Sports:Azarenka ignores numbers in chase for better year

The number next to Victoria Azarenka's name in Friday's Australian Open draw will not be the high seeding she is used to, but a world ranking of 41, something the dual champion is determined to disregard.
Emerging from a bleak year soured by injury and a broken romance, Azarenka is unseeded at a grand slam for the first time since 2007, and could conceivably meet Serena Williams or Maria Sharapova as early as the first round.
Her new and unwanted status, she insists, is not something that matters, for however it feels, or doesn't, nothing will change. "The important thing is to go out there and play, seeded or unseeded. What's important is to get ready, prepare, control what you can control, and that's what I'm gonna do."
The 25-year-old says she has never looked at the numbers, not since her long climb up the rankings to No. 1 began for the girl from Minsk via Arizona, then Monaco, and now also California. It is, she says, about what happens on the court. Pushing, testing yourself. Repeatedly. "There's no miracles, you've just got to go through it over and over again."
Thankfully dusted is a 2014 non-season, foot and knee injuries restricting Azarenka to just 24 matches. The new year started with a first-round loss at the Brisbane International before an enforced training week at Melbourne Park; what the Belarusian is initially more reluctant to revisit is her troubled 12 months, the depths of her struggle having been documented last week in a revealing interview with The New York Times.