If you've ever played tennis or watched a tennis match you know that some players grunt - or 'exhale' as they may put it when hitting the ball - and some grunt really, really loud - it becomes a decibals match as well. The 2010 Wimbledon match between Serena Williams and Portugues teenager Michelle Larcher de Brito was dubbed as a "decibel derby" because of all the loud player grunting. The joke on the news was that men don't grunt, but although grunting is prominent in women's tennis, it also exists in men's tennis. Monica Seles and Jimmy Connors are often credited with being the pioneers, so to say, in this art of grunting in women's & men's tennis respectively. Grunters today include Serena Williams and sister Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Elena Dementieva, Victoria Azarenka, Michelle Larcher de Brito, and Rafael Nadal.
The player with the louder grunt just may have the competitive edge over their opponent to assist their win.
There has been a controversy over the fair play of grunting loudly for decades, and now in a study published last Friday in an online issue of Public Library of Science ONE, quiet playing tennis players have results to support their complaints.
[QUOTE]The noise accompanying a hard shot makes an opponent slower to respond and more likely to misjudge exactly where the ball is going -- so it is tougher to hit it back, said Canadian and American researchers.
"Conservatively, our findings suggest that a tennis ball traveling 50 miles per hour could appear 24 inches 2 feet closer to the opponent than it actually is," said Scott Sinnett, an assistant at the University of Hawaii.
The researchers tested their theory on students in a laboratory at the University of British Columbia, using sounds that were comparable in volume to grunts of tennis stars Maria Sharapova and Rafael Nadal.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Some professional tennis players try to judge the spin and velocity of a ball from the sound it makes hitting a racket, so a loud grunt would mask those clues, while also serving as a general distraction, the researchers suggested.[/QUOTE]
You can grunt your way to tennis win, study says - Tennis- NBC Sports
Some in the tennis circles believe grunting should be banned or at least penalized, even going as far as calling it cheating, like nine-time Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova:
[QUOTE]In the 1988 US Open, Ivan Lendl complained about Andre Agassi's grunting, "When Agassi went for a big shot, his grunt was much louder. It threw off my timing."[6] In the 2009 French Open, Aravane Rezaï complained to the umpire about Michelle Larcher de Brito's "shrieking", which led to a Grand Slam supervisor being brought to the court. No action was taken against Larcher de Brito and she was booed off the court.[6] Afterwards former tennis player Martina Navratilova said that grunting was a form of cheating, "The grunting has reached an unacceptable level. It is cheating, pure and simple. It is time for something to be done." She also cited Roger Federer as an example of a successful player who doesn't grunt: "Roger Federer doesn't make a noise when he hits the ball—go and listen."[12] Another former player, Chris Evert, stopped short of labelling it as cheating but said, "I wouldn't go that far [to say it's cheating] but I think the grunts are getting louder and more shrill now with the current players."[9] [/QUOTE]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunting_(tennis)
Others defend grunting as not just fair play nut natural play, and refer it to the natural exhalation as you are trying to get the hard shot and hit the ball hard:
Michelle Larcher de Brito has often defended "grunting".
Jimmy Connors; one of the first grunters in male tennis
[QUOTE]
Michelle Larcher de Brito, who had a reported decibel reading of 109, said, "If people don't like my grunting, they can always leave".[5] In a different interview she said, "Nobody can tell me to stop grunting. Tennis is an individual sport and I'm an individual player. If they have to fine me, go ahead, because I'd rather get fined than lose a match because I had to stop grunting."[13] Former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova, who has officially reached 101 decibels (a lion's roar is 110 decibels),[7] stated, "I've done this ever since I started playing tennis and I'm not going to change."[14] Current Women's World Number 1, Serena Williams, said that opponents grunting doesn't affect her, "I just play my game and sometimes I grunt and sometimes I don't. I'm not conscious when I’m doing it. I'm just zoned out. It doesn't really affect me if my opponent is [grunting]."[15]
Tennis coach Nick Bollettieri, who has coached many "grunters", says grunting is natural, "I prefer to use the word 'exhaling'. I think that if you look at other sports, weightlifting or doing squats or a golfer when he executes the shot or a hockey player, the exhaling is a release of energy in a constructive way."[14] Louise Deeley, a sports psychologist at Roehampton University, believes that grunting is part of the rhythm for tennis players, "The timing of when they actually grunt helps them with the rhythm of how they're hitting and how they're pacing things," she also believes that banning grunting isn't the solution, "They may feel, on the surface, that this is going to be a distraction to their game, that it is part and parcel of what they do."[16][/QUOTE]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunting_(tennis)
Currently, umpires can award a point against a player if the umpire feels the offender has hindered the opponent.
Sinnett said the researchers are next going to tackle whether the world's top tennis players have developed strategies to counter-effect their opponent's grunting as they hit over the tennis ball. They could start by asking the nine-time Wimbledon champ Martina Navratilova.
