I can think of at least one person who can’t exactly be thrilled by Victoria Azarenka’s decision to return to competition by taking a wild card into next week’s event at Eastbourne. That would be world No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska, the tournament’s top seed.
The two have met 16 times, and Azarenka has won 12 times. And until Radwanska managed a rare and unexpected win at the Australian Open earlier this year—6-1, 5-7, 6-0, in the quarterfinals—Azarenka had won seven in a row against her rival.
But looking at the big picture, Radwanska won’t be the only one fretting over Azarenka’s return from a right foot injury, particularly as Wimbledon gets underway in a week-and-a-half. For the 24-year-old has been one of the most dangerous and unpredictable forces in the WTA for some time.
When Azarenka last left the tour (she played just one event after losing to Radwanska in Melbourne, an aborted comeback at Indian Wells), she was still ranked No. 2. It’s a vivid commentary on the degree to which tennis is a game all about the here and now that, by the time the tour finished up on hard courts in Miami, few people were talking about Azarenka and how her lengthy absence might shape events in the WTA. And by the time the tour made it to Paris for the second Grand Slam event of the year, “Azarenka” could just as well have been the name of Balkan folk dance. Nobody even seemed to notice that the former No. 1 and two-time Grand Slam champion was gone.
Of course, this was partly Azarenka’s own doing. Apart from her Twitter account, she ducked out of the public eye. And in truth, there has always been something elusive and almost chameleon-like about the young lady who’s no more afraid of Maria Sharapova’s forehand than of her war cries (Azarenka is best known in some quarters as “Madame Whoo-ooooooo” for the ululation with which she punctuates almost every shot).