Emma Raducanu loses three-hour epic in first round of Singapore Open

  • Spain’s Cristina Bucsa beats Raducanu 5-7, 7-5, 7-5
  • Briton’s first match since split with coach Nick Cavaday

Emma Raducanu came up short in a three-hour marathon to crash out in the first round of the Singapore Open. The British No 2 lost 5-7, 7-5, 7-5 to Spain’s Cristina Bucsa in a match featuring 17 breaks of serve.

Raducanu, the world No 56, was playing in her first match since splitting with coach Nick Cavaday, who stepped down last week because of health issues. Instead, the 22-year-old had her mother Renee for company in the stands, as well as new fitness trainer Yutaka Nakamura. But Raducanu still flagged as the finish line approached at the end of a brutal encounter.

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A chronic lack of ambition has laid waste to Tottenham | Jonathan Wilson

Ange Postecoglou has serious shortcomings as Spurs manager. But he has hardly been helped by a team trying to do things on the cheap

The good news for Ange Postecoglou is that it seems relatively straightforward to recover from being Tottenham manager: his two immediate predecessors, Antonio Conte and Nuno Espírito Santo, are top of Serie A with Napoli and third in the Premier League with Nottingham Forest respectively. As the banner unveiled on Sunday by Spurs fans during the defeat by Leicester read: “24 years, 16 managers, one trophy”. Nobody really looks at Tottenham any more and thinks the problem is the manager.

But it is usually the manager who pays the price. Their past 10 league games have yielded four points. They have just lost against Everton, who had not won in six, and Leicester, who had lost their previous seven. They’ve reached a stage at which it feels possible that they could lose any given fixture. The only saving grace is that they are 1-0 up against Liverpool after the home leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final and that they are sixth in the Europa League table, assured of automatic passage to the last 16 if they beat the Swedish side Elfsborg on Thursday.

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