I’ve been amused listening to all of the whining the last few days about some tennis players grunting when they hit the ball. We have some of the old-school women tennis players coming out with their complaints about grunting – whether some call it cheating or some simply see it as an annoyance. Whether it’s cheating or an annoyance – the whining about it is nothing short of pathetic.
There’s no crying in baseball, but there is whining in tennis. Check out the article below that can be found at ESPN’s Web site: http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/news/story?id=4293867
SYDNEY — Tennis great Chris Evert has joined the chorus of complaints about the noise level in women’s tennis, saying the “grunting” was getting out of hand.
Evert stopped short of joining former rival Martina Navratilova in labelling the practice as cheating, but agreed it had reached unacceptable levels.
“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,” the former world No. 1 told reporters in Sydney on Monday.
“It comes before they hit the shot. That’s the first thing you hear and you are kind of like thrown off guard as a player and then before you know the ball gets past you.”
Evert is visiting Sydney with her husband Greg Norman, who announced he would play in the Australian Open golf championship for the next three years.
“It is distracting when you are hearing this and I think the grunts are getting louder and more shrill now with the current players,” she said.
“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.
“I don’t understand the philosophy of it.”
I’m cool with Chris Evert, but this is the kind of whining about things that are happening in tennis that seems to serve no useful purpose. In a way, it almost makes some of these former players sound older and bitter (modern translation: player haters).
It’s time for the whiners to focus less on the grunting and more on the great tennis.
Otherwise, it perpetuates a negative image of snobbery.
