Stop That Grunt!

The 106th Wimbledon tennis championships promised several Cinderella stories but delivered none. Old-timers Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe got as far as the semifinals, then were whipped. And Monica Seles, the steamrolling Serb with a shot at a Grand Slam sweep, got to the finals but lost in straight sets, 6-2, 6-1, to defending champion Steffi Graf.

But if there was no glass slipper for Seles, she was still the tourney's top story. Late in her quarterfinal match, foes began charging that the formidable Seles' most effective weapon is not her racquet but her racket: the unnerving grunts and shrieks with which she punctuates every stroke. Nathalie Tauziat of France and Navratilova complained that the screaming was so loud they could not hear the ball coming off Seles' racquet.

The tabloids quickly dubbed her "Moan-ica" and demanded, "Stop that grunt!" One writer, claiming to have monitored her with a "gruntometer," said the noises coming out of the 18-year-old registered 93 decibels, about what a diesel train would produce. The grunts emitted by Gabriela Sabatini and Jennifer Capriati were deemed dulcet whimpers compared with Monica's. Countered Seles: "I don't think I'm going to win a match because I'm grunting."