Serena Williams credited fellow tennis legend Monica Seles for inspiring her iconic on-court grunt during the latest episodes of the popular YouTube series Hot Ones released on Thursday (July 4).
"So I grunt because growing up I liked this tennis player named Monica Seles and she grunts. She had this really cool grunt. It was like, '[grunt].' And I loved that, I was like, 'That's so cool,'" Williams told host Sean Evans . "And so I literally would grunt because of her and then it just became natural and then my grunt just became like a [grunt]. It was really loud."
"I guess it's a form of breathing," she added. "I grunt playing golf now… It's like a part of my life… Other people say it's relieving and exhaling air and it's a different way to exhale air."
Seles, 50, an International Tennis Hall of Famer who retired with nine Grand Slam singles tournament wins and 59 career titles, inspired Wimbledon's Centre Court "grunt-o-meter."
“Some people loved it (the grunt), others hated it,” Seles told the Wall Street Journal in 2013 via the International Tennis Hall of Fame's website . “I grunted since I was age 7. I was a little girl, and they didn’t have kid’s racquets in those days. So my dad just gave me his racquet to play with, but I was tiny, so I put all my energy into it, just the same way I played with two hands from both sides, because I had to. It wasn’t an issue until I became No. 1 and then the competitors always try to find a little edge started to complain, because at the end of the day it [tennis] was a super competitive industry.”
Williams, 42, widely regarded as the greatest female tennis player of all-time, retired in 2022 with 23 career Grand Slam singles titles, the most of the Open Era and ranked as the world No. 1 singles player by the Women's Tennis Association for 319 weeks, including a joint-record 186 weeks.
This story is brought to you by the Women's Sports Audio Network (WSAN). WSAN is the first-ever audio platform dedicated exclusively to women's sports. WSAN celebrates female athletes and gives an in-depth look into their personal experiences in and out of their respective sports. Check out more on the WSAN site .
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