Double defending champion Rafael Nadal crushed the spirited resistance of Lleyton Hewitt on Monday to move into the French Open quarterfinals and a clash with close friend and 1998 champion Carlos Moya.
Nadal, bidding to emulate Bjorn Borg by winning three Roland Garros titles in a row, defeated Australian Hewitt 6-3, 6-1, 7-6 (7/5) in a fourth-round tie that only lived up to the pre-match hype in the third set.
In Monday’s other fourth-round matches, Serbia’s Novak Djokovic eased past Spain’s Fernando Verdasco in straight sets.
He will face unseeded Russian Igor Andreev, who came from a set down to beat Marcos Baghdatis for a semifinal place.
Nadal’s Roland Garros record now stands at 18 wins in 18 matches and the outcome of Monday’s clash, a repeat of last year’s fourth-round match that the Spaniard won in four sets, was never in doubt.
Hewitt dropped serve twice in the first four games of the opening set, managing just four points in the process.
The Australian saved three set points as he broke back to trail 3-5 but then undid all his good work by handing the set to Nadal in the ninth game when he was broken for the third time.
The second set was even more one-sided with Nadal reeling off five games on the trot to open a two sets lead.
Hewitt’s famed fighting spirit and tenacity kept him in the tie and he sent the third set into a tiebreaker as Nadal was serving for the match at 6-5.
Hewitt, a former Wimbledon and US Open champion, nipped ahead in the breaker and was at 5-4 when he buried an easy forehand into the net.
There was to be no way back for the 26-year-old and Nadal claimed his quarterfinal place when Hewitt again netted a dispirited forehand.
”He got off to a great start. He served well, a lot better than he did in Hamburg,” said Hewitt, who took a set off the Spaniard in their semifinal clash in Germany last month.
”He was hitting his forehand up the line accurately. He was in the zone early on and it was hard to press him. I just had to try and make a match of it in the third set.”
Thirty-year-old Moya, the oldest player left in the competition, played his first Roland Garros in 1996 and was champion two years later.
”I’m the oldest guy left but I still remember when I was the youngest. Time passes so quickly that you don’t realise it,” said Moya, who booked his last eight place by beating 35-year-old Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden 7-6 (7/3), 6-2, 6-4.
”But I am proud to be the oldest guy in the quarterfinals and I think I still have some very good tennis ahead of me.”
In contrast to Moya, 20-year-old Djokovic is the youngest player left standing.
The sixth seed continued Serbia’s surge when he defeated unseeded Verdasco 6-3, 6-3, 7-6 (7/1) to reach his second successive quarterfinal.
Djokovic will be the third Serb to feature in the last eight with compatriots Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic already in the quarterfinals of the women’s singles.
Unseeded Igor Andreev reached the quarterfinals, defeating Baghdatis 2-6, 6-1, 6-3, 6-4.
Ranked 125th in the world, Andreev’s win made him the lowest-ranked player to reach the last eight in Paris since Marcelo Filippini in 1999. — AFP
