The Sound of Tennis

Everyone is familiar with the constant ‘huh-huh’ during professional tennis matches. As a novice you may assume it’s because they want to either distract their opponent by masking the sound of the racket or it is just an involuntary response in the heat of the moment. But do these grunting noises pose a problem to the players, with the noises sometimes exceeding levels of 100 decibels. These sounds produced by some players are at par with motorbikes or chainsaws.

A research team conducted a series of experiments in which experienced players were shown video clips of rallies from a professional tennis match. After observing players hitting the ball, they had to work out the ball's trajectory and indicate where it would land. Largely unnoticed by participants, though, the intensity of the grunting noises was manipulated. There was no evidence that grunting caused a distraction effect. The participants' level of error in predicting where the ball would land was the same - regardless of the intensity of the grunts.

Other researchers have demonstrated that forcefully exhaling air activates the abdominal muscles, providing additional strength that enables players to hit harder, making the ball fly faster. This possibly explains why a negative effect on the gameplay of the opponent can be observed as a result of the grunting, but the ability to anticipate the ball's trajectory remains unaffected.