Nothing pleases me more than the sounds of sports. I’d narrow it down to a specific one – a specific noise, or a specific sport – but there are too many of both, and all bring me equal amounts of contentment. Skateboarding is essentially a piece of music to me. There’s the clink of the metal of the trucks against the metal lip of a half-pipe; the scrape of the underside of the deck sliding down a handrail; the hollow-sounding roll of plastic wheels against tarmac; the thud of a trick landing. As a teenager, I used to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on the original PlayStation, and I would toggle the soundtrack off, just so I could listen to these in-game sounds. Don’t get me wrong, though – I cannot skateboard, but that doesn’t matter.
The squeak of a trainer on a gym floor – others can’t bear it – will take me straight back to school netball: the satisfying swish of the net as a shot pays off. Is there anything as beautiful to the ear as the thwack of a tennis ball, or the crack of a cricket bat? A shuttlecock whipping through the air? The scuttle of boot studs on changing room floors? The heavy clonk of two snooker balls colliding? There is not. I could watch Olympic skating for ages, not for the shapes, but for the growling carving of the ice.
I am not sure why I find these sounds so delightful, but it might have something to do with autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), the phenomenon that results in “low-grade euphoria” – or, as I put it, less dramatically, a nice tingly feeling – from various visual or auditory stimuli. I respond to many sounds in this way: hair being cut; fountain pen on paper; the tapping of a keyboard. Sometimes I try to soothe myself to sleep by watching YouTube videos of these things. That sounds weird, but I promise, these videos have millions of views and not all of them are me. There’s been research and everything.
But the sounds of sports are special in that they can be as invigorating as they are relaxing. Rattle the crossbar with a volley and pounce on the rebound. Catch the ball on the edge of the racket and listen to the plasticky backhand save match point. Grab the baseball with a leather mitt – booph! – to win the game.
The only sounds of sports I don’t love are those made by people. The parents on the sidelines, red-faced, screaming, “Man on!” to their 12-year-old daughters. The awkward arguments with umpires at Wimbledon, every curse audible amid the polite silence of the crowd. The chants on the terraces, you know the ones. All I want is the roulette sounds of the golf ball rolling around the bottom of the hole.
