Wimbledon chief shoots down Victoria Azarenka and warns Russians of more booing

Wimbledon have claimed they cannot “control the crowds” after Belarusian Victoria Azarenka was booed after her defeat to Ukrainian Elina Svitolina.

But All England Club chief executive Sally Bolton insisted excessive drinking was not the cause of the crowd hostility on Court 1.

Former world No.1 Azarenka was shocked by the vehemence of the crowd after she acknowledged Svitolina but did not attempt to shake hands. The Ukrainian refuses to shake hands with any Russian or Belarusian players since the invasion of her country.

But Bolton, who said handshakes were a “personal decision” for players, said: “We aren’t in a position where we can control the crowds here at Wimbledon. We traditionally have a hugely respectful crowd here and I expect that we will continue to see that as we head into the rest of the tournament.

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“I think I would echo what Elina and Vika said last night: having witnessed one of the most incredible matches on No 1 Court to an absolutely rapt audience, we should be focusing on the tennis and the match that we saw, not all of the other stuff that went on.”

Azarenka claims the crowd was “quite drunk” and added: “It’s probably been a lot of Pimm’s throughout the day.”

But Bolton responded: “That’s not an issue that we recognise. What I would say is what we all saw in that match was an extremely high intensity well-matched contest that had the crowd absolutely on the edge of their seats. So the atmosphere in there was incredible. And that was driven by the quality of what they were seeing on the court.”

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An umpire on Court 2 had to advise spectators not to open champagne bottles while players were serving at the start of Mirra Andreeva’s match on Court 2 yesterday. It was described as “the most Wimbledon warning ever” by TV commentators.

Bolton said: “The umpire handled that very well and we would expect umpires as fantastic professionals on court to manage those incidents. It’s a pretty isolated incident.”

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