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Watching tennis it often seems as if way too many male players have no fashion sense at all.

While Andre Agassi wore some pretty wild, pushing-the-envelope outfits in his youth, by the last few years of his career he could not have been more boring in monotonous combinations of white, black and grey.

That is exactly why it is so refreshing to see Rafael Nadal bring innovation and variety to his on-court look.

Roger Federer has always had a classy – sometimes excessively classy (e.g. Wimbledon) – on-court style of dress, and Novak Djokovic occasionally gears it up with something bright and different. As for the Andys – Murray and Roddick – they have been constrained by the traditional-bound creations of Fred Perry and Lacoste respectively.

But Nadal has been a breath of fresh air, and a man, working with the designers at Nike, who is willing to take chances.

He won his first five Grand Slam titles – the 2005-2008 French Opens and Wimbledon in 2008 – with his trademark, muscle-highlighting sleeveless tops.

At the beginning of this year he switched a conventional short-sleeved shirt and won the Australian Open. At the time, he wore a white shirt with black and blue trim and charcoal shorts.

His make-over from a look that featured his massive arms gleaming with sweat to something more conservative and preppie – after all he was approaching his 23rd birthday – did not affect his performance.

“I was completely worried about that, I thought I lost the power with the new (shirt),” he joked with reporters after winning in Melbourne when asked if he had been concerned that his more demure attire might affect his performance.

Nadal wore a yellow sleeved shirt with a black spotted motif, vaguely suggestive of New York’s yellow taxis, at this year’s US Open. For the fall, he has sported a lime green shirt with a campy pair of blue, check pattern shorts that look like they’re right out of a summer barbecue in the backyard.

It’s great to see him creating a distinctive profile with fun, colourful clothing. The only regret is that we didn’t see enough of his strongest fashion statement of the year – a glorious deep pink shirt and dark shorts combination he wore at the French Open. An on-form Robin Soderling and the troublesome tendinitis in both his knees resulted in him making a premature exit in the round-of-16.

Some interesting information regarding the Nadal camp came out of last week’s Masters 1000 event in Shanghai on the ATP’s own tennistv.com livestreaming. Commentator Robbie Koenig of South Africa, who ranked as high as No. 28 in doubles in 2003, claimed Nadal’s fellow-Spaniard, Francisco Roig, who was working with him in Shanghai in place of his regular coach, uncle Toni Nadal, was earning “Seven and a half thousand a week, plus expenses and a bonus for every match win.” That type of arrangement is generally not made public, but a rate of about ten percent of a player’s prize money and all expenses is the general guideline for many coaches on the tour.

Koenig, 38, also unintentionally came up with a malapropism worthy of the legendary Yogi Berra. When he miss-identified a pop song playing in the stadium in Shanghai during a change-over, he was corrected by his commentary partner Jason Goodall. Koenig reacted, “first time I’ve ever gotten anything in my ’80s music wrong...it happens occasionally.”