World number one Maria Sharapova said that she doesn’t mind the WTA’s efforts to come up with a handheld device that can objectively measure on-court grunting noise levels, agreeing that this is a good way of educating the younger generation not to come up with the habit of grunting. Sharapova has one of the loudest grunts on the WTA Tour and the Russian said that she can’t stop the habit now.
“Certainly not now, not since I’ve been doing it since I was four years old,” Sharapova said.
“It’s definitely tough and impossible to do when you’ve played this sport for over 20 years. But it’s something, I certainly spoke to WTA CEO Stacy Allastar about it]. We’ve had numerous conversations. It’s the first person actually that’s sat down with many people and coaches and sports psychologists and analysts and really reviewed what could be done. I’m really happy with the system that she put forth. Going to the juniors, going to the academies that are producing the young players, and putting a system in place, I think it’s extremely smart,” she added.
Second-ranked Victoria Azarenka, also one of the loudest grunters on tour, said earlier this week that she was not consulted with this initiative.
Meanwhile, former top-ranked Ana Ivanovic of Serbia is not certain about the initiative.
“Obviously it’s been a little bit of an issue lately on tour, but I think it’s very hard to determine what’s the limit. I mean, how can you set that? Then you say you have to go a little bit less squeaky, a little less loud? I think it would be very hard to implement, to be honest,” she said.
