Defending champion Rafael Nadal marked his 20th birthday with a gruelling 5-7, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 win against Paul-Henri Mathieu on Saturday to set up a mouth-watering clash against Lleyton Hewitt for a place in the French Open quarterfinals.
In a third-round tie that lasted just seven minutes short of five hours, Nadal took his clay-court winning streak to 56 matches, but he had to dig deep into his famed reservoir of resources to see off the 29th-seeded Frenchman.
Buoyed by a passionate Philippe Chatrier Court home crowd, Mathieu gave Nadal an almighty scare before being undone by a combination of the Spaniard’s brilliance and his own inability to keep the pressure on.
He sent down 65 unforced errors to Nadal’s 39. However, the main talking point after the match centred, bizarrely, on a banana.
Nadal had called for medical assistance at 5-4, 15-15, in the third set when a slice of banana became lodged in his throat.
”I started to play, but I found I was paying more attention to my throat than I was to the game,” said the second seed. ”So I had to stop because I didn’t want anything serious to happen to me. The crowd jeered me but it wasn’t my fault. I’m sorry.”
Hewitt, the 14th seed, enjoyed a comfortable 7-6 (7/5), 6-2, 6-2 win over Slovakian 22nd seed Dominik Hrbaty, but Czech 11th seed Radek Stepanek was beaten by France’s Julien Benneteau 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 (10/8), 6-3.
Benneteau will face Spain’s Alberto Martin, who beat Belgian 27th seed Olivier Rochus in five tough sets, for a quarterfinal place.
Hewitt, playing Roland Garros for the first time in two years, swept past Hrbaty as he again showed few signs of the ankle injury he picked up in Austria in the run-up to Roland Garros.
”I was hitting through the court well and I didn’t want to waste too much energy out there,” said the Australian.
Hewitt will go into his fourth-round match with Nadal having won all of their three career meetings. All, however, came on hard courts.
Serb teenager Novak Djokovic reached his first grand-slam fourth round, knocking out German 23rd seed Tommy Haas 7-5, 6-1, 7-6 (7/4) to add another scalp to his collection, having beaten ninth seed Fernando Gonzalez in the previous round.
He faces either the United States’s James Blake, the eighth seed, or French 25th seed Gael Monfils for a place in the last eight. That match was suspended because of fading light with the tie delicately poised at one set-all.
Fourth seed Ivan Ljubicic will also have to return on Sunday after his third-round clash with Argentina’s Juan Monaco was held over with him leading 4-2 in the final set.
Ljubicic dropped the first two sets. Defending women’s champion Justine Henin-Hardenne took revenge on the only player to have beaten her at Roland Garros in the past three years to set up a fourth-round clash with 2004 winner Anastasia Myskina.
Henin-Hardenne, the fifth seed who was also the 2003 champion, eased past Italy’s Tathiana Garbin 6-4, 6-0, while Myskina, the 10th-seeded Russian, was equally impressive beating Serbian 19th seed Ana Ivanovic 6-2, 6-3.
Second seed Kim Clijsters was untroubled, beating Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-3, 6-4, and now faces Daniela Hantuchova for a place in the quarterfinals.
The Slovakian 15th seed won a marathon encounter with French player Nathalie Dechy 6-3, 3-6, 10-8. Martina Hingis, the 12th seed, took just 45 minutes to defeat Croatia’s Ivana Lisjak and now faces Israel’s Shahar Peer, who knocked out Russian sixth seed Elena Dementieva 6-4, 7-5.
Victory was particularly sweet for Henin-Hardenne. It was Garbin who beat her in 2004 to condemn her to the unwanted position of being the first top seed to be beaten so early in the tournament since seeding was introduced in 1925. ”I try not to think about what happened two years ago,” said Henin-Hardenne.
Myskina was beaten in the first round here in 2005 to become the first defending champion to fall at that stage in the history of the tournament. Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin was on hand to congratulate her on Saturday.
”I have never lost in front of him,” said Myskina. ”He congratulated me and said I played really well. He’s the biggest fan of tennis I’ve known.” — AFP
