More complaints about the Sharapova screech

From Mike Downey:

And to think at a tennis match they have the gall to ask a crowd to be quiet.

As I watch the 2006 U.S. Open being played at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center on my TV this weekend, I thank the Man Upstairs—no, not John McEnroe—once more for the greatest invention God has put on this Earth of ours over the last 50 years—the mute button.

The grunts of women's tennis are getting worse. I don't know whether to watch these players play or to pick up a phone and call 911.

I have heard animals fight in zoos and not make this much noise. I went to an Aerosmith concert that wasn't this loud. Janet Leigh didn't scream this way in "Psycho" when she got stabbed taking a shower.

For all of Sharapova's poise, style and publicity as a hot babe, I feel it is necessary to note that she is the loudest human being on TV. This young woman could drown out John Madden, Chris Berman and Dick Vitale simultaneously. If a screaming baby in a maternity ward could talk, he or she would beg Sharapova to shut up.

This eardrum-crushin' Russian has been confronted about all of this grunting of hers but vows she won't quit. Like a smoker who defiantly puffs into your face, Sharapova's noise pollution is going to continue because it doesn't annoy her.

A Nike commercial of hers just came on my TV, the one where everybody in the stadium sings along to that "I Feel Pretty" ditty from "West Side Story."

All I know is, if "West Side Story" were now on Broadway, you wouldn't be able to hear the songs over all that noise from the tennis outin Flushing Meadows. I don't care how lovely Sharapova or her game is. I don't care to observe a tennis match and hear a player shriek like a werewolf.

She isn't the only one. Serena Williams can do a pretty good primal scream of her own. There also is Dinara Safina, whose grunts at the French Open were such loud expressions of pain you would have thought her private tennis coach was the Marquis de Sade.

Only a guillotine could silence them. Tennis authorities won't.

"I think the umpire should maybe step in and come down on her a little bit," Elena Dementieva, a top pro and Russian comrade, once said of Sharapova.

I'm with her. Subtract a point for audience abuse.

The greatest grunter of all used to be Monica Seles, whose wails were such that one Wimbledon quarterfinal opponent, Natalie Tauziat, complained to a chair umpire about her.

Seles was told to keep it down. I believe everybody was grateful for this, including the passengers and pilots of jets flying over London at that hour.

Before his 2005 retirement, Wimbledon's chief umpire, Alan Mills, said in an interview: "Many of the nongrunting players are unhappy about the noise pollution. A kind of counter-grunt culture has emerged in recent years, whereby offended parties ape their opponent's noises."

Interesting. Rather than to fight fire with fire, the idea would be to fight grunt with grunt—a literal translation of "two can play at that game."

First one to lose her voice loses the match.

I watched a Friday match on TV involving the U.S. Open's No. 2 seed, Justine Henin-Hardenne. I had to keep turning up the sound to see if she was making one.

Nope, not a peep. It was a classic example of how tennis can be played without sounding like a fight to the death between Godzilla and King Kong.

A few minutes later I got to see the last points of a match between the No. 6 seed, Svetlana Kuznetsova, and Anastasia Rodionova. I almost went deaf-o-nova. The racket was excruciating. I have rarely heard grunts like that outside of a barnyard.

Tennis is meant to be a quiet sport. A gentle breeze, a soft ball and a light plunk of the strings on every swing … that's the way it should be played.

Spare us from Sharapova and her kind with those yowls and howls. How do you solve a problem like Maria? Maybe you could make her wear a dress, a headband and a gag. Chicago Sports