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Call it a comeback: After taking much of last year off—she gave birth to a son in December—former world number one Victoria Azarenka, 27, marks her Grand Slam return with an opening match at Wimbledon against American CiCi Bellis on Monday. We chatted with Vika to find out more about her return, her time away from the game (including a new trick now up her sleeve)—and her fear of sharks.
First off: Congratulations! How’s your son? What’s his name?His name is Leo Alexander—I’m Belarusian, and my boyfriend is American, so we gave him a double name that reflects both sides of his heritage. He’s 6 months old, and he’s doing great—it’s an amazing experience that’s really hard to describe with words. But right about now, he just wants to get up—he doesn’t want to lay down, he wants to get moving. He’s very active, and I think pretty soon, we’ll be running after him—good training for me, I think.
Much was made about Serena Williams winning the Australian Open when she was pregnant. How long into your pregnancy did you play, and did that affect your game?Well, I was pregnant when I won Miami [in April], but from what I’ve heard you can’t really compare one person’s pregnancy with another. Everyone has their own experience.
Serena’s a friend of yours; she came to visit you at your home in California after you gave birth, yes? Did she drop any hints about her own pregnancy?She wanted to meet Leo and we just hadn’t seen each other in a while, so she came to visit. She was asking lots of questions about it, and I knew she wanted to have a kid at some point in her life. But it’s a very personal thing—I guess she just didn’t want to share the news at that stage.
Was it always your plan to come back to playing?It was always my wish—I always wanted to continue to do what I love doing, continue my career—I’m still young! But I wanted to wait until Leo was born and see how I was doing mentally and physically and take it from there.
This is almost an academic question, but what’s the motivation to come back? You’ve achieved the sort of career pinnacles that most players can only dream of: world number one, Grand Slam champion multiple times over . . .I feel that the time for me to stop playing is when I know I can’t get better; I can’t reach a higher potential; I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do. And that’s just not the case. I’ve got so much room to improve, and I’ve been working on it, and I want to continue working on it. And I love the game of tennis—I’ve loved it since I was a kid—and now there’s a bigger purpose to it. I want to set a good example for my son: that if you have dreams and goals and you love what you do, you can shoot for the stars—but you have to work hard for it. And I want to be an example not only for my kid, but hopefully an inspiration for women around the world—to show them that they can take their time to have a family and then continue to have a career, to work.
Without giving up your game plan, are there specific things you’re working on in terms of changing your game?I always want to improve everything—but one thing in particular that I worked on is the motion on my serve. That took a lot of time and patience and execution. I pretty much rebuilt my whole serve.
Why come back at Wimbledon?Well, one of my best friends—she was with me when I found out I was pregnant—just gave birth a couple months ago, and she lives in London. So we need to have our babies meet each other, and I thought it would be cool to do that—walk our babies in the park and that kind of thing. It’ll be a very different experience from the way I used to experience London and Wimbledon.
You’re good friends with Laird Hamilton and his wife Gabrielle Reece. Does he get you out into the big waves?I did a little bit of pool training with Laird in Hawaii, but the ocean stuff, I don’t mess with—I’m a city girl, and I’m not that adventurous. Actually, I’m a little scared of the ocean. It’s too powerful for me. I love the idea of the ocean, and I love the smell of the ocean and the feel of it all—I just don’t go too far into it. There are too many creatures there, and I don’t know how to speak to them.
Are you talking about a fear of sharks? Because that’s pretty common.I just don’t know how I’d react—I mean, I tried to hit a turtle once because I thought it was a shark! I’m not very proud of that moment—I didn’t try to kill it; I was just scared! And when I asked Laird what I should do if I did see a shark, Laird just told me to stare at it. And I was like, Okay, thanks Laird.
What’s the big prize in your comeback, the dream—to win another Grand Slam? To be number one again?The goal is always to win Grand Slams. Once you do that, the rankings take care of themselves.
Is that goal easier without Serena in the mix?I don’t think of it that way. I prefer when she’s playing. To be the best, you have to beat the best players in the world. When I first heard she was pregnant, I was sad, because I thought maybe I’d never play her again. But then I heard she’s going to—hopefully—come back. I hope we’re going to compete against each other for a long time.