Tennis and golf seem so much different than almost all other sports. Baseball is the most intense with a pitcher throwing a ball towards you at over 100mph. NFL quarterbacks have to go to a silent count to snap the ball because they can’t hear the call. Basketball, Soccer (futball), Rugby, NFL, hockey, etc… all allow as much noise as you can make. Most teams will also encourage noise when the opponent has the ball. Why is tennis and golf an outlier?
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Why are you allowed to drink beer and smoke cigarettes or cigars when it’s not your turn in bowling or darts?
Different sports evolved different cultures which have different expectations. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.
I’m not sure about tennis but golf is definitely more focused on precision and solo play. Everyone takes turns, rather than the ball repeatedly going back and forth or having a dozen noisy players share the field
I think if the noise in golf was constant and ambient it wouldn’t be a big deal. It’s more the sudden loud noise from a quiet gallery that can throw an athlete off. I remember during COVID when the NBA arenas were mostly empty, the Suns played a game in Toronto. Devin Booker was about to shoot two game clinching free throws, and the mascot was out there trying to mess him up by screaming when he shot. Quiet to suddenly loud can break concentration. Officials made the mascot shut up, lol.
They’re not entirely outliers. There are other sports internationally, like curling, where the same etiquette is normal. Essentially it’s a cultural artifact. These sports that first evolved as sort of “gentlemanly pastimes” for the upper middle class expect both the players and the audience to be a bit less, well, rowdy.
The issue with noise in tennis is during serves, when the player is making a solo precision strike like a golfer would. Noise during the volley isn’t as much of an issue.
they require more concentration, generally. it’s not really the noise in general that is a problem for either of those. Ie. watch the waste management open. The golfers will ask for more noise many times on the par 3.
Sudden noise can really f you up when you are golfing specifically. In my golf league we all talk and mess around on the first tee while everyone is teeing off. It’s not an issue. It’s an issue if someone suddenly yells super loud in the middle of your swing.
best way to prevent these distractions that can impact an outcome is to just ask people to be quiet.
also. in these other sports, you are generally further from the fans when you are doing stuff that might require high concentation. In golf and tennis you have fans like 5′ behind you during the serve or tee shots.
>Basketball, Soccer (futball), Rugby, NFL, hockey, etc… all allow as much noise as you can make.
What all of these sports have that tennis and golf do not is *home teams* and *visiting teams*. In sports with the home-vistor dynamic, the crowd is considered part of the “playing field.” The crowd helps gives you a home-field advantage, which varies by sport but typically provides at least *some* benefit. Golf and tennis are tournament sports on neutral territory. No one is supposed to have a built-in advantage by playing “at home,” so the customs of the sport are designed around giving everyone fair and equitable conditions. One way to do that is by asking spectators to be quiet *at certain points of the competition* — before the serve, or as the golfer is making their shot — so that the crowd doesn’t benefit one player over another.
Probably because they didn’t really start as spectator sports, or if there were spectators it wasn’t a loud environment. When you have team sports it’s normally noisy anyway because you have team members shouting at each other. Golf and tennis not so much.
I play tennis, and even the slightest noise or distraction can really affect the point. It’s such a precision sport that involves absolute concentration.
That said, some tennis competitions are more tolerant of noise than others, eg. US Open will tolerate some crowd noise, whereas in Wimbledon you’re not even allowed to get up to use the toilet during a point.
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