Most emotional WTA players – part II

As Marine of Tennis Notebook promised, she’s extended her list of emotional WTA players, based on your suggestions. You’re welcome to leave a comment on her guest post.

After the great feedback on the article “Top 5 emotional players in womens tennis”, with many of you providing some perfect tips on other potential candidates, I have compiled a follow-up on the previous chart.

Dinara Safina

In any sport pressure of expectations and criticism can either make you or break you. Dinara’s story is unfortunately based on the second scenario. Hot temper runs in Safin family, just look at her older brother Marat who also could put on quite a “show” back in his playing days. Mental resilience is not Safina’s strength. Especially her Grand Slam performances had shown how much the pressure can get to her head. Instead of a great triumph at several Grand Slam finals, fans saw her playing an unusually mediocre game after a series of great performances.

Victoria Azarenka

It is nothing more frustrating for the player than to lose a match which they started off in an impressive fashion or were very close to winning. There was a time when no lead was safe in Victoria’s hands and she often ended up in an emotional turmoil because of that. Sometimes venting helped because she raised the level of her performance, but sometimes she just broke a few rackets.

Anna Chakvetadze

Hot temper can be put to the best use if you use it to pump yourself up. Anna is pretty good at it and sometimes it helped her to overcome tight and stressful situations. An example is a match in Fed Cup against Israel where she was fighting the adversity of the crowd with loud come-ons after every point she scored.

Caroline Wozniacki

This choice of the readers surprised me because Caroline usually shows off a very laid-back personality. Well who would not be relaxed in her situation? Her performance is rock-solid and it is becoming unusual to see her lose. Anyway, Sunshine has also been “covered by clouds” sometimes. When the things do not go as smoothly as she is used to, usually she resorts to throwing a racket or quarrelling with herself. The only emotionally difficult times for Wozniacki occur during Grand Slams. The rumour goes that after her loss at the Australian Open 2011 she spent a long time in tears back in the locker room.

Aravane Rezai

Aravane is a player you cannot overlook. Apart from eye-catching dresses, she possesses a great fighting spirit and has “in it to win it” attitude no matter who she stands up against. The will to win is obvious from her body language when almost every won point is celebrated with fist pumps and jumping around. On the other hand, when the tactic does not work she is shouting at herself after every lost ball. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)