Victoria Azarenka opened up about her outburst over the power outage that interrupted her quarterfinal match against Yulia Putintseva at the 2024 Miami Open.
The three-time Miami Open champion defeated Putintseva 7-6(4), 1-6, 6-3 in just under three hours. This victory propelled Azarenka to the semifinals of the Miami 1000 tournament for the fifth time in her career, while also extending her head-to-head record against the Kazakhstani player to 3-0.
The match was not without its fair share of drama. In the fourth game of the first set, with Putintseva leading Azarenka 2-1 and the score at 30-0, chair umpire Marija Cicak paused the game citing a power outage that affected the Hawk-eye technology, scoreboard, and the chair umpire's microphone.
Azarenka, visibly frustrated by the interruption, expressed her displeasure, stating:
"This is pathetic, absolutely pathetic."
The match resumed after a 45-minute delay. During the post-match press conference, Azarenka was asked about the impact of the stoppage on her game. She admitted that her initial reaction to the power outage was "not the best," as abrupt interruptions are challenging to handle.
"Well, my reaction was not the best. I thought it was -- obviously in that moment where you're playing a match, you're like, okay, you need to stop, how long you need to stop for? I have no idea. It's not an easy definitely [sic.] thing to handle. The power went out. Apparently there was Hawk-Eye working but nothing else was working," Azarenka said.
The former World No. 1, revealed that this was the first time she had experienced a stoppage in play due to a power outage and expressed hope that such disruptions would not occur in the remainder of the tournament.
"Yeah, it was a first one that happened to me, so it seems to -- hopefully it doesn't happen again through the tournament. As I said, it's quite challenging to kind of, do you wait, do you warm up, do you sit on the court? No one knows what's happening. I think that was probably the most confusing part," she added.
Victoria Azarenka on power outage in Miami Open QF win: "It was just a very uncertain situation"
At the aforementioned press conference, Victoria Azarenka shared that being a parent has taught her the value of patience, which came in handy during the power outage in her match against Yulia Putintseva.
"Well, it's definitely a frustration, and dealing with that, I'm not sure it's the years of experience rather than being a parent helped me with that (smiling). It's learning patience, is my biggest challenge, for sure, being a parent rather than being on the tennis court," Victoria Azarenka said.
Azarenka stated that the power outage was very "frustrating" and the high nerves of the match added to the frustrations.
So those situations are definitely frustrating. It was just [a] very uncertain situation, and I think in the situation where you are kind of already at high nerves during the match, it probably adds to it. The frustration feeds that," she added.
Azarenka will face fourth-seeded Elena Rybakina in the semifinals of the Miami Open, against whom she is winless in three tour-level matches.
