#match-scheduling

#match-scheduling

Even before the first set and first hour of his match elapsed, Tomas Machac had asked the umpire for the tournament doctor, trainer and pickle juice, the drink du jour for tackling cramps. Those preventive measures taken in the intense early stages of his third-round tussle with Lorenzo Musetti proved to be sensible, for the pair would spend a brutal four hours, 25 minutes on court.

You would love to have more time in the environment, more time practising, but I guess I was pretty much handed the schedule to try and turn it around.

Manchester United are on course to go more than four months without playing a fixture in the traditional Saturday 3pm slot. Ruben Amorim's side have played just three times during the 3pm blackout this campaign - the last time being a 2-2 draw at Nottingham Forest on 1 November. The Red Devils have also not played a Saturday 3pm kick-off at Old Trafford since beating Sunderland on 4 October.

Welcome along to another packed Women's Super League Sunday. These smorgasbords of midday starts are becoming quite the fixture in the WSL calendar nowadays and they're usually lots of fun. Today, Manchester United host West Ham at Leigh Sports Village, with Marc Skinner's side looking to jump back into the top three with three points, while there are mid-table clashes between Spurs and Aston Villa, and London City and Brighton.

"the most ludicrous decision I've ever seen or heard of"

During a week when Wheel of Fortune made history by paying out its highest ever cash prize to a marketing manager from Connecticut, the first of the 4.5 million fans who have applied for Geopolitics World Cup tickets were selected to buy them through the system Fifa has named after the long-running American gameshow. While Christina Derevjanik walked away with $1,035,155,

The greatest challenge for Carlos Alcaraz in his third-round match at the Cincinnati Open was simply remaining sane. Hours of preparation turned out to be more stressful than the match itself.