“I’m very emotional player,” she added. “I mean, if you ever watched my matches, you know. Before there was bad emotion. Breaking rackets, having that almost-crying face on the court, as a lot of players do. Now I try to stay composed and control it.”
If Azarenka had her tempestuous moments on Friday, she has already shown self-restraint this week at Melbourne Park. In the late match on Wednesday night, she played an Australian underdog in Casey Dellacqua, and came up against a unique form of heckling.
After a couple of games, the home fans began baiting her with their own impression of her scream, and then guffawing at their own cheek. In between almost every point, the chorus would start up, sounding like a colony of howler monkeys in mating season.
Azarenka knows she cannot expect much sympathy over the crowd’s behaviour, because grunting is one of tennis’s hot-button issues. According to Ian Ritchie, the outgoing chief executive of the All-England Club, the people at Wimbledon receive more letters about this than anything else.
But while Azarenka’s non-verbal tic might grate, you had to admire her mental fortitude. She didn’t rise to the bait or become distracted, brushing Dellacqua aside 6-1, 6-0. And then, when interviewed on the court for Channel Seven’s local TV coverage, she dismissed the whole thing with a smile.
Asked whether she had heard the commotion, Azarenka replied: “Of course I did. I mean, I’m not deaf. I knew it was going to happen. They wanted her to win bad. It’s fine for me, doesn’t really bother me. I respect the crowd, whatever they do. I try to just be focused on my game, and that’s it.”
Now 22, Azarenka picked up her habit as an undersized eight-year-old in Minsk, when she found that long, loud exhalations helped her force the ball over the net. “It’s become a part of my movement, part of my game,” she said last year. “So I cannot change it and I’m not going to.”
The best way to stop this sort of behaviour is in the juniors, before players gain international renown. By the time that they have reached the world’s elite, it is much more difficult to make a stand, especially as any physiologist will tell you that grunting is more than just a distraction strategy: it does actually help players strike the ball with extra venom.
Look at the likely quarter-finalists of this tournament and three of them — Azarenka, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova — all make a god-awful racket.
But it is hard to see the WTA stepping in when Williams and Sharapova are arguably the two highest-profile female athletes on the planet. Better to catch them young, and tell them that they cannot compete in the junior international tournaments unless they keep a lid on it.
Azarenka’s wail is already notorious, particularly because it is so long-lasting, often carrying on until her opponent makes contact with the ball. But it will attract even more attention if she wins this tournament — a result which would carry her to No. 1 in the world. Then she will be a big noise in every way.