MELBOURNE, Australia — Thursday was another rough day for the leading women at a major tennis tournament. Garbiñe Muguruza, the No. 3 seed, and Anett Kontaveit, the No. 6 seed, lost within five minutes of each other in their second-round matches at the Australian Open after playing in the championship match of the WTA Finals in Mexico in November.
Thursday’s setbacks were hardly surprising in the spinning roulette wheel that is the women’s game, which is so unpredictable and deep in talent that Emma Raducanu, as a little-known 19-year-old British qualifier, managed to win last year’s U.