Australian Open: Defending champ Azarenka booed

Another question was about the message written in big letters on her T-shirt: "Just Deal With It."

Was that her attitude for moving past the loss?

"No. It's just a shirt."

Asked how long it takes to get over a loss like this, which ends her 18-match winning streak at Melbourne Park, she said: "I'll be fine tomorrow."

The performance offered a flashback to a younger Azarenka, who was more prone to public outbursts. One of the standouts was her fourth-round meltdown while playing Nadia Petrova at Wimbledon in 2009 in which she mimicked her own movements before sarcastically shaking a linesperson's hand and telling the chair umpire, "You guys have so much power to ruin the whole match."

Since then Azarenka has matured and has worked on staying focused. She has said her coach, Sam Sumyk, has been a cornerstone to her development.

When she's in form, Azaraneka controls the match, setting the rhythm of shots and dictating from the baseline. But she never got into her game Wednesday, going down in a flurry of unforced errors -- 47 in total. In contrast, Radwanska was a vision of calm, playing smart tennis with finesse and instinctively anticipating Azareneka's shots.

"I'm not happy with what I did today," Azarenka said. "I think there was just too many mistakes, and too many easy mistakes on important moments."

Azarenka is the first to acknowledge that she can still cause herself problems -- particularly when she loses focus.

"She was just doing everything a little bit better than me," Azarenka said, during a moment of introspection. "I was just watching. I was like a spectator a little bit."

She described her state of mind as "in the clouds" as she watched "the opponent play amazing."

"What I have to think about is what I have to do better next time," Azarenka said. "I know that I can play better, so I guess there's some positive in there."