2005 Australian Open - Day #8
By Eleanor Preston  |  January 24, 2005

The Rod Laver Arena was treated to a sight it has seen many times before, but which never loses its appeal – Lleyton Hewitt in full flight.

Flight? Or should that be fight?

In a match that began in the stinging heat of the afternoon sun and ended somewhere near supper time, Hewitt somehow managed to outhit, outlast and ultimately outplay 18-year-old Rafael Nadal in arguably the men’s match of the tournament thus far.

It was a contest of sharp twists and fascinating turns as Hewitt lead by a set and a break only to find himself starting at yet another fourth round exit from the tournament. At 2-0 up in the second set, with his early nerves behind him and the stadium court settled into contented adoration of their man, Hewitt looked golden. Nadal, a feisty prodigy in the Hewitt mould, wasted no time in shaking the whole place to its foundations by winning 12 of the next fourteen games to put Hewitt two sets to one down and looking worried.

To add to his woes and the quiet and murmuring concern of the crowd, Hewitt was walking gingerly and showing signs of distress from a hip flexor injury which, it transpired, he sustained in Sydney ten days’ ago. He received prolonged treatment from trainer Per Bastholt while Nadal prowled around with a face full of angry concentration.

If Hewitt’s body is beginning to fail him – ironic, really, given the extra hours of fitness work he has put in during the off season with coach Roger Rasheed – his mind is so strong it barely mattered.

As he usually does, he found a way to win, partly through some extraordinary tennis and partly through sheer stubbornness.

Nadal deserves credit for the way he kept the scoreline respectable in the fifth after Hewitt had broken his heart by levelling the match by winning the fourth and for the way he graciously accepted the applause of the crowd afterwards. His time will come, and probably very, very soon.

Hewitt’s friend and compatriot Alicia Molik made it a spectacular day all round for the home supporters by knocking out Venus Williams 7-5, 7-6 in a match that said as much about Molik’s self-belief as it did about Williams lack of it. Molik is on a march towards the World’s Top 10 and will go even higher if she beats World No.1 Lindsay Davenport in the next round.

Williams has now failed to get past the quarter-finals of a grand slam since Wimbledon 2003 – her best result coming, oddly, at the French Open last year. She played well against Molik and two years ago it might well have been enough but these days players no longer look at her and crumble.

Williams did do Anastasia Myskina a favour though, by ensuring that the Russian’s straight sets loss to Nathalie Dechy didn’t make the headlines. In a bad day for the Russians, last year’s French and US Open finalist Elena Dementieva also exited the tournament. Dementieva was beaten in three sets by Patty Schnyder.

Phillip Kohlschreiber didn’t capitulate against Andy Roddick but never looked like upsetting the American either. It was as easy a straight sets win as Roddick could reasonably expect in the fourth round of a grand slam.

Roddick should probably expect a similar scoreline against Nikolay Davydenko in the quarter-finals, and should be thanking his lucky stars at the draw he has been handed thus far. Davydenko knocked out seventh seed Tim Henman on Roddick’s behalf and, on Monday, followed that up with a straight sets win over the usually obstinate Argentine Guillermo Canas.

If you think Roddick came anywhere near the top of the news agenda in Melbourne, think again, for their were only two names that anyone in Australia was interested in.

Monday belonged to Hewitt and Molik.

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