Victoria Azarenka calls out WTA over late starts and finishes

Published at :August 17, 2023 at 11:42 PM

Modified at :January 13, 2024 at 5:55 PM

(Courtesy : People)

The Belarusian is a two-time Australian Open champion.

Victoria Azarenka did not hold back criticizing the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) for their poor scheduling. The placing of matches in tennis has often invited criticism due to the uncertainty involved with the match timing. The tournaments often release the Order of Play (OOP) before the start of the day’s play which acts as a schedule for the matches.

As such everything on court depends as to when the previous match ends. However, tennis being a game of no fixed duration, sometimes the matches go on for hours beyond the anticipated time of finish. This causes the subsequent matches to get delayed. Due to this, sometimes players have to play past midnight or even the next day due to curfew timing.

Speaking on it Azarenka said, “I absolutely lost it yesterday because we work so hard in the Players Council and I just felt so frustrated, like I’m not making a difference and I put a lot of time, a lot of effort. I try to be reasonable; I try to compromise; I try to create ideas and we are moving at the slowest pace to get things done,” said the 34-year-old tennis star.

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“This is the only sport in the world where you don’t know when you’re going to play. I look at it as a player, and it’s ridiculous. I look at it as a fan, and I don’t know which matches I’m going to go watch because I have no clue, unless you’re very fanatical, but we need to appeal to a bigger crowd to watch our sport,” she added.

Sharing similar views on the matter are also last year’s Wimbledon winner Elena Rybakina and World No. 1 Iga Swiatek. Rybakina was forced to delay her quarter-finals match against Daria Kasatkina at last week’s National Bank Open due to multiple rain delays. She finally stepped onto the court late into the night and the match went on past 3 AM in the morning.

Swiatek echoed Rybakina’s calls for change in Cincinnati, having first raised the issue during clay-court tournaments in Madrid and Rome, where she had multiple midnight finishes. Iga suggested an alternative which was to start the night sessions earlier.

So now it will be be interesting to see how the WTA handles the whole situation. Needless to say that the circumstances have indeed been tough for the players and the sooner matter is addressed the better it is for the sport.

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