Victoria Azarenka experienced a very unfortunate situation at this year's Wimbledon, being booed while leaving the court.
It came as part of the whole handshake drama which has plagued the WTA Tour for a while but escalated at Roland Garros recently. The Parisian crowd is quite famous for being willing to boo, and they did plenty of that at this year's French Open.
Some of it could be technically justified, but most of it was unnecessary. For example, players from Ukraine not shaking hands with Russians or Belarusians always resulted in boos. And similar situation happened also in the All England Club.
Svitolina announced in an interview before her match with Azarenka that she wouldn't be shaking hands with the Belarusian. She didn't, and ultimately we saw booing from the crowd, which both the Ukrainian and Azarenka referenced in their post-match press conferences.
It prompted Svitolina to urge the event and the Tour to explain why it was happening so that fans understand the reasons for it in hopes that they would stop booing. Players like Medvedev were convinced that the boos came because people didn't know.
Ultimately the WTA did issue a statement even though Wimbledon declined to do the same thing. Azarenka has now addressed the situation on Twitter after giving herself some time to digest it all. We carry her statement fully below.
Hi everyone! Took a few days to digest the last few weeks. There is a lot I could say, but the feeling and thought I keep having is, when something great happens to us we usually have gratitude and say thank you. When something unpleasant happens to us we ask why and usually the thank you comes later when we see the reason why after the fact.
Whatever happens, happens for a reason (I really believe that). And I want to say thank you and I’ll continue being grateful for the experiences...
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