By Chris Oddo | Thursday March 21, 2019
Surprising but true: Victoria Azarenka has not won a title since she capped off her Sunshine Double in 2016 with an emphatic win over Svetlana Kuznetsova in the Miami Open final, just two weeks after she stunned Serena Williams for the BNP Paribas title at Indian Wells. At the time, the pair of titles marked a return to elite status for Azarenka, who had been riddled by injuries in the season prior, and dropped out of the top 40 after a run of two consecutive years inside the Top 3 during 2012 and 2013 (including 51 weeks at No.1).
After that victory in Miami Azarenka returned to the Top 5 for the first time in over two years, but her stay would be short-lived as pregnancy took her off the courts for over a year starting in the spring of 2016. Since then Azarenka, now a proud and inspiring mother, has had to deal with the emotional and logistical difficulties that have sprung from a custody battle for her son Leo in addition to re-adapting to life on the tour post-motherhood.
It’s been a wild ride for the two-time major champion; she has played well at times since returning to tennis in the summer of 2017, but the Belarussian only played six matches in 2017 because her travel was limited due to the aforementioned custody battle, and those troubles continued into 2018.
It’s hard to believe that nearly two full years after her return to tennis Azarenka has only played 45 matches and has yet to crack the Top 40, but the lack of match play goes a long way to explaining her lack of momentum in terms of Top 10 victories (just one in eight tries) and ranking (46 as of this week).
But at 29 years of age Azarenka is still hoping to find her missing mojo. Anybody who saw her tear-laden press conference at this year’s Australian Open knows that the desire is still there.
The game isn’t that far off, either.
Last week at Indian Wells Azarenka played scintillating tennis in a three-set defeat to Serena Williams in a second-round match that felt more like a semi-final. The spirited contest will surely go down as one of the best popcorn matches of the season at year’s end, based on drama and level of play, and it could prove to be a symbolic moment for Azarenka despite the fact that she lost.
She went down swinging, and did so impressively, and after she christened Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on Wednesday with a hard-fought victory over the ever feisty Dominika Cibulkova 6-2 3-6 6-4 to set up a second-round clash with Caroline Garcia, Azarenka was still reflecting on that tilt with Williams.
“I thought that was really my first best match since really kind of like my comeback on the tour,” Azarenka said. “That definitely gave me a little bit of more confidence, of seeing my abilities in the match, because I know I have—I'm not doubting my abilities as a player. It's just being able to transfer that from practice to the match has been a struggle, and in that match, I was able to do this.”
Azarenka says that she’s still looking for signs and building belief. Perhaps the loss against Williams will serve as a trigger, one that helps the old confidence and swagger become a bigger part of Azarenka’s current psyche.
“I came up short a little bit, but it was, again, a really good step forward for me,” she continued. “As I said, the process can be frustrating and the patience is not easy to have, but I'm definitely improving step by step, and I want to continue to go that way.”
If Azarenka is finding her form again, this is a perfect time. Last year she reached her only semi-final of the season at Miami before falling to eventual champion Sloane Stephens in three sets.
Many believed that the run might be the one that jump-started another push up the rankings last season, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Perhaps the good vibes garnered from the loss against Williams and yesterday’s tough win over Cibulkova will mean something to Azarenka. At some point, she’s bound to make a push back up the rankings. Top 20, Top 10, another major? Hard to say. All that matters now is that she keeps building confidence and keeps believing that she can be what she once was.
Tennis is not about what happens to you, it’s about how you react to what happens to you. Azarenka has been dealt a lot of difficult scenarios of late, but all the while she has been a constant inspiration as a mother who is a fighter, determined to overcome obstacles and prove herself all over again.
“I think, you know, the kind of losses that I had in the beginning of the year is something that I'm trying to build from, because that's where you kind of learn most,” she said. “I had a pretty close match, last one in Acapulco, which I was also serving for the match and I didn't convert that opportunity. So today it was a different story, and I'm happy with that progress, because, you know, as much as you want to be on the roll and winning easy matches, it never happens this way.”