Tracy Austin

Tennis has hit the hardcourt season leading up to the U.S. Open later this summer, so it's a good time to answer some of the most asked questions this season, including whether Jennifer Capriati will ever play again.

Q: Can and will Jennifer Capriati attempt to make a comeback to the WTA tour?

And if she does, what would be her chances at cracking the top 10, and winning at least one more major?

Right shoulder and right wrist injuries -- she's had two surgeries on each -- have kept Capriati off the WTA Tour since late in 2004. But I have heard that the 30-year-old former No. 1 ranked player wants to come back, she just doesn't know if she will be physically able to return.

Capriati's last surgery was in June of last year, but her rehab has not gone as she would have liked so her indefinite hiatus continues, but I still feel she has time on her side. She may be 30 but if healthy, she's far from being finished.

A healthy Capriati would still possess the ability to move extremely well and to defend, handling the power shots hit towards her and sending those shots back with force. I believe Capriati could successfully return to the WTA Tour because she has such a pure, clean-hitting game, and she is so strong.

What we can't be certain of is the level of desire Capriati has to make it back among the top players in the women's game.

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But again she has resisted calling it quits, so you have to figure she hasn't yet reached a point where she feels she doesn't have enough desire to put everything on the line again, and work hard on a comeback.

I think if she got healthy again and had the desire she displayed in making one of the great comebacks in tennis in the mid 1990s, there would be no doubt in my mind that she could again be a top-10 player. Her game is too good, and she has too many assets and too many weapons for me not to feel that way.

Would she have a strong shot at winning at least one more major? That's harder to say since majors are so tough to come by, and a lot depends upon what opponents a player draws over the two-week stretch, and what kind of breaks come her way.

Here's hoping we haven't seen the last of Capriati.

Q: Is there a disadvantage to opponents of players who constantly grunt when hitting the ball because the grunts take away from the opponent’s ability to hear how hard the ball is hit or what sound it makes when it drops?

And can officials do anything to make players like Maria Sharapova and others stop grunting?

Tennis players do use their hearing to help them adjust to how hard a ball has been hit. At the net, hearing is especially important as players need to hear the ball hit the racket so that they know how fast it's coming at them.

Hearing the shots is less crucial from the baseline, but it's still important. When a player is at the baseline there's some time to pick up and adjust to a shot even if hearing that shot hit has been dwarfed by loud grunting.

But at the net if a player doesn't hear the ball being hit it becomes dangerous to that player since she or he doesn't know how fast the ball's coming at them.

Grunting is not specifically covered in the rule book, but the umpire can ask for a point to be replayed if a player's opponent makes an official protest.

While Maria Sharapova and some others now gain attention for their grunting, this issue is not new to women's tennis. In 1992 at Wimbledon, Monica Seles had her grunting become the subject of complaints from Nathalie Tauziat and Martina Navratilova.

The referee told Seles to tone it down, and she did in the final against Steffi Graf, but doing so clearly affected Seles' game, and she quietly went down to defeat.  

Any strategical disadvantage brought on by grunting aside, tennis is game that entertains and fans should be watching matches and enjoying them, not being bothered by the grunting to the extent that they skip matches or watch them on television with the sound turned down.

With that in mind, Navratilova wants grunting banned, saying its unfair to opponents and terrible for the fans.

Sharapova has been asked about her grunting, but she has replied that she won't seek to stop it since she has played this way for as long as she can remember, so the initiative to get her and others to stop falls for opponents.

I think that if at some point the grunting by some players becomes distracting enough to other players, than these players will need to make it an issue. Maybe then things will come to a head, but they haven't yet.

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