Lleyton Hewitt showed why he was the No. 1 seed at the
Mercedes-Benz Cup on Wednesday night. He overpowered Michael Joyce
with aces, hard cross-court forehands and backhands and the
occasional lob, beating the American 6-3, 6-0 in the second-round
match.
"I felt like I was in total control of the match," the
Australian and last year’s No. 1 player internationally said.
It didn’t seem that way in the beginning. Leading 3-2, Hewitt
lost the next three points and eventually had his serve broken by
Joyce, tying the set at 3-3.
That would be the last game Joyce would win for the rest of the
match.
"I felt like I could take the foot off the pedal in stages,"
Hewitt said. "I thought I had a lot better rhythm, put a lot of
pressure on his service game, and I tried to play more percentage
tennis."
Hewitt immediately broke Joyce’s serve and won four straight
points when he served, making the score 5-3.
In the next game, Joyce committed a couple of double faults to
help Hewitt win the set.
Hewitt did have one scare in the third set. Serving and leading
2-0, Hewitt couldn’t put away a resilient Joyce. Joyce had two
breakpoints and forced the game to six deuces before Hewitt put him
away.
Hewitt will play Kenneth Carlsen of Denmark in a quarterfinal
match Friday.
In another second-round match Wednesay, Carlsen beat Prakash
Amritraj 6-4, 6-2. Amritraj played at the Los Angeles Tennis Center
just a few months ago as a USC junior and qualified for the second
round by beating Marat Safin in the first round after Safin retired
because of injury.
In Wednesday’s other singles matches, Germany’s Nicolas Kiefer
beat No. 3 seed Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands 6-4, 6-4, and
Vincent Spadea of the United States beat the Czech Republic’s Jan
Vacek 7-5, 2-6, 6-2. The two winners will play each other Friday in
the quarterfinals.
Thursday’s action kicks off at noon with former Bruin Eric Taino
against No. 4 Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil. That match will be
followed by No. 5 Mark Philippoussis of Australia against American
Michael Chang; No. 7 seed Wayne Ferreira will then play Alex
Bogomolov Jr of the United States.
The other singles match is American Robby Ginepri against No. 2
seed Sebastien Grosjean at 7:30 p.m.