Third seed Lleyton Hewitt and women’s fifth seed Mary Pierce were sent spinning out of the Australian Open on Thursday, but an awesome Roger Federer glided through to the third round.
Hewitt’s dream of glory in front of his home crowd was shattered by Argentina’s Juan Ignacio Chela, who outclassed the Australian 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (8/10), 6-2.
”I was giving everything I had out there. You know, I just wasn’t up to it tonight,” said Hewitt.
The former Wimbledon and US Open champion, who was struggling with a left ankle injury, became the highest seeded casualty of the first Grand Slam of the season.
That honour had been Pierce’s for several hours after she failed to find the sizzling comeback form that swept her to two Grand Slam finals last year, falling 6-3, 7-5 to Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic.
She was the second big-name flop on the women’s side after Venus Williams.
A third top player could soon be joining them with Kim Clijsters continuing to struggle with a hip injury which she said threatened her campaign, which is good news for Martina Hingis whose remarkable comeback cranked up a gear.
The triple champion blitzed Finn Emma Laine 6-1, 6-1, and with Pierce out the draw has opened up for her.
She will now play Pierce’s conqueror and will be astonished to find that she will not meet a seeded player until the quarterfinals, which is scheduled to be Clijsters if she survives her injury.
”Maybe in these three years I’ve freshened up a bit and now I can just go full gas,” she told an ecstatic Melbourne Park crowd.
”I’m really just enjoying every second being out there.”
It was an equally awesome rout by the ‘Fed Ex’, who rolled over Florian Mayer of Germany 6-1, 6-4, 6-0 in just 72 minutes on centre court as his drive for a seventh Grand Slam title revved up.
Federer, the world number one, issued an ominous warning that he can still get better.
”I think I can definitely improve little things. I can maybe still improve my returning game, my serving, my volleying. There’s still potential left,” he said ahead of his next clash against Max Mirnyi, the 30th seed from Belarus.
Hewitt’s former girlfriend Clijsters, seeded two, has been installed as tournament favourite by the bookies but is playing one game at a time as she struggles to beat the hip injury that she developed in Sydney last week.
The US Open champion downed China’s Meng Yuan 6-4, 6-2 but needed medical attention on her right hip early in the second set and said the injury was making her participation in the tournament a day-to-day proposition.
”I’m happy with the win but my body doesn’t feel too good at the moment,” Clijsters said. ”I’m happy to get through and give myself another day off tomorrow and hopefully I’ll recover better.”
Pierce will enjoy the next fortnight off after appearing to struggle with dry contact lenses as a hot wind grilled the court, repeatedly massaging her eyes.
She racked up 41 unforced errors to Benesova’s 19 and even seven aces from the 1995 Australian Open champion could not keep her in the match as her terrier-like opponent chased down every ball to break her serve five times.
”What went wrong? … what didn’t?,” she said. ”It was just one of those days. Not my day really.”
”I thought I was going to win the second set, then felt pretty confident if I did that I would win the match in the third set — [I was] a bit surprised that didn’t happen.”
Elsewhere, women’s third seed Amelie Mauresmo and seventh seed Patty Schnyder progressed, as did men’s fifth seed Nikolay Davydenko, sixth seed Guillermo Coria and dark horse Tommy Haas.
Schnyder put paid to the hopes of Shinobu Asagoe of Japan in straight sets and will meet another Japanese star, Aiko Nakamura, who downed 31st seed Gisela Dulko of Argentina 6-1, 6-1.
Nakamura is Asia’s only singles players left after Indian teenager Sania Mirza failed to live up to expectations against Michaela Krajicek of The Netherlands.
Krajicek will next play Mauresmo, who beat Emilie Loit of France. – AFP
