World number 19 Ekaterina Alexandrova collapsed on court and had to retire from her first-round match at the Memphis Classic due to high temperatures.<\/p>\n
Russian Alexandrova, who was the number one seed, was trailing 7-6 (7-2) 4-6 5-4 against 16-year-old compatriot Kristina Liutova in a match where temperatures reached 34C. <\/p>\n
The match was initially paused as Alexandrova tried to continue, before she received a time violation as she took too long to serve amid her struggles.<\/p>\n
But in the middle of the next point, Alexandrova fell to the ground and needed immediate medical attention.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old was well enough to stand but had to forfeit the match, which had lasted more than three hours.<\/p>\n
It gave Liutova victory in her debut match on the WTA tour, but the teenager was left in tears on court amid the chaotic situation.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in women’s tennis, Venus Williams lost in the first round of the Mubadala DC Open in Washington DC on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 46-year-old, whose last singles win came at this event last year, was beaten 6-3 6-3 by Austria’s Anastasia Potapova.<\/p>\n
Williams won 78.4% of her first serve points but just 24.1% from her second serve, and 20% of her returns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number 19 Ekaterina Alexandrova collapsed on court and had to retire from her first-round match at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-721867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}