Tennis – ugggh … ugggh… aaghh … SHUT UP!
Tennis has me confused. In fact looking for words to complete this blog entry is difficult enough. But for the sake of entertainment I will continue.
Wimbledon is currently consuming the tennis world for the next few weeks. The grass is mowed the tennis balls are in abundance and the ball kids look just as crazed and frenzied as ever. The commentators from the BBC talk as though they learnt their style from the most recent David Attenborough documentary.
But what really confuses me are two things:
Grunting - Mainly found in the woman's tour, grunting as spread through the ranks like a disease. The bigger the woman the louder and deeper the grunt, the smaller the woman the more it sounds like a exotic bird call. They make the sound when releasing their shots and in the average tennis stadium, it echoes and sounds plain annoying. I don't understand why they need to grunt. One tennis coach described it as exhaling. Well that's the same as saying farting is passing wind, it may be wind, but it smells like shit. Grunting is a form of cheating in my books. Golf outlaws any sound around a player, yet tennis seems to relish in the hilarity of players sounding like they are unloading in the toilet. Venus Williams sounds like she could rival a jet engine for decibels and Maria Sharapova puts fingers nails on a blackboard to shame. The men do it in a far smaller number, but that seems to be an even lower point. Should a man grunt when hitting a ball? Simply ban the 'exhailing' now or risk the sport causing another injury to add to the already common neck soreness, acute deafness.
Pay Day - Women have always played their finals the day before the men and have always played to the best of three sets in grand slams. Men play to the best of five and considering sets can last for 45-60 minutes that can equal more than a few hours of potential entertainment each match. A while back the women kicked their heals in, and demanded equal pay for the winners of the Grand Slams. They won, women now get the same prize money as the men. They play less each match and yet get payed the same. How is that fair to the men? The woman's argument stated that it was unfair on grounds of sexual discrimination. But how is it fair that men should work harder and risk greater injury and fatigue for the same money? Personally if someone in my workplace was working less and getting paid the same because they were a woman, I would be filing for sexual discrimination against me.
Tennis is a lacklustre sport, it demise is evident in the ratings. The UFC will be a bigger sport soon enough and then the tennis world will be hurting at the notion two men thumping the shit out of each other is a more interesting sport than grunters and equal pay complainers.