GUADALAJARA OPEN

September 19, 2023

Victoria Azarenka

Press Conference

V. AZARENKA/D. Yastremska

6-4, 7-6

Q. Congrats on the match. I have a question: How do you feel the weather in Guadalajara for your performance?

VICTORIA AZARENKA: Sorry, can you repeat that?

Q. How do you feel the weather in Guadalajara for your performance? It's sunny, sometimes it's rainy.

VICTORIA AZARENKA: Well, I haven't experienced the rain yet. The sun was pretty hot today. It was pretty hot today. I feel like the weather, it's tricky, but more I think for me the most difficult I would say is the altitude, kind of getting adapted to it. It's tricky. The ball flies a lot so you kind of lose a little bit of control that I feel like you usually have. But conditions are the same for everybody and you try to do the best you can out of them.

Q. How do you feel today? It was a different match, totally different match than yesterday. Yesterday you dropped just two games. Now it was different. How do you feel today?

VICTORIA AZARENKA: Well, I felt that I played pretty good first set. Second set it was not my best tennis, for sure. But I'm very glad that I was able to find a way with not playing my best. I felt like I served pretty well today. I got a lot of free points on my serve, which was good.

I also played against a player who is really like a hit or miss, you know, winner or a big mistake. So it's kind of difficult to feel the rhythm and to get into the rhythm.

So I was expecting that, but I definitely would like to improve my game based on today. I found a way to win and sometimes those wins when you are not playing your best are more important than when everything kind of goes smoothly and you feel great.

Q. Congratulations. I want to ask you, now that a lot of top seeds withdraw from the tournament, do you feel with the people on your side? Do you think you're the favorite to win it?

VICTORIA AZARENKA: I don't really think of it that way. I think there is still a lot of good, really good players in the draw.

As I said, the conditions aren't easy. You have to find a way to win. The tournament is long. So, do I feel like I have a chance? I always feel like I have a chance wherever I go, otherwise I wouldn't be here playing. But I definitely know that it takes to play one match at a time, one game at a time, one point at a time to succeed, so I kind of try to stay focused on that.

Q. Your next match is against Kudermetova. What can you expect from it?

VICTORIA AZARENKA: She's a very good player. I think I played her twice and I haven't, I don't think I have beaten her yet. But I feel like there is, every match is a new story, and I'm looking forward to the challenge. We'll see what happens.

It's definitely something that I want to do better than the previous matches. We had quite a good battle in Australia, so looking forward to that.