It took less than three hours of play at the Australian Open tennis tournament for Andy Murray to be Britain’s sole singles representative after Laura Robson and Heather Watson both suffered first-round defeats.
British number one Robson suffered the ignominy of being the first player knocked out of the tournament with a crushing 6-3, 6-0 loss to 18th seed Kirsten Flipkens.
Watson fared better, putting in an impressive performance against 31st seed Daniela Hantuchova before losing 7-5, 3-6, 6-3. The 21-year-old had to fight her way through qualifying in Melbourne after a 2013 season ruined by glandular fever that sent her plummeting outside the top 100.
She will drop further from her current ranking of 121 to below 150 because of her run to the third round here last year, but she won only eight more tour-level matches in the whole of 2013 so has very few points to defend.
Watson said: “I feel like it’s an opportunity lost. I really looked forward to this draw, I thought it was a good draw for me.
“But I’ve played 10 matches this year already and if you had told me that last year I would have taken it in a second. Even though I might be dropping in the rankings, I’m not worried about that. I’ve had a good start to the year, I’ve improved as a player and it’s been a positive few weeks.”
After fighting back from a break down, Watson was twice two points away from winning the first set but a costly double fault to be broken at 5-5 handed the initiative to Hantuchova.
The British number three took the second after getting the better of three successive breaks but could not quite recover from trailing 4-1 in the decider.
She said: “I felt I was close throughout the whole match.
“I had chances in the first set and wasn’t able to take them, chances in the second and took them.
“I started slow in the third. I should have got up while she went to the bathroom and kept moving.
“I tried my best with what I had today.”
There were far fewer positives for Robson to take following her 50-minute beating.
The 19-year-old had not completed a match this season prior to arriving in Melbourne because of a left wrist injury and looked horribly rusty.
She had plenty of support and there were loud cheers when Australian-born Robson finally won a point at the 10th time of asking.
She seemed to find her feet in the middle of the set against Belgian Flipkens, who was a surprise Wimbledon semi-finalist last year, with three service holds in a row. But the errors flowed increasingly from her racquet as she lost the last eight games.