INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—“Oh, no, not this.”
These are the first words out of the mouth of a man in the lower seats of the main stadium here today. He’s been sitting down for all of two seconds, and he’s heard his first “Woooooo” come from the mouth of Victoria Azarenka.
He doesn’t get up, probably because by the time he gets there, it’s too late to leave. Azarenka’s blowout 6-0, 6-2 win over Agnieszka Radwanska is almost over. In staying put, he's unlike the vast majority of fans here today, virtually all of whom exited en masse just as Azarenka and Radwanska took the court. These two are the closest thing that the WTA has to a blood rivalry these days, but it hasn’t exactly captivated the tennis fans of Southern California.
Azarenka, despite her brilliant play and 21-0 record in 2012, hasn’t captivated the fans here in any of her matches. They largely cleared out for the last two, and in her opening round they rooted hard for her unknown opponent, Mona Barthel. The German, despite losing, received the more rousing ovation of the two players as they left the court. Today, many of Azarenka's perfectly struck winners are greeted with silence.
Love her or hate her, or—worst of all—don’t care either way, Azarenka was surpassingly brilliant today. She came within two points of double-bageling the No. 5 player in the world, who had just won a tournament in Dubai. In the process, Vika exacted some revenge on Radwanska, who said she “lost some respect” for her last month when they played in Doha. In that match, Azarenka had dramatically fallen to the court with an ankle injury, only to get up and win easily.
This time Vika won even more easily, and it was clear from the opening point that she was motivated. She slugged a winner past Radwanska with her first return of serve, and never stopped slugging from there. Azarenka, from her deep serves to her penetrating returns down the middle, wasted no time getting on top of the rallies, and she wasted less time finishing them. Every ball was hit with a purpose, and most of them were followed by a clipped, deadly serious, “Come on!” Nothing, except for the score, was for show.
“I was just focused on every point and every ball,” she said afterward, “I didn’t really think about the score.”
Really? Up 6-0, 4-0, Azarenka could be heard urging herself on with a “Come on!” after yet another line-clipping winner. A couple of games earlier, someone in the crowd had pleaded with Vika: "Come on, give her a chance.” Azarenka’s response was to hit a savage forehand winner on the next point. At times, as Azarenka took ball after ball from inside the baseline and hit winners that landed at least 10 feet away from Radwanska, it looked like she was playing against an empty court.
There’s nothing like the specter of being served a double-bagel to make a player want to disappear; sometimes I think the score exists just to show us that real, no-excuses-possible failure exists. As the games went on this afternoon, Radwanska seemed to vanish ever farther under her heat umbrella during changeovers. When she finally did break through, she waved her arms and received, naturally, the biggest ovation of the afternoon. “What can I do?” Radwanska said of that moment. “I said, ‘Either have fun or cry.’”
Azarenka’s win streak is now at 21, halfway to Novak Djokovic’s season-opening run in 2011. She’s also into the semifinals of the year’s first Premier Mandatory event, while two of her top rivals, Petra Kvitova and Caroline Wozniacki, are already out. Still, Vika, as we’ve seen this week, hasn’t made herself a popular No. 1 yet. That’s not her job, of course, but like the head of a corporation, the player at the top of the rankings represents the tour as a whole. What may be more troubling for the WTA isn’t that Azarenka isn’t loved; it’s that she’s not compellingly loved or hated. She doesn’t have Serena’s polarizing charisma, Sharapova’s billboard fame, Ivanovic’s charm, or Radwanska’s graceful style. Even today it was Aga, despite getting just two games, who inspired more “oohs” and “aahs” with the very few good shots that she did make.
Vika the player has found herself, and she's already a much more viable No. 1 than two or three of the women who have held that position in recent years. Vika the personality, though, remains a work in progress. In Australia, she wasn’t booed, but she was wooed—the Aussie fans imitated her trademark peacock-style shriek, and her attempts to win them over in jokey post-match interviews were hit and miss at best. Azarenka is still searching for a persona. Is she a charmer, or a natural villain? So far she’s been defined mostly by her intensity, her relentless fist-pumps and impatience with ball kids and chair umpires. That was true again today; after just a few minutes, she was already annoyed with a ball girl and motioning for two fans on the other side of the court to sit down.
At the same time, though, Azarenka has spoken movingly this week of the motivating talk she had with her grandmother last year. It made her realize that, compared to so many others, she has it pretty good as a professional tennis player, and she should make every moment of this life count.
There may be more to Vika than has met fans’ eyes so far, but for now her wins and her celebrations don’t inspire many to join in—the woo is the first and last thing most people notice. After the last point today, Azarenka thrashed her arm in front of her over and over in an angry-looking victory display, then walked out to the middle of the court and thrust her index finger in the air. By that point, most of the audience that was still there had turned for the exits.
Still, as the winners piled up, the handclaps did as well—no tennis fan could remain indifferent to the excellence on display out there. Even the man next to me eventually joined in praise of Vika.
His first words when he heard her had been, “Oh no.” In the last game, after one last Azarenka backhand blast had touched down, he had changed his tune.
“Wow, so good,” he said.