How grunts can tell you who will be the winner

GRUNTS made by tennis stars change in pitch depending on how well they are doing, researchers say.

Listening to the noises – produced by the likes of Rafael Nadal and Victoria Azarenka – could even help predict who is going to win.

Players’ grunts were higher in pitch during matches they lost than in the matches they won, a study shows.

Psychologists at the University of Sussex found the differences in grunt were evident long before the scoreboard made it clear whether the player would win or lose.

Researcher Jordan Raine – captain of the university tennis team – and his colleagues analysed television footage of 50 matches featuring some of the world’s top 30 stars.

They measured grunts made during serves, backhands and forehands, recording at what stage of each match the noises were produced, as well as whether the players won or lost the match. While the pitch of grunts rose as matches progressed, the study, published in the journal Animal Behaviour, found that the likely match outcome for a player may be apparent from the outset.

Mr Raine said: ‘This suggests that this shift in pitch is not due to shortterm changes in scoreboard dominance, but may reflect longer term factors. These could include previous encounters, form, world ranking, fatigue and injuries.’

It seems these differences are distinguishable even to non-scientists. When tennis players were played short clips of competitors’ grunts, with no access to any other information, they were able to identify which of two grunt sequences produced by a competitor came from a match they lost – suggesting the noises may give opponents useful information.