It gives us a chance to fantasize about the players.

The grunting has GOT to stop ! As a former tennis pro, the grunting is completely sophomoric, and it's only purpose is to attempt to break the concentration of the opponent.

Anyone who doesn't think so hasn't seen women's beach volleyball.

If you don't like the sound of tennis + giving birth.

There's an almost porn-like effusion of fluids flowing or flying or dripping or hanging from the players' mouths.

It's way too gross to watch in HD.

Shooting them wouldn't fix the problem. That would just add another body fluid to the mix.

Stich is completely correct, about both of his points. The grunting does need to stop, it's ludicrous. And yes, Virginia, sex does sell in women's sports. Heck, it sells in ALL sports. Most of the major men's players are taking advantage of this as well.

No less a figure than Martina Navratilova has railed against the grunting recently, as well. She didn't find it necessary to grunt while winning her 20 Wimbledon titles, including 9 in singles.

I don't buy that it helps performance (if it did, why aren't all the men doing it?) and it's a great way to permanently damage your voice, as well.

Oh how I wish some reporter somewhere would do their job and ask the right questions. Such as when Stich claimed his remarks were taken out of context: "What is the proper context, then, in which to suggest that someone ought to shoot a tennis player, especially since tennis player Monica Seles, a grunter, has already been knifed during a match?"

how the worst offenders all went to the Bollettieri Academy. It is a form of cheating, it hides the sound made by the racquet hitting the ball, which is valuable information for the opponent.

It isn't that it's unsexy (I don't watch tennis to ogle the women). It's that it's annoying and distracting. And, if the great tennis played by Navratilova and others is any example, totally unnecessary.

Monica Seles sounded like she was calling her mother: "Mah-ME". Many of the women sound like they've just been stabbed. Enough already.

...that anyone is worrying about female athletes making noise during athletics. No one makes an issue of it in male sports, such as football, which on the field sounds like a whole bunch of men getting involuntary and sudden prostate exams. I don't see why tennis is somehow special, and why women's tennis is somehow especially special. If they want to let out a bellow like rutting bull moose every time they hit the ball, big deal.

A little research would be helpful here.

Here's Martina comment on the issue

"I started having issues with it when I was playing Monica Seles back in the early 1990s. She was one of the first, and I didn't like it one bit. It affected my game because to me it is important to hear the ball hit the racket; you can hear a bad shot before you can see it and the sound is an imperative part of the game."

Oh and the context is the on going debate currently taking place

From TimesOnline

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/tennis/article6493899.ece

"Nick Bollettieri academy in Florida, which produced champions such as Seles, Sharapova and Agassi (all grunters by the way)

Bollettieri, 77, insists he does not encourage his players to make noise because of the effect it has on the opposition."

Further more:

"Maria Sharapova was the outstanding grunt champion, on occasion breaking 100 decibels – well above the level regarded as potentially damaging to hearing"

Although she doesn't appear to grunt during practice. (And admittedly it is kind of hot when she grunts).

I find it funny that an event where the crowd is expected to be as silent as church mice during play time doesn't penalize the players for this type of behaviour.

Even worse is a Russian player who (I kid not) WHiNNNNNNES during the whole of the set. It sounds like there is a hollow motor running the whole time. How is this not distracting to the other players. Watching on TV, one can always turn it off, but watching this live ... must be it's own special kind of horror.

Or at any rate, that is what I was taught when I played field hockey: We were told that studies showed that grunting while making a hard drive of a field hockey ball increased the force behind it by several percent. It made sense, grunting is just a way of throwing every ounce of your body, including your diaphram, into striking a ball upfield. YMMV. As a sweep, I was particularly encouraged to do this.

I was also a gymnast, and while the occasional "oomph" from a hard landing is overlooked, we were expected to perform pretty much silently. But we weren't swinging sticks and rackets, or exerting force on things, like tennis, volley, field hockey, or baseballs: We were concentrating very hard on precise movements. Not the same at all.

Naomi (wife of MillionthMonkey)

... but I do think this particular behaviour is unsporting, and should be stopped. Doing other things that distract or interfere with play are not allowed, and players are frequently warned and penalized for taking too long to serve, throwing a racquet in anger, or even having their hat blow off during play. I'm curious why this seems to be beyond the reach of the rules.

Michael Stich’s comments are unnecessarily sexist (and unfortunately violent in his choice of solution), but I do agree with it from the perspective that, for me, these screamers render matches unwatchable. Sport, and the money to be made from it, comes ultimately from its value as entertainment, and it’s to no-one’s benefit if their audience can’t stand to watch them play.

Michael is right - grunting or making any kind of loud noise when hitting the ball is just obnoxious. And completely unnecessary and controllable. No one can claim that it helps them make the shot or they just can't stop. That's BS. And as far as his comments about motivating the women to stop - he is also right - half of the women's game is about how they look on the court - sex sells! Shooting them is a bit outlandish - it would get blood on the court!