Victoria Azarenka refuses to answer question surrounding pressure facing Ukrainian at Australian Open after Yastremska exit

Victoria Azarenka refused to acknowledge a question surrounding facing a Ukrainian opponent at the 2024 Australian Open after losing out to Dayana Yastremska on Monday morning on a day when the top half was blown even further open with now Linda Noskova and Anna Kalinskaya as of time of writing joining the vanquisher of Azarenka in the Quarter-Finals.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been an ongoing storyline in terms of the media on the tennis tour since early 2022 with Ukrainian players failing to shake hands with Russian and Belarusian players. Belarus aided Russia in its invasion of the Ukraine with Azarenka and Sabalenka in particular as a result receiving scrutiny. The two-time Australian Open champion said that the atmosphere was great and she was gutted she couldn't continue on before answering basically no comment surrounding facing a Ukrainian.

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"The atmosphere was good. I always enjoy playing in Australia. I think it was great. The stadium is always fun. I always have so much support here. Yeah, I wish I could have played just longer here, but it wasn't meant to be," she said.
"Next [question]," she said when asked about the pressure.

"Not a good day for me playing-wise. I feel like I just wasn't able to really connect my game fully. I feel like I had a lot of opportunities still and just didn't take advantage of them. A bit of a disappointing day for sure," she continued.
"I feel like just overall today, balls were a bit off timing-wise. Serves were really low percentage of first serve today. Tried to kind of get into the game, tried to get the energy up, and didn't work today. Definitely very disappointing to not be able to convert some of the opportunities to hopefully get the ball rolling a little bit better, but it happens. It's disappointing that it happened in the fourth round of a Grand Slam," she added.

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Melanie Lautrup

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Azarenka’s take on how tricky it is to play against “hot & cold” players with weapons such as Yastremska & Noskova:

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