Grunt, squeal and moan preceded game, set and match as noisy Portuguese teenager Michelle Larcher de Brito was silenced by France’s Aravane Rezai 7-6, 6-2 in the French Open third round on Friday.
Sounding like she was having a particularly troublesome tooth extracted without anesthetic every time she played a point, the 16-year-old Portuguese qualifier drove her opponent to complain to the umpire several times during the match.
“It’s a pity, because she really plays well,” Rezai said later at a press conference. “She’s talented, she fights, but she still has a lot to learn. She’s very young and I think she’s just going through a phase.”
The Portuguese did not just shriek as she hit the ball but also yelped when her opponent sent her shots long. She also annoyed the partisan crowd with her bad-tempered racket slamming when she was frustrated.
But even the boos could not drown her out.
“I can do nothing about it,” the grand slam debutante, ranked No. 132, protested during the match.
“It’s part of my game. I can’t really all of a sudden stop grunting,” she later told reporters. “I mean, I could, but it won’t feel natural because it feels like it’s something missing in my game if I just stop.”
Retaliating with some grunts of her own, the 57th-ranked Rezai managed to tune out long enough to win the first set tiebreak before racing through the second set.
Listing Monica Seles, one of the original grunters, as one of her idols, Larcher de Brito had become the first Portuguese player to advance to the third round of a grand slam event.
Ears ringing, Rezai could barely look at her opponent as they shook hands curtly at the end.
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