Grunting in Tennis Improves Your Game

Researchers have found that it may be advantageous for tennis players to grunt as they swing because the grunt may confuse opposing players about in which direction the ball is moving:

For those clips that included a grunt, respondents had a slower response and were less accurate about the location of the forthcoming shot. The authors, while concluding that future on-court study needs to be conducted, posit one possible explanation, that “the interfering auditory stimulus masks the sound of the ball being struck by the racket or it distracts an opponent’s attention away from the sound of the ball.”

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