The booed Wimbledon ace off the pitch gives a thorny press conference after making the first move

"She doesn't want to shake hands with Russians and Belarusians. I respected his decision. What should I have done? You stayed and waited? Like, I mean, there's nothing I could do that would have been right, so I just did what I thought was respectful of his decision."

And Azarenka didn't want to continue having the conversation about Ukrainian players snubbing handshakes with their Russian and Belarusian rivals - something that's been going on since the start of the war. She continued, "But this handshake conversation is not a life-changing conversation.

"So if you want to keep talking about it, talking about it, making it a big deal, headlines, whatever, keep going. I thought it was a great tennis match. If the people are going to just focus on the handshakes or the crowd, quite a drunken crowd, booing at the end, that's a shame. That's probably what it is in the end. It was a game of tennis. We're here, tennis match. No one is changing lives here. We're playing tennis. We're doing our job. That's it."