenie Bouchard's Wimbledon dress "recalled" before she even wears it, as fellow Nike players have wardrobe malfunctions

WIMBLEDON – First reaction when Nike released photos of the dress it mandated all its players wear at Wimbledon: form was ethereal, function was ... a big question mark.

The frothy, pleated dress looked lovely in the photos. But any gust of wind or sudden movement was going to send it flying up over players' heads. And the width of it was very likely going to hamper them when they tried to hit their groundstrokes. And you knew it was a lot more sheer than appeared.

And, yes, it was very short; Canadian Eugenie Bouchard has been wearing very short dresses all season long. But most of the Nike players wear tops and skirts, of fairly modest length. So the "all players" memo about everyone having to wear the iconic dress – a first, in recent memory, from Nike – was bound to annoy many of them.

Players rarely test out new outfits before going on court for an official match - and anything that distracts even a little bit on court can make a difference, as silly as that sounds.

But veteran Czech player Lucie Hradecka tried it out during the qualifying – and was forced to add some leggings.

(Hradecka's "shirt" was not, in fact, a shirt – but the actual dress).

British hopeful Katie Boulter had to improvise a tie around the upper part of her waist, just to keep the dress down. No word on whether that was the reason she ended up losing a match she had well in hand.

Nike was forced into action, and quickly. Four days before the tournament officially gets under way, The Daily Mail is already reporting that not only does the All-England Club have issues with the short length of the dress, the players do, too.

Wimbledon has to approve anything the players want to wear during the Championships; no doubt they have an all-white committee poring over the garments and mesuring the EXACT length of any trim so that it doesn't go a millimetre over the guidelines. Until a couple of years ago, the All-England Club was a little more slack with the rules, and there was a little more colour in the trim. But they clamped down. In 2013, Roger Federer was forced to change his shoes as the orange soles were a no-go.

If Federer can't get away with it at Wimbledon, you know they're hardcore.

The Nike dress has a couple of issues. First, the very short length may contravene the "common standards of decency" rules even if the Daily Mail reports the club did approve the dress given it complied with the all-white rules. The second is that it's just not practical.

Among the NIke players who typically wear tops and skirts are American top-10 player Madison Keys, Sara Errani, Roberta Vinci, Caroline Garcia, two-time champion Petra Kvitova, Germany's Sabine Lisicki, Great Britain's Laura Robson and more than a dozen others in addition to Bouchard. Most of them are in the 5-foot-10 to 6-foot range.

Another top-10 player, Victoria Azarenka, has been wearing Nike shorts on court for several years.

Serena Williams has her own dress, a far more modest one. Maria Sharapova probably would have as well, but she's under drug suspension.

The sight of Nike women trooping into the company's rented house at Wimbledon to have "alterations" made to the dress over the next few days is a pretty hilarious notion. But if the real thing never sees the light of day at the All-England Club beyond the promotional photos, the marketing department will have done its job by creating all the buzz about the "forbidden dress."

As it turns out, Bouchard should have opted – if she had the choice, which she doesn't – for another item in the WImbledon line, a cute romper.

It's a little cheeky. But it's not literally cheeky.