Elina Svitolina declared that she won't shake the hand of Victoria Azarenka after their Wimbledon match and she didn't though the Belarusian gave her respect with a small gesture.
When Elina Svitolina confirmed to BBC that she won't shake the hand of Azarenka, fans knew that we should expect fireworks. For a good portion of the match, we didn't see it but then we finally did thanks to an incredible comeback.
Despite being down a set and a break Svitolina continued her inspired run at Wimbledon beating Azarenka in three sets. Azarenka is a WTA veteran and one of the most experienced players who played a lot of matches on grass mostly because she's quite good at it.
The more you play on it the better you are because there is only a finite number of matches that you can play on the surface each year. That's not the case for Svitolina who just recently got her 20th career win on grass.
Her level has been inspiring because she's quite motivated but for the most part, it's not her best surface and never was. The Ukrainian announced before the match that she won't shake hands with Azarenka due to her being from Belarus and truly she didn't but Azarenka gave her approval after their fierce battle.
The opening set was a very interesting one as the stat would tell you that the players performed similarly. Both served decent enough and had a similar number of winners and errors but Azarenka won 6-2. So what happened? Well, she performed better in the crucial points.
Svitolina was able to exert some pressure at times but she didn't use her break point while Azarenka used two of the three she had. Azarenka opened the second set with an early break as well but this time around Svitolina managed to use her break point and make the match a bit more interesting.
That set ended up being very competitive as Svitolina pushed Azarenka around quite a bit but took a very long time to finally break once more. Eventually, she did and won the set 6-4. The final one was another close one even though Svitolina took an early break.
Azarenka battled back to make it close again and it had to be settled in the tiebreak. The Ukranian was up early in that one but then Azarenka turned it around in her favour. In the end, it was Svitolina who won the 20-point match tiebreak 11-9.
A fabulous performance from Svitolina who was down a set and a break but turned it around. The final score was 2-6 6-4 7-6(9) as the Ukrnaian had 8 aces, 36 winners, and 40 unforced errors. She will face Iga Swiatek in the next round.
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