"We're looking to have the hearts and minds of the people match up with this legislation," she said.

Across the ocean, a day before, a 16-year-old Portuguese tennis player issued a defiant proclamation that focused King's challenge. "I'm here to win and nobody can stop me grunting," Michelle Larcher de Brito said after winning her Wimbledon match. "If they have to fine me, go ahead."

Even those with the quickest of channel-changing trigger fingers are probably aware that women's professional tennis has become a bit noisier over the last decade. The money and guru tennis academies like Nick Bollettieri's in Florida have produced a generation X-hale of female players, to varying degrees.

Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams and others have done more than a few Springsteen imitations amid serves and returns. But de Brito, who bowed out yesterday, has been dubbed the queen of screams since her third-round French Open opponent, Aravane Rezai, complained about her loud grunts during a match last month.

De Brito's loudest screech to date has been measured at 109 decibels, but she need only hit 108 for bettors to collect in England this week. If you took the over Monday, you lost, big-time. De Brito won, 6-2, 7-5, over Klara Zakopalova in a match so quiet it sent many piqued fans to the exits - or at least to the louder court where Sharapova was playing.

"Well, I tried to be quiet for you guys today," joked de Brito, showing a poise and perspective far beyond her years.

She was much noisier on her way out yesterday, so too was Sharapova, who also lost.

The good news is that this nonsense over noise has drawn some interest back to women's tennis, something King - who jump-started the Title IX movement when she played and beat Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome - surely appreciates.

The bad news is that the grilling de Brito has taken about it, in Paris and the other day, seems sinister and is most certainly sexist.

"Why do female tennis stars at Wimbledon sound as if they're in labour or a porn film?" asked the Daily Mail, a London tabloid.

"It sounds disgusting, ugly, unsexy!" former Wimbledon champion Michael Stich was quoted as saying.

Stich's viewpoint, given his relative youth, is alarming. But even some defenders of the grunt seem trapped in a time warp.

"Senorita Larcher de Brito is more of a shrieker, wouldn't you say?" wrote Frank Deford on his latest NPR blog. "Actually, I always thought the best grunter of all was a Romanian player named Virginia Ruzici of the 1970s whose shriek reminded one and all, vicariously, of ecstasy."

Boys, boys, boys.

Put a sock, umm, in it.

I can only imagine how this plays out to King, who to this day is critical about the passivity Margaret Court displayed while losing to Riggs, before King took him on. Or to athletes like Diana Taurasi, who as a Connecticut basketball player was once caught on national television, screaming "mother[expletive]" after she had made one of her trademark big buckets in the closing minutes of a game.

Male tennis players grunt all over themselves and nary a moan is heard. It's considered part of the competitive process, just as sound is crucial in the execution of martial arts. But women are still held to a different standard when it comes to competitiveness, a standard that sadly, doesn't seem to be much different this week than it was 37 years ago.

That's what King was talking about on Tuesday. The legislation mandates that finances be distributed equally. Perception and appreciation? Well as the noise at Wimbledon has underlined this week, we still have a ways to go.

"Definitely if the matches are going to be tougher, obviously I'm going to start grunting," said de Brito. "I'm not here really to be quiet for anybody. I'm here to play. I'm here to win. That's it. If people don't like my grunting, they can always leave." *

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