Considered from virtually every imaginable angle, the phenomenon of shrieking/grunting/howling/roaring has caused nearly every observer to spill vast quantities of ink. Having eyed the quagmire with caution until now, we wanted to share three thoughts on the topic.
1) Careful what you wish for. Not one, not two, but three of the current WTA top five (in fact the current top three) shriek from atop the rankings mountain. When one adds Serena Williams to their numbers, four of the Tour’s leading sirens would suffer a significant impact from any formally instituted measures, which in turn leads to serious enforcement dilemmas. While Sharapova and Serena probably enjoy the two largest fan bases of any women, Azarenka and Kvitova look destined to create a rivalry to remember. Without them, the WTA becomes the province of players like Wozniacki, Stosur, Radwanska, Zvonareva, and Bartoli, of whom only Wozniacki enjoys a widespread appeal in a way comparable to any member of the shrieking quartet. (And an attempt to hang the Tour’s entire marketing power around the Dane’s neck will not end well.) Even most of those who deplore the shrieking probably would not fancy a WTA so bland, and certainly few sponsors would. Another option would consist of waiting for the next generation of players to develop, but that strategy would rely too much upon a speculative investment to succeed in such a present-oriented sport.
To be sure, one doubts that Azarenka and Kvitova would leave the sport in frustration, for far too much of their careers lie ahead to cast aside. But an effort to overtly police them, according to both, will dramatically hamper their games, and this prophecy probably would prove self-fulfilling whether or not it sounds convincing to us. In fact, it does sound convincing to us because surely their agent would have convinced them to jettison such a controversial activity by now if it did play a superfluous role in their success. Since tennis revolves around confidence and rhythmic routines, these two brilliant ball-strikers would sag just when their momentum has begun to accelerate decisively. Their finest achievements already behind them, meanwhile, Sharapova and Serena probably would depart if someone suddenly saddled them with an intrusive policy that required them to redefine their playing style. All four of these magnetic if polarizing personalities deserve better fates than those.
But not every policy needs to be officially codified or sweeping in scope. As some have suggested, complaints from other players during individual matches could catalyze some limited change. Here again, though, the ascendancy of the leading shriekers will blunt such a movement. Many women of the second and third tiers will lack the courage to directly confront one of the WTA divas in a temple of the sport. Those who do will face the wrath of an extremely talented opponent who suddenly has additional motivation to pulverize them—not an attractive prospect for a world #87 who just wants to make a living unobtrusively. From the premier non-shriekers of their tier, like Radwanska or Bartoli, might spring a more compelling opposition. On the other hand, personal friendships and animosities could stain any such movement because of the WTA’s fiercely competitive, divisive culture. For example, a World According to Radwanska would allow Azarenka’s yodels but not Sharapova’s howls, an outcome that makes no sense to any neutral observer.
2) Much of the damage already may have been done. It seems unlikely that any substantive change can happen overnight, even if adopted. On a practical level, the main objection to grunting concerns the loss of fans who find the pleasure to their eyes less substantial than the abuse to their ears. Nevertheless, nobody yet has made a study that directly traces the impact of grunting to financial losses by the WTA, which apparently has weathered the recession as well as one could have expected. Not everything crystallizes into dollars and cents, though, and certainly people passionate about tennis like me would want the sport to have as many fans as possible, regardless of the economic perspective.
Considering that grunting hardly represents a new phenomenon, one wonders whether most fans already have passed their fork in the road. Those who continue to watch clearly do not find the grunting a sufficient reason to abandon their devotion to the sport, while those who do find the grunting so abhorrent probably already have left it for other sports or leisure activities. With their lives reoriented around different poles, they may not return once they realize that what once alienated them from the sport has disappeared.
In my own experience, I have found that it is much more difficult to abandon a passion for a sport than to ignite it but hardest of all to rekindle it. Readers may find it surprising that I once was thoroughly absorbed in baseball and did not know a slice from a drop shot—which means that I had something in common with many current American players. During the era of accumulating steroid exposures, my devotion to baseball waned as a taint spread across each of the athletes whom I had admired. (In no way do I seek to draw a parallel between PEDs and shrieking, of course.) Eventually, I stopped watching and following the sport entirely. Now that the steroid era has passed, or at least has abated, I theoretically could return to my original baseball-loving existence because my reason for abandoning it has gone. When I read articles about it or watch highlights of it, though, I cannot recapture the same enthusiasm that I once had. Baseball may be more or less the same sport as it was when I enjoyed it, but I am not the same person.
In short, people constantly change more than even they would think, fluidly redistributing their time and priorities. People who have abandoned tennis and think that they would return immediately to this former passion at the instant that shrieking fades into history thus might have an unexpected surprise. Many of them would find it interesting, but they might not recapture the original passion for the sport after the spell had been broken for the first time. Thus, it seems unrealistic to expect that any sort of change can completely reverse whatever damage has occurred in the form of disillusioned fans. Any cost-benefit analysis should consider that likelihood on the “benefit” side.
3) Time might cure all things. Especially applicable to tennis is Horace’s famous saying that “time flies.” Careers last only brief times, and ten years from now none of the famous shriekers will appear on a tennis court except in an exhibition. By then, one of two possible events likely will happened. In one trajectory, the phenomenon will have receded into a curiosity specific to its era, somewhat like the anachronistic outfits of a few decades ago. If the WTA starts to adopt “soft” methods of enforcement by shaping junior players away from shrieking, while the media continues to disparage it, the trend will diminish as talents emerge without a pulsating audio accompaniment. As the case of the nearly forgotten Michelle Larcher de Brito suggests, players who shriek ostentatiously without the talent to buttress it will not survive for long in either a tennis court or the court of public opinion. The WTA can use examples like those to show its rising stars that shrieks do not translate to success, despite current evidence to the contrary.
All the same, time passes not just for players but for fans. In a different trajectory, the shrieking might persist and embed itself further into the composition of elite players, while an entirely new generation of tennis fans arises who cannot imagine the sport without it. At that stage, the shrieking would have become an integral part of the WTA’s product, something that defines it to the general fan. In some corners, hints of this trend already have appeared. Reactions to the annual Wimbledon measurements of shrieks in decibels produce mostly mild amusement, mixed with shrugs of “c’est la vie.” A North American tournament once devised an advertising banner that framed an illustration of Sharapova next to the exclamation “EEEEEYAAAAHHH!,” admittedly a poor approximation of the three-time major champion’s shriek.
Tennis purists might produce that sound simultaneously if this latter trajectory unfolds.
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