Azarenka fights to another title
MELBOURNE, Australia — Victoria Azarenka had the bulk of the crowd against her. The Australia Day fireworks were fizzling out, and when she looked over the net she saw Li Na crashing to the court and almost knocking herself out.
So after defending her title with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over the sixth-seeded Li in one of the most unusual Australian Open finals ever at Melbourne Park, Azarenka cried tears of relief.
“It isn’t easy, that’s for sure, but I knew what I had to do,” the 23-year-old Belarusian said. “I had to stay calm. I had to stay positive. I just had to deal with the things that came onto me.”
There were a lot of those things squeezed into the 2-hour, 40-minute match. Li, who was playing her second Australian Open final in three years, twisted her ankle and tumbled to the court in the second and third sets.
When she first injured her ankle, Li was trailing 3-1 in the second set. When she came back, she won three of the next four games to tie it 4-4, but Azarenka broke back and then held her serve.
The second time was on the point immediately after a 10-minute delay for the fireworks. The 30-year-old Chinese player, with smoke still in the air, fell and hit the back of her head on the hard court. She was treated immediately by a tournament doctor and assessed for a concussion in another medical timeout before resuming the match.
“I think I was a little bit worried when I was falling,” Li said, in her humorous, self-deprecating fashion. “Because two seconds I couldn’t really see anything. It was totally black.
“So when the physio come, she was like, ‘Focus on my finger.’ I was laughing. I was thinking, ‘This is tennis court, not like hospital.’ ”
Azarenka had generated some bad PR by taking a medical timeout after wasting five match points on her own serve in her semifinal win over American teenager Sloane Stephens. When she walked onto Rod Laver Arena for the final, there were some people who booed, and others who heckled her or mimicked the distinctive hooting sound she makes.
“Unfortunately, you have to go through some rough patches to achieve great things,” she said. “That’s what makes it so special for me. I went through that, and I’m still able to kiss that beautiful trophy. . . . I was expecting way worse, to be honest. What can you do?”
Later, Bob and Mike Bryan won their record 13th Grand Slam men’s doubles title, defeating the Dutch team of Robin Haase and Igor Sijsling 6-3, 6-4.