Victoria Azarenka

Victoria Fiodaraŭna Azarenka (born 31 July 1989) is a Belarusian professional tennis player. Azarenka is a former world No. 1 in singles, having claimed the top ranking for the first time on 30 January 2012.

Quotes

• I do want to have interesting discussions because I’m very professional all the time and I do give insightful answers, but unfortunately, the only that comes up in the media is this one question, and I just feel like I’m wasting my time.
• I absolutely lost it yesterday because we work so hard in the Players Council and I just felt so frustrated, like I’m not making a difference and I put a lot of time, a lot of effort and I’m very direct
• I try to be reasonable, I try to compromise, I try to create ideas and we are moving at the slowest pace to get things done. There are some things behind the scenes that we’re working on, but it’s time to get something concrete done
• This is the only sport in the world where you don’t know when you’re going to play. It was 11PM yesterday and I didn’t know when I’m going to play. This is unacceptable in any shape or form… I look at it as a player, and it’s ridiculous. I look at it as a fan, and I don’t know which matches I’m going to go watch because I have no clue, unless you’re very fanatical, but we need to appeal to a bigger crowd to watch our sport.
• These late finishes aren’t benefitting anyone. They’re not benefitting fans, tournaments, broadcasting because there are no primetime spots, and it’s impossible to find tennis on TV or anywhere. You’re looking for it like it’s some treasure.
• The night matches have to start earlier: 6PM, 8:30PM slots. We have to have other courts having night matches because, I understand if there’s no match on Center Court, it’s difficult for the tournament. But we need to have a back-up that can be moved to another court. We need to expend a little production on other courts to make sure we cover more for the World Feed and for the TV.
• I believe that would help a little bit more, and we won’t be talking about this every week. If tennis can help itself to have slots of time where we can market, it would be much easier for the tournament.
• I don’t know how it will be received, but if matches could be a little bit shorter. I think the quality of the competition won’t be affected that extremely. There’s tradition, but I don’t think it would change the game to the point where it’s unrecognizable. Maybe a third set is up to 12 points. There has to be some innovation possible.
• I’m the person who will ask questions: ‘Why not? What can be done? What is the solution?’ I’m frustrated because I feel like, we all as a group, all the girls on the Council, every day we work so damn hard. I feel like we are making progress but it’s slow.
• We want to help tennis, we want to help players, and we all want to make more money. That’s obvious, but all of these things tie together. There’s absolute effort to understand compromise, but we have to start moving towards some place.
  • Victoria Azarenka has had it, calls for shorter matches, scheduling reform in Cincinnati tennis, 15 August 2023 by David Kane