Citron
Every tennis cap's brim blocks the exact ball you need to see on an overhead. Citron cuts the brim to two inches: long enough for sun, short enough to stay out of your swing.
The brim that shades your eyes standing still is in your sightline the second you look up. Citron is a five-panel cap with a two-inch brim, made for tennis.
Serve toss, overhead, any ball above the net tape: those are the shots where losing sight of it costs you the point. Players spin the cap backwards mid-point and spin it back after. Published buying guides for tennis hats say to keep the brim under three inches.
- Brim
- Two inches
- Cap
- Five-panel, quick-drying
A dog chewed the bill off, and the stub was the right length
Zach's dog chewed the bill off a Woosah five-panel, a 50/50 cotton-poly cap. He threw it out, then pulled it back out of the trash. He cut the brim back to where the dog hadn't reached, about two inches, drilled holes along the new edge and stitched it with heavy leather-working thread so it wouldn't fray. He wore it running, then on court for months. It kept the sun out and stayed out of the way on overheads and high balls, which a normal cap doesn't do. The measurement came from a dog and was tested by one player.
Every colorway follows the rule for racing silks
A racehorse owner's colors are registered with the Jockey Club, two colors and one pattern, no two owners alike. Citron's six colorways use the same rule and are named the way silks are named. The cut-down cap also reads as a jockey cap, which in Louisville is a feature. Hoops and sashes need custom panels, though, at 50 to 200 hats per colorway, so the silks wait on a second run. The first run is one crown color with an embroidered lemon.
Citron is French for lemon, and French slang for your head
In French, se creuser le citron is to rack your brains, so a headwear brand gets a head pun in its own language. Louisville is named for Louis XVI and flies the fleur-de-lis. Tennis already counts in French: deuce comes from à deux.
The mark is a lemon with tennis-ball seams. "Lemon" stands for the ball.
The first test is twelve hats on a Louisville court
Nothing is for sale. The plan is a dozen blank performance five-panel campers, worn by players at a Louisville club for two weeks, then offered to each of them. It answers three questions at once: whether a player picks a short brim over a visor, whether the cap looks good enough to wear, and what a player would pay for it. A run of twelve also can't leave a garage full of hats nobody bought.
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