The loss came after Barty had to wait until Thursday to begin her Australian summer, with the men's ATP Cup having a mortgage on centre court earlier in the week.

She's in Melbourne ahead of the Australian Open later this month, and Maria Sharapova made the most of a rare day off on Friday, visiting the National Gallery of Victoria.

MIKE DICKSON IN SYDNEY: Amid the dramatic recent history that Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova have at the Australian Open, it is easy to overlook a fifth anniversary taking place.

MARTIN SAMUEL: My grandfather had an unusual take on authority. He thought a desire to be in charge should see that person disqualified. On the subject of VAR, he may well have a point with this.

Maria Sharapova and Eugenie Bouchard saw their matches on Tuesday overshadowed by health concerns caused by 'hazardous' levels of smoke in the air from nearby bushfires.

Novak Djokovic, says the Australian Open in Melbourne may need to be postponed as players continue to struggle to compete due to the smoke-filled air.

The Russian star jumped behind the microphone to provide commentary at the Kooyong Classic, a tournament ahead of the Australian Open, while Dimitrov was on court at the time.

The 32-year-old tennis pro's WTA ranking recently fell to No. 369 following her first-round defeat at the Australian Open 2020

Maria Sharapova has announced her retirement from tennis after winning five Grand Slam titles during her career. She has announced she will be quitting tennis in an interview with Vanity Fair.

The 32-year-old Russian athlete was seen on a hike with two pals in Palos Verdes, California on Thursday. Maria seemed to be in great spirits as she beamed while cradling tiny dog while enjoying breeze.

I have several powder blushers but they are a bit dry looking on my skin and sometimes show up fine lines. Do you know of one that looks dewy? Or should I try cream blush?

My Top Ten this year covers the full range of new festive albums, starting with Old Bing.

The trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary, France's answer in both glamour and virtuosity to our own Alison Balsom, has a new album that's guaranteed to add an extra layer of good cheer this Christmas.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason's new album, his second for Decca, is a real curate's egg.

Historically, the list of great British pianists is a sadly short one.

John Wilson's hobby is creating orchestras. He began at college with a small jazz ensemble, which became the John Wilson Orchestra, specialising in music from Hollywood musicals.

Hats off to the little-known Irish composer Gerald Barry, whose late-flowering career (he's almost as old as me!) has produced a generally joyous take on Lewis Carroll's oeuvre to his own libretto.

English National Opera is the Flying Dutchman of the operatic world, floating aimlessly around the repertoire, creating chaos most places it alights.

Herbert von Karajan, who died in 1989, shifted 200 million albums - an astonishing figure for a classical musician.

There are several good reasons for seeing this spirited revival of Anthony Minghella's 2005 Madam Butterfly , and one totally compelling one: the Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw.

Georges Bizet was 17, and a student working on a piano reduction of Charles Gounod's symphonies, when he wrote his own solitary Symphony.

Sometimes hype is just that; hype. But occasionally it's true.

We don't see much of Berlin-based Daniel Hope these days, but an album like this shows us what we are missing.

Shostakovich's 11th Symphony here receives a performance of exceptional eloquence from the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic under their chief guest conductor, the Finn John Storgårds.

The leaked email reveals how Brian Fallon, Clinton's spokesman, told Huma Abedin, her right-hand aide, that the Department of Justice had told him about a court date related to the scandal.

Donald Trump has escalated his bitter battle with the Republican party by launching fresh attacks on the leadership and saying he 'doesn't want their support'.

Clinton and Trump are each at 44 percent in the LA Times survey. Trump’s six point lead evaporated as a video of him making lewd comments about his conduct toward women emerged.

Donald Trump leveled a new attack at Hillary Clinton in Cincinnati, recalling her physical collapse on Sept. 11 in New York. He said she couldn't negotiate with China because 'these are tough people.'

The Fox News poll gives Clinton 45 per cent of the four-way presidential preference vote while Trump has slid to 38 per cent. However Rasmussen showed him clawing back support with 43 per cent.

The survey, which was conducted during the period between October 7 and 13, gave Clinton 44 per cent support from likely voters compared to 37 per cent for Trump.

Two new national polls that dropped today tell different tales, with Donald Trump nipping at Hillary Clinton's heels in one – and her running away with the race in another.

Donald Trump has slipped further in the polls, a survey showed Monday, as he battles to dismiss a series of sexual assault allegations by claiming that the election is rigged against him.

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by an average of 5.5 percent. But an election forecaster is advising voters to 'hold off on trusting poll-driven proclamations of a Clinton victory just yet.'

On his eponymous radio program Monday morning, Stern said that he was upset that the interviews were being used against Trump and that he himself would never re-release the old interviews.

Assailing Trump, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said, 'This is what losers do. And we're not even going to give it any credit by amplifying it. It's not true. The system is not rigged.'

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in deadlock over America's swing states, with polls showing hairs-breadth gaps between the bitter rivals weeks before the presidential election.

The CBS News poll found that 47 per cent of likely voters support or lean towards Hillary Clinton while 38 per cent support Donald Trump.

The Democrat captures a 46 per cent share of the vote, while Trump slips a point to 40, according to a weekly NBC News/Survey Monkey poll.

Paddy Power has paid out $1 million on a Hillary Clinton victory in next month's election following the dramatic implosion of challenger Donald Trump's campaign which has lost him support.

Trump unveiled a scorched earth attack on the Clintons ahead of the debate, taking mourning Benghazi relatives as his guests as a man who claims to be Bill Clinton's son turned up in Vegas.

Hillary Clinton has swiped a chunk of Donald Trump's voters, a poll showed Wednesday, just hours before the candidates go head-to-head in the third and final presidential debate.

The results of Wednesday's presidential debate began to trickle in in the early hours of Thursday morning, with neither candidate the clear winner thanks to contrasting polls.

Donald Trump declared himself the debate winner, dashing off a 3 a.m. tweet as his campaign plane touched down in the swing state of Ohio after last night's Las Vegas throwdown.

Voters in 13 battleground states say Donald Trump won Wednesday night's final presidential debate. Voters said Clinton won by 49 to 39 per cent, according to the CBS survey.

Voters think that whoever loses the election needs to accept the result, a poll showed Friday - even though almost half of those surveyed think that there will be widespread fraud at the polls.

The latest ABC News presidential opinion poll shows Republican Donald Trump trailing his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by 12 points.

On Monday, Donald Trump made the campaign rounds in battleground state Florida and insisted he believes he's winning and the polls showing Hillary Clinton ahead are 'phony.'

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 45 to 43 in the latest Bloomberg News poll in Florida, in a matchup where third party candidates are included.

With less than two weeks to go before election day on Nov. 8, Clinton has 43 per cent of the vote to her Republican rival's 39 per cent.

Hillary Clinton appears on the cusp of a potentially commanding victory over Donald Trump as she leads with 14 percentage points among likely voters, 51-37, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.