The racket of screaming, grunting tennis players ranks higher on the irritation scale than fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. This awful, deafening and unfair trend that's now common particularly among young women players.
Relief is near as new proposals to make noise hindrance part of the International Tennis Federation's code of conduct, could mean screaming grunters could potentially forfeit a whole game or match.
Actor, Peter Ustinov, a wit and a tennis tragic, watching Monica Seles grunting her way to a victory at Wimbledon said to a friend: ‘I’d hate to be be in the hotel room next door on her wedding night.’
Forget about wedding nights when grunting and groaning are presumably legitimate noise-making. Let’s just accept that watching someone like Seles play in the past, and now one of the loudest offenders, Maria Sharapova, who at 101 decibels is almost as loud as a lion's 110 decibel roar or the sound a small aircraft makes when it takes off.
Monica Seles is not far behind with her groans reaching 93.2 decibels subjecting we viewers to a sound pollution of grunts, groans, aaahs, ooohs, eeeaahhs-urrrrrrs
In last month's French open, Aravane Rezai complained to the umpire about the noise emitting from 16-year-old player Michelle Larcher de Brito.
This tactic is increasingly being adopted by players who, admittedly, put less into their shots and their racing around the courts than the star players. It’s being called ‘the counter-grunt.’ The journeyperson Russian player, Elena Dementrieva, for instance, lived up to her name by adopting a double-bang grunt, ‘oooaah- urrrring’, on every shot, whether a great effort was expended or not.
There are two main reasons why sound pollution on the tennis court should be banned: first, it is used as a tactic to unsettle opponents: and second, it makes watching tennis played by grunters and groaners an unpleasant experience, which grates on the pleasure of watching tennis.
The grunters and groaners deny that they are trying to unsettle opponents. But this is clearly at the heart of the tactic. The retired Wimbledon referee Alan Mills told reporters some years ago that coaches were training women players, in particular, to grunt as loud as they can.
Martina Navratilova, who despised the tactic, pointed out that tennis players rely on the sound of the ball coming off an opponent’s racket to a certain extent to give them clues about its velocity, direction and the spin on the shot. How convenient it is that the grunting denies a skillful player this basic information.
In the 1992 quarter-final at Wimbledon, Steffi Graf demanded that Monica Seles, grunting at a 93 decibel level, shut up. Seles eventually lost the match to Graf.
Then there is the unpleasant nature of the sound. For the two hours or so playing Sharapova, say, her opponent and viewers are subjected to an unceasing flow of unpleasant noise, rather like being forced to listen to a heavy metal radio station in a locked room with the sound distorted because the tuning is off-station.
Leading coaches and players have called for grunting to be banned on the tennis court by the organisers of the major tournaments. The secrets of the bedroom should be kept to the bedroom.
Official gruntometer: Top 10 grunters in decibels
(Stats thanks to the Daily Mail)
# Lion's roar 110
# Maria Sharapova 101
# Monica Seles 93.2
# Serena Williams 88.9
# Lindsay Davenport 88
# Venus Williams 85
# Victoria Azarenka 83.5
# Elena Bovina 81
# Anna Kournikova 78.5
# Kim Clijsters 75
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