In high school, I briefly lusted after a girl who played on the tennis team. In order to curry her favor, I attended one of her matches, where I noticed she had a habit of grunting loudly every time she hit the ball, presumably to distract the other player. For some reason, this put me off and I lost interest. Ironically, I would eventually become very interested in grunting women and put tremendous effort in making them do so, but that's not the point of this post. Instead, I'd like to segue into this study showing that grunting actually does improve one's chances on the court.
In a study conducted by Scott Sinnett, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii, 33 undergraduate students watched tennis players hitting balls – with some of the tennis players grunting as they hit. Researchers then had the students indicate the direction of the shot immediately afterwards.
Turns out grunting not only slowed down the students' response time – it caused them to make more mistakes in guessing the direction of the shots.So I guess my short-term object of desire had the right idea. The article I linked to above, from NBC's The Body Odd, goes on to discuss the ethics of grunting during tennis matches. Personally, I have no problem with it. It reminds me a little of how soccer players fall on the ground and writhe in agony after the slightest collision in hopes of earning their opponent a penalty.
This, in turn, reminds me of my daughter's AYSO soccer games, where the girls often fall on the ground and writhe in a similar fashion, only not so much for strategic reasons - more just because 6-year-old girls tend to be drama queens. What's sweet about the whole process is that when it happens, maternal instinct immediately causes the entire game to grind to a halt as the other 13 players on the field - from both sides - run over to attend to their fallen comrade.
I think tennis players should learn a lesson from this primal behavior. If the other player is grunting like a caveman and ruining your game, you should be allowed to also act like a caveman and beat him or her soundly with your racket until the grunting ceases.
It's only fair.
Seems fair Denis that if you really go to all that effort in helping women grunt that it is reciprocated making all things equal. The same with sports I guess, play them at their own mind games. Personally I don't mind the male tennis players grunting but listening to the women is somewhat akin to wet nails down a blackboard, but then again I am female so that explains a lot.
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