'Thank You': Azarenka Digests Wimbledon Booing Incident & Finds Gratitude
WTAFriday, 14 July 2023 at 02:40
Updated at Thursday, 08 May 2025 at 13:58
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 a similar situation also happened at 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 would understand the reasons for it, in hopes that they would stop booing. Players like Daniil 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.
"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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