I’ve been ripped for constantly complaining about the screaming and wailing that goes on during every women’s match these days. It’s as if some people have lived with it so long, they actually think it’s poor form to criticize the rudeness. There’s always some dull commentator ready to point out, incorrectly, that they’ve been playing that way all their lives and couldn’t begin to stop screeching if they tried. In reality, it happens only because the WTA lets them all get away with it. (Is there anything they don’t let them get away with over there? ‘Fraid not)
Leave it to Bud Collins to be the lone voice consistently raising the noise issue:
Is any umpire going to hand out point penalties to the leading howling offenders: Sharapova, the Williams Sisters, Victoria Azarenka? It’s probably too late to call for law and vocal order. But why not? Did Steffi Graf or Martina Navratilova sound off as they played? Or Justine Henin?
Monica Seles was the mother of grunting in the 1990s, but she was pianissimo compared with the current crowd. But I’ve seen Serena and Venus play well without sound affects. Sharapova, too. But does screaming give them an edge?
I believe the WTA (Women’s Tennis Assn) should give serious consideration to applying the hindrance rule. Naturally it won’t happen, but maybe they could issue pacifiers to the shouters
Ah, we love you for that Bud. And the answer is yes, the screaming gives them an intimidation edge of some sort. I don’t think Monica Seles intended to intimidate. But today’s players use it especially on the big points. The Swingin’ Sisters of Sound, Sharapova and Serena, are the two worst offenders on that score.
Women’s tennis wouldn’t be in this pickle if they had made Monica Seles shut up during her heyday. At the time, Martina Navratilova was pilloried for questioning Seles’ vocal exhortations. If my memory serves, this happened during an important match at a grand slam, so it was deemed gameswomanship. So what? If we could jump into a time-machine and do it all over again, would anyone decline to create and enforce a noise rule?
(Just to be clear, the first act we’d perform after time travel would be to send Gunther Parche packing off to some Russian or American gulag so that he never got within 1,000 miles of Hamburg, Germany in 1993.)
I can’t accept that nothing can be done. We write complex rules and regulations on every topic under the sun. There’s no reason the same thing can’t be done with a noise rule. The Supreme Court once said of obscenity – “we know it when we see it.” Yep. The same is true in tennis. We hackers all know the difference between a noise of true exertion (or exhilaration, or exhaustion, or extreme disgust). Let’s put the professional back in Women’s Professional Tennis.
Passing Shots 
Posted on June 2, 2009
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