Lleyton Hewitt was granted the easiest of victories in his first match of 2007 when Serbian opponent Janko Tipsarevic retired injured from their pool match in the Adelaide International at Memorial Drive.

Tipsarevic said he twinged his right inner thigh in the first game of the match, and Hewitt was leading 6-1 4-2 when the Serb called it quits.

While happy with the win, Hewitt was dubious about the extent of Tipsarevic's injury.

"I saw him occasionally jump and touching somewhere around his groin area then he played on a few more games," Hewitt said.

"After the injury break, I still felt like I was moving him around the court and coming up with some decent shots. There was one backhand he rifled up the line and, if he had that bad a groin, I don't know how he would have pulled that off.

"It was important that I came out and tried to dictate tonight and I had my game plan. I wanted to get away with a straight-sets win and I was able to do that." Playing singles for the first time since a five-set Davis Cup loss to Argentine Jose Acasuso more than three months ago, Hewitt began with plenty of early rust evident but was allowed time to find his feet thanks to a series of errors from his opponent.

Tipsarevic lifted his ranking from 140 to 64 in 2006 and possesses enough qualities to suggest he should rise higher this year, but he lacked the poise to stretch the vastly more experienced Hewitt.

Without playing particularly well, the Australian broke for a 2-0 lead and was never headed, letting out one hearty cry of "come on" after threading a sliced backhand winner down the line in the fourth game.

He took the first set in 28 minutes and Tipsarevic's request for an injury timeout at 2-0 down in set two suggested the end was near.

Tipsarevic fought on to win two more service games before electing not to continue.

Hewitt's next centre court date will be on Thursday night against Russia's world No.94 Igor Kunitsyn, who last year defeated the likes of Tommy Haas, Arnaud Clement and Gael Monfils.

Earlier in the day, top seed Novak Djokovic disposed of 16th seed Jan Hajek 6-0 6-1 in less than an hour, while Frenchman Richard Gasquet was also in a hurry, beating ninth-seeded German Florian Mayer 6-2 6-1 in just 49 minutes.

Another leading seed, however, was bundled out of the tournament by registering successive defeats - fifth-seeded Slovakian Dominik Hrbaty losing 6-2 7-6 (7-4) to American Paul Goldstein.

Fellow American Vince Spadea enjoyed a straightforward 6-4 6-4 victory over Martina Hingis' fiance and third-seeded Czech Radek Stepanek, and Paul-Henri Mathieu of France beat another Czech, Jan Hernych, 4-6 6-3 6-3.

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