Women’s tennis has become the topic of conversation; not because of an unbelievable serve and volley sequence at Wimbledon or because Serena Williams has donned a new outfit or because Maria Sharapova has posed for yet another magazine cover. It’s because of the guttural grunting, shrieking and generally annoying sounds emanating from these female participants.



The women’s game, in many aspects, is as good if not better than the competition on the men’s side but this “noise” has got to stop. As a casual tennis observer, I can’t stand it. Even in my fittest day, when I was benching over 300 pounds, I didn’t grunt like these women. It’s one thing if you’re locked up with an offensive or defensive lineman and a sound escapes from your body, that’s more of a dominance thing in my opinion but this screeching has crossed the line. Once in a while, when a rush of air escapes your body, you will make some type of noise but women, yelping with each and every swing of the racquet, give up the game if you can’t manage your cardio function any better than that.

Chris Evert, former women’s tennis great isn’t thrilled with the shrills either, "Grunting is one thing but the shrill sound that you hear with players nowadays, and especially they get louder when they hit a winner, that's the thing that I observe as a player.” Evert went on, “It is distracting when you are hearing this and I think the grunts are getting louder and more shrill now with the current players. The next time you watch say a Maria Sharapova -- the grunting is consistent but all of a sudden when she has a set up to hit a winner. I don't understand, they say you've got to blow air out when you hit the ball. Steffi Graf hit the ball a ton and she didn't grunt. There were a lot of players, hard-hitting players, and you never heard a peep out of them.”

Winner of 18 Grand Slams, Martina Navratilova, took the grunting a step further by calling it blatant cheating, “Roger Federer doesn't make a noise when he hits the ball - go and listen. The grunting has reached an unacceptable level. It is cheating, pure and simple. It is time for something to be done."

As someone who played tennis when they were merely a kid, I could never express the kind of advantage or disadvantage that these tennis greats are eluding to, I just know that the women’s game has become, to me a casual observer, a joke and I simply don’t watch it anymore. The only time I expect a woman to grunt is possibly an East German weightlifter with a 340 pound “clean and jerk” on the line, that’s it. If more people are like me, the ratings dip, the sponsorships go away and the money dwindles, I’d imagine the grunting, shrieking, yelling and, yes this is politically incorrect but it's the best description I could come up with, “small doglike” barking would suddenly seem not so necessary. Just a thought.