Lleyton Hewitt's road to the Australian Open struck a pothole on Thursday night when he allowed history to repeat in losing to Russian Igor Kunitsyn in the Adelaide International at Memorial Drive.

In 2006 Hewitt set himself on the path to an underwhelming open campaign by suffering a shock three set loss to German Philipp Kohlschreiber, and a year on the same thing has happened, Kunitsyn coming from behind to win 4-6 7-6 (7-4) 6-4 in a tick under three hours.

Even when winning the first set, Hewitt had shown a tendency to wait for Kunitsyn to make a mistake rather than driving the points, and when his opponent improved he became worryingly error strewn.

Hewitt served a pair of slack double faults to give up the second set lead, then was weighed down by errant shots in the tiebreak.

Set three provided more of the same, as Hewitt gave up a first game break and was broken again by a now thriving Kunitsyn to lose the match.

Chris Guccione had earlier received the double gift of an Australian Open wildcard and his maiden ATP tour quarter-final by outlasting Clement 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (7-5).

In enervating afternoon heat, Guccione held his nerve and his serve when it mattered to close out one of the most significant results of his young career, reaching a meeting with second seed Richard Gasquet.

He then walked into the locker rooms to be told he had a wildcard into the open.

"I've beaten (Juan Carlos) Ferrero a couple of times and some other guys in Davis Cup who were pretty high, but I've beaten three top 100 players in a row now and never done that before," Guccione said.

"Hopefully I can carry this form into Sydney and the Aussie Open - I think I can do some damage if I play this well."

Both players broke serve in the opening set, and Guccione was the beneficiary of a fortuitous overrule by Irish chair umpire Fergus Murphy at 3-3, eventually taking it 7-4 in the tiebreaker.

The second set went with serve until another breaker, which Guccione took advantage of by taking a 5-2 lead that Clement was unable to rein in.

Clement was visibly unsettled by some pro-Australian barracking from the stands.

Del Potro, Swede Joachim Johansson, Gasquet and American Vince Spadea joined Kunitsyn and Guccione as players to advance.

Defending champion Florent Serra's retirement during the third set of his match against fellow Frenchman Gilles Simon, at 5-7 6-2 1-1, allowed the popular Johansson through to the quarters having beaten Simon in their earlier meeting.

Gasquet needed more than two hours in the sweltering conditions to see off Canadian Davis Cupper Frank Dancevic 7-5 5-7 6-3.

Spadea registered his second straight sets win by defeating Russian Evgeny Korolev 6-1 7-6 (8-6) in 72 minutes, a result that dumped third seed Radek Stepanek from the tournament.

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