Wimbledon star Victoria Azarenka hits supporter on the head

Wimbledon star Victoria Azarenka apologised after inadvertently hitting a supporter on the head with a ball while he was watching a match on a different court. The 33-year-old reached back-to-back semi-finals at the All England Club in 2011 and 2012 and has also won the Australian Open on two occasions.

Azarenka was a rank outsider to win this year’s edition of Wimbledon before the tournament got underway on Monday. But the Belarusian has progressed to the fourth round after getting the better of Russian opponent Daria Kasatkina in the third round on Friday.

Azarenka won the match 6-2, 6-4 after dominating from start to finish. But the biggest talking point of the showdown came when the two-time Grand Slam champion was serving at deuce with the scores locked at 1-1 in the second set.

The ball sat up on Azarenka’s side of the court after Kasatkina had managed to keep the rally going. And the veteran smashed a half volley into the ground to win the point. But her shot was so ferocious that the ball bounced high into the sky and flew over the barrier separating two courts. It then dropped down and smashed a fan on the back of the head.

The supporter was startled and turned around in an attempt to work out where the ball had come from. After the incident, the BBC commentator said: “There’s a header there, you might get to see it. There it is – almost took his shades off. And he’s looking around there – ‘who did that?’”

The Wimbledon media team clearly saw the funny side and posted a video of the incident to their Instagram page with the caption: “The chances of getting hit in the head at #Wimbledon are low… but never zero.” And Azarenka shared the post on her own Instagram page as she wrote: “Sorry about that mate.”

Azarenka is now set to take on Elina Svitolina on Sunday for a place in the Wimbledon quarter-finals. And Azarenka has also recently revealed that she has banned her six-year-old son from attending matches in south west London.

“So now my son wants to come to my matches,” she said. “It’s still a bit of a hard feeling for me, because I get a bit distracted. I have tried that in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and it was very awesome moment to share. But at the same time it kind of takes me a bit, you know, into my mum mode too much rather than being a tennis player.”