By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday January 18, 2022

On the subject of vaccination and potential tour mandates, Victoria Azarenka hopes for a black and white solution, but isn’t sure how the tour’s can implement such a thing.



As one of the members of the WTA Player Council she was asked if she felt it was time to set a strict “no vaccine no play” policy.

“From my standpoint it's been very clear. I believe in science. I believe in getting vaccinated,” Azarenka said. “That's what I did for myself.”

Azarenka says that while she doesn’t want to push her beliefs on anyone else, she is also aware that global travel and the policies of each country that the tour travels to need to be respected.

“I don't want to push my beliefs on everybody else,” she said. “However, we are playing a global sport that are traveling around the world. As an entity, as an association of WTA, that is traveling globally, we still have to respect countries, different countries, different mandates, different legalities of the country.”

Azarenka knows that vaccination won’t prevent everybody from getting sick, but it has been proven to lower the risk of hospitalization and death.

But she knows it will be a tough hurdle for the tour to enforce a full vaccination mandate.

“I don't necessarily [want to] say that getting vaccinated, then nobody will be sick, but I think it is a step to hopefully battle against this coronavirus, hopefully bring it down globally. But to make it as a mandate, there is much more to it. If you ask me just for my opinion if that should be the case, I think it would just be helpful for everybody in the world, especially when we are traveling internationally.”

Black-and-White Policy Could Have Helped Avoid Djokovic Controversy

Azarenka spoke briefly about the events of the past two weeks, which led to Novak Djokovic’s visa revocation and eventual deportation.

“I believe this whole situation could have been prevented from the beginning,” she said. “I don't believe that this was something that just came out of nowhere. This could have been prevented. This could have been addressed way earlier than it was at this point.

“What happened after, I don't believe there was anybody who looked good in any case. That became, you know, a bit of a circus. I think there should be a really hard look on this situation moving forward. I think as soon as there is a grey area in the rules, that gives a bit too much questions, and situations like this happen. On certain things I think black-and-white approach is necessary. In my opinion, this should be the case.”