Those loud grunts some tennis players make when hitting the ball could actually have a negative effect on their opponents by distracting them and slowing their reaction time, scientists said Friday.
Players like Maria Sharapova and Rafael Nadal are notorious for their grunting, a practice which often triggers complaints in professional tennis, said Scott Sinnett, lead author of the report that appeared in the journal Public Library of Science ONE.
Researchers played 384 video clips of a tennis player hitting a ball to either the left or right of a video camera, to 33 students at the University of British Columbia in western Canada.
The students were asked to quickly determine whether the ball was hit to the right or left. For some of the shots, a loud white noise was played as the racket hit the ball.
"When an additional sound occurs at the same time as when the ball is struck, participants are significantly slower ... and make significantly more decision errors," said the study.
A growing body of research shows that noise "distracts you from your ability to pay attention to what is going on," said Sinnett in a telephone interview.
"A grunt doesn't allow you to place all your attention on what's happening. It blocks the ability to pay attention to a multi-sensory event."
Grunting could cause a tennis player to perceive a ball traveling 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour to be "two feet (60 centimeters) closer to the opponent than it actually is," said Sinnett.
"This could increase the likelihood that opponents are out of position and make returning the ball more difficult."
"A lot of people have complained about grunting in the tennis world, that it's distracting, and even some professionals have said it's pretty much cheating," said Sinnett.
"The study raises a number of interesting questions for tennis. For example, if Rafael Nadal is grunting and Roger Federer is not, is that fair?"
Scientifically regulating tennis players' grunts -- some of which register at 100 decibels -- "could be looked toward, because if it's distracting to opponent, then it's basically cheating," he said.
