IN the last few weeks, my neighbours may have overheard the sound from my living room TV and wondered if I was watching X-rated movies.

PIPE DOWN: US player Serena Williams. PICTURE: AFP

(I did consider reassuring them that the moans, grunts and occasional screams they were hearing were actually coming from female tennis players playing an international tournament, but I decided to leave them in awe of me.)

When did women tennis players start making these embarrassing noises?  In the past, the only shouts I heard in women's tennis came occasionally from that referee in the super-sized baby chair next to the net.

In the past, sports personalities carried themselves with dignity. Even boxers who butchered each other in the ring didn't make noises. Wrestlers who reduced each other to putty did so in relative silence.

Okay, so martial arts practitioners tended to make lots of noise but war is a noisy business, and warriors have always employed noise as a means of scaring the enemy.

Women players, however, had always considered it un-ladylike to shriek. Now it's becoming a trademark - I can identify three players just by their squawks - and I am not even a tennis fan.

So what am I doing following tennis on TV? I don't, actually. The TV is on permanently, and I every time I break for tea or snacks, I watch whatever is going on in an uninterested way. Interestingly, I've become uninterested in lots of things lately.

One thing that amuses me is the way all the tennis players shove spare tennis balls into their pockets.

The result is men looking like they'd had sex operation that went awfully wrong. (How in the world can they run up and down the court with these things jammed into their thighs?)

As for the women, they become circus magicians - they can mysteriously disappear tennis balls into their underwear and pull them out at will. (Saddam Hussein could have learnt a few things from them about hiding weapons of mass destruction.)

The other thing I don't understand is: why would anybody pay for superbly crafted, sexy designer outfits and then ruin their exquisite shape with bulging pockets?

Why not let those adoring kids crouching on the sidelines store them for you, since carrying balls is their job anyway?

One of the great mysteries of life for me has always been how they keep tennis scores.  The game starts, I get a drink from the fridge, and when I come back two minutes later, the score is 15 something.

I make a sandwich and come back two minutes later and it's 30 something, and then before I know it, 40 something.  Then there's a tie and I think the game will be over in a couple of shots but no, it goes on forever.

Marathon game

One game went on for 31/2 hours!

Can you imagine saying to the world's top sprinters: 'Okay, we'll do the usual hundred metres but if the competition is close, we'll extend to 400 metres and if the competition is still stiff, we'll take it up to 1500 metres and let's hope we don't have to do the full marathon....'

Maybe I should write to the gods who organise tennis tournaments and suggest they use the same system used by soccer. One point each time you score a victory over your opponent and the whole game is over in say an hour, or two if you like.

That way, tennis tournaments wouldn't run for days and I might get to catch re-runs of other programmes like Sesame Street when I pop into my living room.

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