The familiar debate over on-court decibel levels produced by tennis players has resurfaced after the Belarusian player Aryna Sabalenka on Tuesday night drew mockery from the Melbourne Park crowd during her first-round Australian Open defeat to home hope Ashleigh Barty.
The 19-year-old from Minsk was her usual vocal self from the outset on Rod Laver Arena and the partisan crowd let their displeasure known by imitating her shrieks in between points.
At one stage, the umpire was forced to ask for quiet in the stands, although her choice of words — “Ladies and gentlemen please, during the rally, do not scream” — only seemed to make the crowd redouble their efforts and Sabalenka’s service preparation was interrupted by further impressions.
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Barty appeared unimpressed by the crowd’s behavior at the time and afterward the Australian No. 1 said she had not been phased by the noise from Sabalenka.
“We knew it was coming,” she said. “I hadn’t seen a lot of her matches, but my coach had watched vision. He was aware it was coming. A lot of players grunt. A lot of players don’t grunt. It’s just the way they are, the way they play.”
While Barty said she was not unduly affected, plenty viewing from afar were.
“Sabalenka has 347 different sounding grunts. What a talent,” former US player Pam Shriver wrote on Twitter.
Sabalenka is not alone in practicing in-play grunting and the likes of Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka and the Willams sisters, Serena and Venus, are among the most high-profile players to make noise when playing shots.
Nor is the practice limited to the women’s game, with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic also well-known for their on-court vocalizations, but public criticism is more often than not reserved for female players.
The debate over grunting centers on whether the noise is loud enough to the point of distraction for an opponent and if so, whether that constitutes a form of gamesmanship.
There was support for Sabalenka in the face of the fierce backlash, with some decrying the “bullying” nature of the crowd’s taunts and asking questions over the role of the official master of ceremonies on the court, who himself impersonated the player into the microphone.
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