MIAMI, Fla.— From a mid-match “bee invasion” in Indian Wells to a protester gluing his feet to the stadium at last year’s US Open, tennis players are no strangers to weird or unexpected interruptions to their matches.
On Tuesday afternoon at the Miami Open, Victoria Azarenka said she had to tap into the patience one can only learn from being a parent in order to deal with a bizarre delay during her own quarterfinal. Just three games into her clash with Yulia Putintseva, a power outage on Stadium court caused play to be halted for nearly an hour.
“It's definitely a frustration, and dealing with that… I'm not sure it's my years of experience (on tour) rather than being a parent that helped me with that,” she joked afterward. “Learning patience is my biggest challenge, for sure, (from) being a parent rather than being on the tennis court.”