Victoria Azarenka has heaped praise on Novak Djokovic for helping to pave the way for others to also tweak their games and keep at the top even as they get older.
Azarenka is a two-time Grand Slam champion winning the Australian Open in 201`2 and 2013. She also has finished runner-up three times at major tournaments at the US Open in 2012, 2013 and 2020. The latter saw Vika return to the top after a few years in the tennis doldrums and that sudden return hasn't hugely waned apart from indifferent form in recent years.
This comes down to tweaking her style and remaining current instead of going back to what she knows and that having an open mind helps to bring success instead of resting on her laurels and knowing that what has brought her success before will again.
"When you have success, you become quite conservative. It’s something that you probably rely on, something you’ve learned, something that worked. And then things change. The physicality of the sport changed — balls, surfaces, players, and game styles change," she said.
"If you have an open mind and you’re able to apply that objective criticism and understand, yes, I can probably beat 90 percent of players playing my old game, with what I learned and based on experience. But there’s that 10 percent and those are at the later stages of tournaments. What do I need to be able to do to win against those?" she continued.
"I think that really is something that I try to understand and shred those walls of that conservativeness and what I know and what I’m really good at. It’s scary. It’s not easy, because it’s one thing to understand that quite well, but another to be able to go and dare," she added.
"I'm not sure how many people actually do see the changes that he made, even technically, with his serve and some of the movements in the game. It's pretty impressive," she expressed.
