The Tennis Grunt
By Geoff Williams
I was not a grunter for the first ten years of my tennis life. That was the period when none of the pro players were grunting at all. Then Johnny Mac and Jimmy Connors started grunting, and a tennis buddy said to me, "If McEnroe and Connors are doing it, maybe you should be doing it too."
I became a grunter right then and there. I was always willing to try new things to improve my 4.5 game and I think the grunt definitely did. Over time I believe it improved the velocity of my ball, and probably, my movement as well for some of the reasons outlined below.
But in my experience, spanning 30 years of grunting since 1982, I have seen the grunt from all angles, the good and the bad, the positive and the negative. In this article, let's take a look at some of the arguments on both sides.
As an early grunt adopter, there were many tournament and club player types who disliked me due to the grunt alone. A few people began to imitate and caricature my grunt, as if it were a nasty thing to do, although my grunt was a fairly conservative grunt.
It was a little bit hurtful, but I did not stop grunting because of it because I could sense from the very beginning that it was a new positive in my game. I had already seen grunting used in my martial arts classes in the same fashion, which was one of the reasons it made so much sense to me.
The whole idea of grunting is to exhale air at the moment of contact. I believe this can focus energy and that by tightening the core abdomen area you can increase the power in your shots. I also believe that over time this improved my core strength which in turn helped me improve my quickness.
How does this work? Take a look at this amazing sports science video about Paul Pumphreys, known as "the human wrecking ball", an expert at breaking concrete blocks with a double forearm strike.
The video shows what happened with and without a grunt. Instruments show he created about 2,000lbs of force with the grunt, but only 1,500lbs of force without it. To me that is compelling evidence.
The video also shows he failed to break the entire stack of the concrete blocks without the grunt, and that the force rebounded up back through the stack, knocking Pumphreys backwards off the platform.
The program concludes that the grunt gave Pumphreys an intense adrenaline injection with a higher heart rate, a faster blood flow, and a larger, more aggressive lung contraction. The result was a 25% more powerful strike.
The grunt effect is hardly limited to this one example, martial artists who fight in tournaments, weight lifters and football players are other examples of athletes who rely on grunting to generate additional power.
Soccer players are also taught to grunt when kicking to create more power and spin. So if so many different sports disciplines are using the grunt to focus power and adrenalize, then why not tennis players?
The sports science television program goes on to speculate that grunting could add up to an additional 25% more force to strokes in tennis. If so that would go a long way to explaining why the grunt is so commonplace in the modern power game.
Grunting History
So what is the history of grunting in tennis? Not too many people remember Virginia Heinecke, probably the first player to openly grunt during matches. In the early 1960's she had a win over Billie Jean Moffitt (before she became King).
Heinecke was a hard hitter and her grunting marked the start of the end of civility in the game of tennis. Ever since that day, tennis has become ever more blue collar and less "gentlemanly" and "lady like."
During her career, one of Heinecke's opponents went to the referee at Wimbledon and complained, asking that she be called for a hindrance for each grunt, but the request was declined.
Heinecke's grunt, according to Billie Jean, "was more like David Ferrer's grunt," a lower pitched, lower decibel grunt that wasn't audible in the same way we hear today's players due to the improvements in on court audio.
"The microphones never really picked up my grunt," Heinecke said. "We have come a long way, electronically."
The grunt ante really didn't go up until the arrival of Bollettieri proteges Andre Agassi and Monica Seles. At the time Nick explained why his players grunted to the BBC, "If you hold your lips tightly, you're not breathing and you become very tense and less flexible so you get tight more quickly."
Monica's grunt sounded like a linebacker breaking the back of the school principal in a dark shower stall. Or maybe it sounded more like a pig getting stuck with a pike and then shot in the forehead with a .22 caliber rifle.
Seles was also the first to develop the two part grunt. First a short, "Auuuh, and then a much longer "AugghcreeeaGGGhhhHHH!"
Eventually Seles's new level of grunting provoked another confrontation at Wimbledon, this time a far better known one with tennis legend Martina Navratilova in 1992.
In my opinion, Seles' grunt terrorized Martina and actually created a form of sonic paralysis. After she lost to Monica in the Wimbledon semi final, Navratilova openly called it "cheating." She complained that since she couldn't hear the contact she couldn't read the pace, spin or angle of the shots coming off Sele's strings.
Whether that complaint was genuine or gamesmanship, only Martina can say. But, whatever the truth, Seles fell for it.
She was stung by Martina and the other anti-grunt crusaders, and decided not to grunt in the final against Graff. She lost to Graff 2 and 1, having beaten her easily a few weeks earlier at the French.
No doubt it hurt Seles to stop grunting. Afterwards Monica said, "That was one of the few things I've ever regretted in my life." Seles went back to the grunt and then beat Graf again at the Australian in January of 1993.
But shortly after that she was knifed in the back in Hamburg by the Graff loving Gunther Parche. Seles never psychologically rebounded and gained 30lbs of unrequited hatred, due in part to the fact that Parche received virtually no legal punishment and was quickly released by German authorities. Her game and her grunt were never as intimidating again.
Still, Monica's success had already inspired a whole legion of female grunters, whose decibel levels went on to exceed even Seles herself. There is a straight line from Monica to Serena and Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka. As Serena has said, "I loved Seles grunt. It was a double grunt just like mine."
The Grunt Study
So, even if it actually improves your tennis, is grunting still a form of cheating? Is there any basis to the complaint that it interferes with the ability to react to an oncoming shot? Two professors, Scott Sinnett and Alan Kingstone decided to do an experiment to try and find out.
In the study, undergraduate students viewed videos of a tennis player hitting a ball to either side of a tennis court by watching video in a laboratory setting. Half of the shots were accompanied with a brief, 60-decibel sound at the same time as contact, comparable in volume to the grunts of players such as Maria Sharapova. (Click Here to read about the study in more detail.)
Participants were asked to identify the direction of the shot in each video clip as quickly and accurately as possible using a keyboard. According to the study, the "grunts" produced significantly slower response times and led to more errors determining direction.
Noting that some professional tennis players' grunts reach as high as 100 decibels, Professor Sinnett wrote: "Our findings suggest that a tennis ball struck along with a loud grunt can travel an extra two feet in the air before the opponent is able to respond."
"This could increase the likelihood that opponents are wrong-footed, or out of position, and make returning the ball more difficult."
However, there is no indication whether or not the students in this study were tennis players or exactly what type of noise was used by Sinnett. And sitting in front of a computer key board is not the same as playing tennis versus a grunting player. So there may not be a close correlation between the results of the study and the experience of actual tennis players who presumably could adapt to the effects of grunting over time.
Nonetheless, some people have pointed to this study and concluded that grunters distract and slow down their opponents' reactions. Some have gone so far to say that the grunt is primarily a "psyche" job and a form of cheating. They point out that the Azarenka/Sharapova type grunts are of much longer duration and now continue until the ball is on the opponent's side of the court. This camp is calling for a decibel limit/warning system for grunts that exceed 60 decibels.
But let's consider one more point: the possible negative effect upon the grunter him or herself. The super adrenalized Nadal style grunt may affect the grunter's own body more dramatically than the standard type of grunt.
Yes, it enlarges the lungs more. But it may also exhale a larger amount of water from the lungs and mouth, eventually causing more water loss and cramping, especially on a hot day and in a long match. We know that Nadal has cramped many times. Is that possibly related?
On the other hand, the constant grunter also exercises his abs more than the non grunter, even if the non grunter exhales silently during contact. In addition to possibly improving movement, more core strength in the abs might help grunters avoid muscle injury, especially in a hotter or a humid climate or at a higher altitude. At this point, I'll have to conclude, these questions are mainly speculation and have no definitive answers.
There is no doubt, however, that a lot of people are turned off by loudest grunters. Which raises a question for tennis fans: do we want gladiators killing themselves to win, grunting and screaming, or do we want silent and polite competition?
Should grunting be minimized or even banned? Or should players stop complaining and start grunting themselves to maximize their own power and neutralize any advantage held by grunting opponents?
My own opinion is that, first, grunting helps tennis players, and second, without grunting matches would simply not be as intense. For these reasons I am thankful for grunting, and love and appreciate the players who will half kill to win.
I have a feeling though that not every Tennisplayer subscriber is going to agree. So let me know what you think about grunting and this article in the Forum! (Click Here.)
