Lleyton Hewitt will play Xavier Malisse in the fourth round of the French Open after the Belgian won a two-day marathon against former champion Albert Costa.

Twelfth seed Hewitt had to wait overnight to discover who his fourth-round opponent would be when Malisse and Costa were stranded by bad light on Saturday with the score at 5-5 in the fourth set after Costa had thrown away two match points.

The Spanish 26th seed again blew a chance when he served for the match in the fifth set, but Malisse broke him and went on to win 6-4 2-6 4-6 7-6 (7-4) 8-6.

Hewitt has won two of his three matches against Malisse, who has slid to 54 in world rankings from a high of 19 in 2002.

Malisse has already knocked one Australian out of the tournament, when he and countryman Olivier Rochus teamed up to beat second seeds Todd Woodbridge and Swede Jonas Bjorkman in the third round of the doubles.

Woodbridge's bid to extend his world record 79 career doubles titles was thoroughly dismissed by the Belgian pair 6-2 6-4 only hours after Malisse had fought back against Costa.

Woodbridge also backed up later in the day with more success as he and Slovakia's Daniela Hantuchova scored a second round 6-1 6-4 mixed doubles win over Frenchwoman Sandrine Testud and Pavel Vizner from the Czech Republic.

Bryanne Stewart and Samantha Stosur lost their third round women's doubles match to fifth-seeded veteran American pair Martina Navratilova and Lisa Raymond 6-2 6-3.

Alicia Molik and Paul Hanley didn't pick up a racquet on their way into the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles when French pair Severine Beltrame and Michael Llodra gave them a walkover.

Llodra pulled out after his epic four hour, 10 minutes loss to Tim Henman in the singles.

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