JANKOVIC: GRUNTING IS NATURAL

Women’s tennis these days has become synonymous with the word ‘grunt’ with many, rather most of the top tennis players screaming their lungs out when hitting a shot, sometimes courting controversy as was done by Serena Williams at the US Open Final last year and sometimes being mimicked by the fans, just for the fun of it and one woman who is not too keen to cut down on her screaming is Serbian tennis ace Jelena Jankovic. Jankovic has not been in the best of forms recently, having been knocked out of the WTA Tour event at Indian Wells recent quite unceremoniously but she is not one to take into account what others think of her grunt and cut it down.

According to Jankovic, it is something that comes to her naturally when she hits a shot and there is no way that she is going against her natural instincts in trying to make it more comfortable for the fans or her opponent for that matter. Jelena Jankovic, however, did point out that it was not her but Russian tennis beauty Maria Sharapova who has the strongest grunt in the world of women’s tennis at moment.

She did happen to mention that although she grunts herself, it is extremely hard to concentrate amidst the loud screams of the opposition player. But that still doesn’t change anything and according to her, in the world of power tennis, it has become a part of the tennis culture.

Jelena Jankovic very candidly replied that during the days of Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graff, it was all about skill but today, one has to rely on skill and power and when a powerful shot leaves the racket with a lot of force generated from the body, the scream or the grunt comes as a natural reaction.