AH-YUHHH! Over on Court 14 at the US Open this week, it sounds like a cat is being strangled.
Again: Ah-yuhhh!
What is that noise? The sound is feminine yet forceful, like the kind Audrey Hepburn might make trying to clean and jerk 220 pounds.
The noise is in two distinct syllables — a sharp, shrill yell followed by a lower, drawn-out expulsion of air, more appropriate for breaking a board at a karate class than playing a civilized game of tennis.
Upon closer inspection, Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski is the culprit. She is tall and lithe with ridiculously long legs, her brown hair tied in braids. Her opponent is Germany’s Mona Barthel, who, incidentally, doesn’t make much noise when she hits the ball.
Ultimately, Jovanovski triumphs in three sets. Could it have been the grunting? If it were, Jovanovski and the other female players who tip the decibel meter might have to change their ways.
Grunting has long been the topic of endless jokes and eye-rolling, but in June, the Women’s Tennis Association, together with the International Tennis Federation and reps of the four Grand Slam tournaments, got serious on the topic.
The tennis groups adopted measures — of which there is no firm timetable for implementation — that would outlaw excessive vocal explosions. Umpires would use a hand-held device that measures sound, and a player would be penalized for anything considered too, er, grunt-y.
The move comes in the midst of a golden age of grunting, as many top players — including the Williams sisters, Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka — shake stadiums around the world. At last year’s Wimbledon, Sharapova was clocked at 101 decibels by one UK tabloid, or approximately a bit louder than a freight train. There’s even a noisy compendium of her work on YouTube, a video titled “Grunt Force One.”
“It’s time for us to drive excessive grunting out of the game for future generations,” WTA chairwoman and CEO Stacey Allaster told USA Today.
High-ranking players such as Caroline Wozniacki and Jelena Jankovic, as well as tennis legend Martina Navratilova, are calling for a crackdown on grunting.
“It’s hurting the game. It’s not just the players that are affected, it’s the fans. We’re losing fans,” Navratilova said on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.”
“I cannot tell you how many times people come up to me and say, ‘Can you do something about the grunting? It’s driving me crazy.’ ”
Gai Corley, from Mississippi, who attended the US Open on Tuesday, is one of those fans.
“I don’t like it. They need to dial it down,” says Corley. “It detracts, to me, from watching it. I guess I don’t like squealers.”
Corley compared Sharapova’s screams to a “diesel truck.” On an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David jokingly pokes fun at his wife’s cries on the court as sounding like “pigs f - - king.”
Sharapova, Azarenka and company are by no means the first to split eardrums. American Victoria Heinicke (then Palmer) is considered the true grunt pioneer. At 1962’s Wimbledon, she made so much noise hitting the ball that an opponent lodged a complaint. Oh, those uptight English.
In the modern era, Monica Seles is considered the trailblazer. Her high-pitched squeal, which sounds almost like a violent sneeze, bothered competitors and fans throughout the 1990s. Wimbledon once threatened to fine her if she didn’t pipe down.
Some have complained that women are being unfairly picked on and that the whole issue boils down shallowly to the discomfort with female players making unladylike sounds.
“I do think that this issue is a bit unfair to the women,” the WTA’s Allaster told “Outside the Lines.” “But obviously our DNA is different. Men have deeper voices, we were blessed with a higher pitch.”
“Give the women some credit. Maybe that’s the only way they’ve learned to get as much power on the ball as they want,” says Pam Friend from California, who was attending the Open on Tuesday and didn’t mind the grunting. “That level of exertion and effort, maybe you can’t control that very well.”
Dr. Joel Fish, the director of Philadelphia’s Center for Sport Psychology and someone who has worked with top tennis players, says grunting is about one thing: habit. When it becomes part of a player’s routine, it can improve performance.
“It can be symbolic of a strong hit, a controlled effort,” Fish says. “It gives you confidence, and that’s the foundation for your natural talent to come out.”
It can also have the opposite effect on an opponent, throwing them off their game — although Fish says he’s never worked with anyone who grunted specifically to distract an opponent.
“Some people are better at tuning it out than others,” he says. “I put grunts in the same category as fan noise or weather conditions. If someone is grunting and the opponent has difficulty tuning it out, a grunt can have a distracting effect and be a mental edge.”
One joint study by the University of Hawaii and the University of British Columbia found that grunting offered the player an advantage because it masked the sound of the ball being hit. Opponents use the sound of the ball coming off the racket to determine its speed and direction, and were slower to react to shots from grunters.
The more seasoned star players, however, probably have the mental toughness to carry on with Metallica playing in Row B and not lose focus.
“If you couldn’t learn how to deal with grunts,” Fish says, “you’ll probably have been weeded out of the system before the professional level.”
At 9 years old, though, focus can be difficult.
“Grunting is good because they’re letting out their emotions, but sometimes it’s too loud,” says Gabriella Price, a pint-size player from Rockland County who’s among the top young American prospects. “It’s distracting sometimes.”
But could all this noise pollution be controlled even if mandated?
Joel Kassan, principal at Gotham Tennis Academy, says it’s possible.
“There are proper breathing techniques,” he says. “We’ll pull a player aside and tell them it’s bad sportsmanship and they need to stop. When you have a young player, you want to break those habits before they get too far.”
Kassan estimates that less than 10 percent of his young players grunt. Almost all of them are girls, who, he believes, are just copying the tonsil workout from the top female players in the world.
Sharapova, for one, says there’s no shutting her up at this point.
“I’ve been doing it since I was 4 years old,” she said after a Wimbledon match this summer. “It’s definitely tough and impossible to do when you’ve played this sport for over 20 years.”
So if you’re heading to the Open this week or next, best to bring earplugs.
reed.tucker@nypost.com