MELBOURNE—Victoria Azarenka, despite nerves, a shaky serve, and a German opponent whose last name might as well be that language’s word for “pesky,” was trying her best to keep it together.
Early in the second set in her match against Mona Barthel this morning in Hisense Arena, Azarenka double-faulted to go down break point. She breathed deeply and looked up to the heavens, as if someone there had forsaken her. But she didn’t get angry. She finished the next point with a nice swing volley and another with a beautiful wrong-footing forehand up the line for a winner. Azarenka held.
But the 21-year-old Barthel, who won her first WTA title two weeks ago in Hobart, is nothing if not tough to finish. She’s not a big hitter, but she has a knack for hanging around and irritating her opponent, and she hung around long enough today that Azaranka finally did lose her cool, the cool that she has been working so hard to keep for the last year.
Azarenka served at 5-4 and twice reached match point. On the first, she hit a forehand down the line that appeared to miss by a centimeter. It was called out. Azarenka went to protest, before remembering that she was out of challenges. Then she gathered herself and got back to match point. This time Barthel mishit a forehand return of serve that also appeared to land a centimeter wide of the sideline. No call came. Again Azarenka protested, this time desperately. Again she realized that she was out of challenges. Again, she fought to settle herself.
A minute or so later, Barthel finally succumbed with a weak backhand into the net. Now that the match was over, Azarenka couldn’t hold back any longer. She looked to her player box, let loose with an unhappy spiel, and threw the ball she was holding into the back curtain. The crowd booed and Vika looked embarrassed, but she made up for it in her post-match interview.
“I had to get pissed off,” at the end, Azarenka said. “I wasn’t brave enough to finish it.” Azarenka took the blame for not having any challenges left, and won the crowd back in the process.
In this case, according to Azarenka, she didn’t need to calm down as much as she needed to fire herself up.
“I had to get my emotions going,” she claimed later.
Azarenka said today that she plays on emotion, and that she’s been a different person since she stopped “breaking racquets” last year, and making "that almost crying face” on court. Judging by today’s match, though, it’s not just a matter of controlling those emotions for Azarenka, but of being able to call on them when she needs them. Part of the reason that she always seems to be steaming below the surface is that the steam is part of her game.
Vika—however much she works on her focus; however long she dances herself into oblivion inside her headphones; however many fist-pumps and head-pumps she does on court—is going to have an edge, and will need that edge.
For now, she moves on to face a surprise opponent, Iveta Benesova. Compared to her fellow favorite Petra Kvitova’s performance yesterday, Vika’s was a model of stability and consistency today. Azarenka stuck to her successful patterns—forehand wide crosscourt to open the court; backhand down the line as change of pace—and played with the right mix of aggression and safety. Compared to the other top players, including both Serena and Kim, Vika seems like the least likely to go walkabout and suffer a shock exit—not that it couldn’t happen, of course.
Still, slow and steady very rarely wins the WTA race—ask Vika’s friend and rival, Caroline Wozniacki. Would another solid semifinal performance be satisfying for Azarenka or her fans? In keeping with her new “staying in the moment” mentality, she doesn’t get drawn in by talk of the future, or of specific expectations for the Slams, beyond the well-worn phrase she offered today:
“I’m trying to take it to the next level."
Whatever Azarenka's ambitions, no one can win a Grand Slam with their mind alone. The bigger question is whether she has the game to do it, now. Her draw will not necessarily stop her. After Benesova, she'd get the winner of Radwanska-Georges in the quarters, and possibly Wozniacki or Clijsters in the semis (Serena and Kvitova are in the other half).
Still, it’s going to be tough. Azarenka is solid all around, but even today against the unknown Barthel, she didn’t have the power to take the important points in hand on her own. She rallied forcefully and patiently, but she still relied on Barthel's errors at a number of key moments, including the final ones. Petra, Serena, Kim: All of them control their own destinies in rallies.
As Azarenka said, maybe she wasn’t angry or brave enough to go big with her shots when it counted. But that just shows how tricky it will be for her at a major, if she can’t just bash past her nerves. The high-strung Vika can win it anyway, especially if another top player is upset. But walking an emotional tightrope—staying calm one moment and getting ticked off the next—for seven matches won’t be easy.