New York, United States—For her or against her, former world number one Victoria Azarenka says fans in the stands are a key part of the tennis experience.
“I feel like they create an energy,” Azarenka said Saturday (Sunday Philippine time), after beating Donna Vekic 6-2, 6-3 in her opening match of the Western & Southern Open campaign on an eerily empty Grandstand court at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows.
“Those kind of magical moments always happen when there is a crowd, and it can swing each way,” Azarenka said. “I love that energy I feel like you can feed off.
“Sometimes you have the whole stadium against you and you kind of feed off of that, as well.”
Players are having to adjust, however, as tennis returns amid the COVID-19 pandemic that brought the sport to a halt in March.
ATP players are back in action this week for the first time since play was halted back in March.
The WTA resumed earlier this month with tournaments in Prague and Lexington, Kentucky, neither of which boast the massive courts of the tennis center where the US Open will start on August 31.
The center’s biggest courts, the Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong stadiums, aren’t in use this week, and Azarenka hopes the US Tennis Association won’t try to fill them with virtual fans when the Open begins.
“I hope they don’t put fake people, because that’s going to be super weird,” she said.
“To me it looks creepy” she said of the “virtual fans” displayed electronically at NBA games in that league’s quarantine bubble in Orlando, Florida. “So I hope that’s not going to happen.”