The time has come for tennis to tell Maria Sharapova and her fellow screamers to shut up. Enough is enough. Someone needs to take that one small step for women’s tennis and do something about this ridiculous tactic. The 2011 US Open got underway yesterday, but it looks like it will be yet another unnecessarily loud tennis championship.

Sharapova just managed to grunt her way to a first round win yesterday over the 19-year-old British sensation, Heather Watson.

Some critics are saying that Sharapova intentionally grunts to scare her opponents, because, as Patrick McEnroe, US Davis Cup coach, notes, Sharapova doesn’t scream like that in practice.

Here’s a video of the last game in which Sharapova went on to win the tough three-setter against Watson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UJWHPZjMt8

That is some noise, Maria. Awful, actually.

We have all had this discussion before. It’s nothing new. The problem is that it’s getting so decidedly bad that people don’t even want to watch anymore.

At this year’s Wimbledon, also the tournaments 125th anniversary, the chief executive of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club, Ian Ritchie, admitted tournament officials were becoming increasingly pissed off with this nonsense.

He said players suffered from an “education problem,” and that it’s mainly the younger players that are responsible.

The problem is that nobody has ever done anything about it so the players can’t really be blamed.

Cleverly, the BBC even setup a webplayer that allows viewers to use their grunt control device that basically allows you turn up the commentary, and turn down the screams.

The BBC Radio Player has a mixing desk and allows fans to fade up and down noises to get the perfect listening experience.

Tennis has long since been known as a classy sport dominated by classy players that understand what the word etiquette means.

I’m not saying Maria doesn’t have etiquette, but I am saying that her on-court vocal tract doesn’t.

She is also responsible for the loudest known grunt, blasting gaffers’ eardrums at 105 decibels back in 2009.

[Sources: BusinessInsider, DailyMail, Telegraph]