ISTANBUL, Turkey—Victoria Azarenka says she is feeling a bit burned out as the season comes to a close. The world No. 2 admits that she is lacking a little motivation at the WTA Championships and is mentally tired.
“I think it’s pretty obvious,” Azarenka said after her straight-sets loss to Jelena Jankovic. “It’s just the bad road, and I have to go through that, because it didn’t happen to me in a long, long time. It’s been a long year. It’s been a tough year. It’s been tough two years, so that consistency I have been playing with, it’s sometimes difficult to keep all the time. Everybody goes through tough moments in his or her career, and the important thing is how you come out of it. I just need to battle right now as much as I can.”
Azarenka affirmed that she is not injured or still sick. She sustained knee and hip injuries at Wimbledon and caught a virus in Tokyo.
While she has played fewer matches and tournaments than any other player in the eight-woman field in Istanbul, Azarenka is still feeling wiped out.
“Definitely it’s tough, in the end of the year to play against the best players, because every match you have to go and dig deep, and sometimes your motivation is not there enough to know the capacity, how deep can you dig,” she said. “It’s tough for everybody I’m not going to sit here and say that I feel perfectly, but you play back-to-back matches. It’s a little bit tiring, and all the things put together, it makes your body tired. Just mentally tough right now, tough to get things started a little bit.”
Serena Williams, who has won both her matches at the WTA Championships, says she can empathize with her rival.
“I feel like that every year at the end of the year,” she said. “I think it’s natural. Just like the last tournament, and then you just know in a couple of days you can be somewhere else, on a beach or, in China, where you choose to go. I’m barely hanging on, but I don’t know [how I keep my mind on matches].”