Belarus’ Victoria Azarenka did “nothing wrong” by not shaking hands with her Ukrainian opponent Elina Svitolina after their fourth-round match at Wimbledon, says Laura Robson.
Azarenka was booed off Court 1 by those who attended the thriller, which Svitolina won 2-6 6-4 7-6(9), after she waved towards Svitolina near the net rather than offer a handshake.
Svitolina has previously publicly stated that she will not shake hands with a Russian or Belarusian player because of the war in Ukraine which began in February 2022.
Robson believes Azarenka did not do anything wrong by respecting Svitolina’s decision.
“It was totally fair,” said Robson when appearing on Eurosport’s Wimbledon coverage. “I don’t think the crowd understood that Svitolina was never going to shake her hand.
“She said ‘thank you’, went to her bag, did everything you thought she was going to do if you follow tennis week in, week out.
“For the crowd to react like this, I don’t think anyone appreciated it – most of all Svitolina.
“That was an absolute battle of a performance that both gave and for the match to be about anything other than tennis is so disappointing.
“Azarenka did nothing wrong. For her to be talking about that after the match rather than the tennis is so disappointing.”
When Azarenka was asked by reporters after the match what she made of the crowd reaction, she said: “I can’t control the crowd. I’m not sure that a lot of people were understanding what’s happening.
“It’s probably been a lot of Pimm’s throughout the day. It wasn’t fair. What can I do?
“I feel like it’s been pretty consistent for the last 18, 19 months. I haven’t done anything wrong but I keep getting different treatment sometimes.
“She doesn’t want to shake hands with Russian, Belarusian people. I respected her decision.
“What should I have done? Stayed and waited [at the net]? There’s no thing that I could do that would have been right, so I just did what I thought was respectful towards her decision.
“But this conversation about shaking hands is not a life-changing conversation. So if you guys want to keep talking about it, bring it up, make it a big deal, headlines, whatever it is, keep going.
“I thought it was a great tennis match. If people are going to be focusing only on handshakes or a quite drunk crowd, booing in the end, that’s a shame.”
At the French Open last month, Svitolina was booed when she walked off court after not shaking hands with Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka following a quarter-final defeat.
Svitolina, who only returned to the tour three months ago after giving birth to daughter Skai last October, has called on the WTA and ATP to make it clear why Ukrainian players are not shaking hands with Russians and Belarusians to avoid confusion.
“I feel like each player that loses, and there is no handshake, is getting booed,” she said.
“I think the tennis organisations have to come out with a statement that there will be no handshake between Russian/Belarusian and Ukrainian players.
“I don’t know if it’s maybe unclear for people. I already said multiple times that until Russian troops are out of Ukraine and we take back our territories, I’m not going to shake hands.
“I have clear statement. I don’t know how more clear I can be.”
