London, June 11 : Former English tennis player Virginia Wade has slammed today's women tennis players saying that they are bland, muscular, grunting, insular, robots with no personality.

Wade, who won the women's singles championship at Wimbledon on 1 July 1977, called today's women tennis stars as muscular powerhouses, bred to slam balls between baselines with all the power they can muster.

"They're taught to treat tennis parties like business meetings. Their personalities are probably interesting underneath, but to spectators they're racket-wielding robots," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

She said women's tennis has become less interesting to watch and lacks personality - which makes the players seem dull and disappointing.

According to her, the problem of the games becoming less interesting to watch began during the mid-Nineties, when the enormously talented Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, raised the power bar.

As they are so physically strong that many other girls felt the only way to beat them was to be just as forceful.

From a multi-layered game of technical prowess, mental agility and power, women's tennis became a muscle match. Endless balls are now smacked from baseline to baseline using brute strength, she said.

She cited Belarusian tennis star Victoria Azarenka, the current world No1, who even during the off-season, spends two hours in the gym each day followed by a rigorous regime of hill sprints.

She said that unlike present generation, everyone in her days spent time together away from the games - which added another dimension to the matches.

"Most live in cocooned worlds, surrounded by tight-knit entourages with little opportunity to mix with other players in the same way we did," she claimed.

Parties and social events are few and far between, and any socialising that is permitted tends to revolve around these insular entourages.

Every calorie and hour is mapped out by their teams, leaving little room for the player's individuality to surface, she added. (ANI)