Watson laments mistakes as tournament jinx strikes again

It was hard to say who got off to the worse start at the US Open: the new Amazon Prime streaming service, which saw presenters appear unwittingly on air as they prepared for their spots, or the British contingent of players.

There is one big difference, however. Amazon will no doubt have its technicians working overtime on the various faults, which also included bizarrely inaccurate scorelines on the ticker-tape across the bottom of the screen, and a disconnection between visuals and sound. Whereas Heather Watson – who emulated Kyle Edmund’s exit earlier in the day – has nowhere to go but the doubles.

Watson was looking for the first senior win of her career at the US Open – an extraordinary statistic for a woman who has 16 other major victories to her name, and also won the junior title here in 2009. But she drew an awkward first-round opponent in Ekaterina Makarova, whose ranking of No 45 rather under-rates the threat she presents.

Only last month at Wimbledon, Makarova took out the second seed, Caroline Wozniacki, on her way to the fourth round.

Watson was outclassed early on by Makarova’s relentless lefthanded groundstrokes, which fly both flat and deep into the corners. She did regroup to some extent, but still wound up suffering a 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 defeat in 2hr 10min.

“I felt like I was my most inconsistent,” said Watson. “Sometimes it happens like that, you wake up and you’re not feeling your best, but I started to play better as the match went on and I fought hard. I had break points in the third set and the errors I made there were costly.”

And so it will be on to the doubles, where Watson is to reunite with Tatjana Maria, of Germany – the woman with whom she won a WTA title in Acapulco this year, and also reached the quarter-finals of Wimbledon.

“I could have entered the mixed as well,” said Watson, “but I didn’t want to because I am focusing on singles. It’s great it’s been going well but doubles for me is a bonus.”