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British number one Laura Robson suffered her sixth first-round defeat of the year as she lost to Japan's Ayumi Morita at the Portugal Open.

Morita, ranked just two places below Robson at 43 in the world, won 6-2 7-5.

The Briton recovered an early break but faced nine break points in the first set as Morita reeled off four straight games to take it.

Robson served better in the second but was broken at 5-5 and Morita completed the win in one hour and 28 minutes.

The Londoner lost her first match of the year on red clay in Katowice last month, but managed one win and one loss in Britain's Fed Cup defeat by Argentina earlier this month.

Robson did show she can compete on the surface when she reached a WTA semi-final in Palermo last year.

However, she has been struggling for form recently and has now lost six of her eight WTA matches since the Australian Open in January, where she reached the third round.

She had won her only previous encounter with Morita at last year's US Open, albeit after the Japanese player retired when trailing 7-6 1-0 in the first round.