Maria Sharapova apparently has the loudest grunt in women's tennis. Why does she do that? You won't hear a sound from her during training sessions.
There is a growing chorus of critics who complain that many of the top-ranked professional tennis players who grunt when they hit the ball gain an unfair advantage because the sound of the grunt interferes with their opponent's game.
Although there is no scientific evidence to support this claim, research showed that the presence of an extraneous sound interfered with a participants' performance, making their responses both slower and less accurate.
4 comment(s):
You just wanted to run another pic of your Maria, didn't you? ;-)
Aw, you saw right through me. :)
And here I thought it was pretty much the same concept as kiai during martial arts or taiko.
The usual excuse given by tennis players is that it is similar to boxers expelling air down their noses. Tennis players will generally tell you that boxers do this in order to give their blows more power. While it may be true that breathing out sharply gives more force to the blow you will notice that boxers don't generally grunt. In fact grunting would restrict the flow of air and presumably limit the beneficial effects.
However having spoken to a few boxers about this I've been told that they expel air down their noses sharply, rather than specifically out of their mouths, to keep their nasal passages clear. Presumably this helps with breathing since their mouths are effectively blocked by their gumshields.
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