Depending on your persective, grunting in tennis might be annoying, erotic, or cheating. Larry David, in Curb Your Enthusiasm, likened it to "pigs fucking."
Apparently, the WTA is on David's side of the argument, as the organizing body of women's tennis has announced that it is launching an initiative to "drive excessive grunting" out of the game. Calling it a "sport-wide plan," the WTA will use education and rule changes to complete the task.
Education? I understand how education can help stop the spread of AIDS, or make people more tolerant of those of other races, faiths and tongues... but as a tool to end grunting in tennis? I'm having a hard time imagining what that lesson would consist of.
Anyhoot, here's Maria Sharapova grunting. This is the precise thing the WTA wants to do away with:
A little excessive? I suppose. Kind of hot? Yeah, maybe.
But it's not just female tennis players who grunt - even if they do tend to be the worst culprits. Here's Andy Roddick and Janko Tipsarevic grunting it out at Wimpleton (or Wimbledon, for the tennis purist):
That was not nearly so hot. But let's get back to what Larry David thinks, because I don't think we, as a culture, listen to Larry often enough.
Comments (1)