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Cutting it loose Hewitt, ever the showman, rallies into quarterfinals
PARIS (AP) -- He runs up and down sand dunes to get in shape. Before matches, he often listens to music from "Rocky" and even calls himself Balboa on the court. And when his opponent hits a ball into the net, Lleyton Hewitt isn't above pumping his fists and yelling: "C'mon, give it to me!" Hewitt's intense, self-promotional style inspires some and rubs others the wrong way. But no one can deny the 20-year-old Aussie is steadily climbing to the top of men's tennis. He advanced to the quarterfinals of the French Open Monday with a win over Guillermo Canas that took five sets and two days. The two began playing on Sunday, and Hewitt fell behind two sets to love. When the match was suspended for darkness after almost four hours, he was leading 4-2 in the fifth. Returning to the court Monday for only a few games, "It felt like a 100-meter sprint," Hewitt said. He blew three match points at 5-2, then closed out the match on his fifth match point for a 3-6, 6-7, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3 victory. It was the first time he'd come back from two sets down. Though not a clay-court specialist by any means, Hewitt has steadily improved on the surface, which suits his tenacious baseline game. On clay this year, he's won 14 of 18 matches. He's seeded sixth at Roland Garros. "It's a hard surface to play on," he says. "You've got to work for every point. There are no easy matches on clay. You've got to grind it out." Hewitt's intense style has brought him far in a short time. At last year's U.S. Open he reached the semifinals, at age 19 the youngest player to do so since Pete Sampras in 1990. Fittingly, he lost to Sampras, who has championed Hewitt as a future star of the game. Looking at Hewitt's career, one sees the words "first" and "youngest" a lot. At 15, he was the youngest qualifier in the history of the Australian Open in 1997. A year later, with a title in his hometown of Adelaide, Australia, he became the youngest tour winner since Michael Chang 10 years earlier, and the lowest-ranked tour winner in history (No. 550.) He was one of only six teen-agers to win seven titles in the Open era. But his personal style bothers some. He's drawn criticism for his on-court vocabulary, and had a testy exchange with an Australian reporter at Monday's post-match news conference, repeatedly denying he'd insulted the umpire. At Roland Garros this year, Hewitt beat a wild card and a qualifier in the first two rounds. He won his third-round match against American rising star Andy Roddick, when the American retired due to a thigh injury. On Tuesday, he faces fourth-seeded Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain, by far his toughest matchup so far. Ferrero won the only time they've played. "He's obviously hitting the ball great," Hewitt said. "It's hard to see where you're going to break him down." Hewitt is aware that no Australian has won the French Open since Rod Laver in 1969. He says that's not what inspires him. "You know, you don't need extra motivation going into these tournaments," he said. Hewitt certainly doesn't seem to need any. He says he'd be just as intense no matter what game he played. "You know, I love competing," he says. "I love getting out there, I want to win. That would have been the same in anything I did."
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