Hewitt on track for Queen's title - Sports News - Fanatics - the world's biggest events

Hewitt on track for Queen's title

By Maria Hawthorne 13/06/2003 05:33:18 AM Comments (0)

World tennis No.1 Lleyton Hewitt continued his march towards a fourth straight Queen's title in the traditional Wimbledon warm-up match after grinding out a three sets win over unseeded Belgian Dick Norman.

Hewitt took the first set in a tie-break but lost his serve in the second and was forced to save an incredible six break points on his last service game to set up a quarter-final against Frenchman Sebastien Grosjean at the Stella Artois tennis championships at the Queen's Club.

The 2.03m tall Norman looked like pulling off a shock upset when he grabbed a 40-15 lead as Hewitt served with the scores locked at 4-4 in the third set.

But the defending champion, who is aiming to become the first player to win Queen's four years in a row, saved break point after break point before eventually holding his serve to take a 5-4 lead.

The game galvanised Hewitt and sapped Norman, ranked 118th in the world, with the Australian racing away to break the tall Belgian's serve and win 7-6(7-4) 3-6 6-4.

"Obviously it was a different kind of match out there and a bit of a frustrating one as well," Hewitt said.

"He just gave me no rhythm out there and he served probably as well as I've seen anyone serve today.

"I felt like I played nearly a perfect first set tie-breaker to get out of that one. Second set I played one bad game. But his serve was on that big a rhythm that he felt unbreakable, I guess, so on my service games he'd come out and just have a crack here and there.

"Some games he'd look like he was struggling and then other games he'd come out and hit cold winners and that's what happened in the game where he broke me and when he got close to breaking me in the third set again, he was free-hitting out there. It was a tough situation for me to be in."

Hewitt will next play Grosjean, who beat the only other Australian remaining in the singles draw, Todd Reid, 6-1 6-4 earlier today.

Reid, 19 and ranked 279th, pulled off a huge win on Wednesday, beating world No.39 Jan-Michael Gambill in straight sets to claim only his second win on the men's tour.

But Grosjean, the world No.20, proved too much for the reigning Wimbledon boy's champion, beating him 6-1 6-4.

Reid will now begin preparing for next week's Wimbledon qualifying tournament full of confidence.

"I know I can play at the level," Reid said.

"It's just consistently doing it. I've got to get my ranking up there and consistently win matches instead of losing first rounds. But it's good for my confidence, I've got two matches under my belt and I've beaten a top 50 player, so I'm really happy with myself."

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