French Open: Nadal, Hewitt to Meet

Posted on June 3, 2007

World No. 2 Rafael Nadal muscled past Spanish countryman Al Montanes 6-1, 6-3, 6-2 Saturday to complete third round play at the French Open, setting up a marquee meeting with former No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt in the fourth round.

Hewitt, who has somehow found his claycourt legs in 2007 after floundering on the surface for much of his career, continued his march Saturday, coming back from a 6-1 loss in the first to defeat No. 20 seed Jarkko Nieminen in four sets.

"I just didn't feel sharp at the start and he's a tough player as he doesn't give you a lot of cheap points," Hewitt said of Nieminen. "I didn't come out of the blocks fast and had to go back to the basics to grind it out."

A couple weeks ago at Hamburg Hewitt narrowly lost to Rafael Nadal in three sets.

"I played a great first set, put pressure on him and it turned into a dogfight in the end," Hewitt said of the encounter. Hewitt has never been past the quarterfinals in Paris. "It definitely gives me confidence. [Nadal's] been the standout claycourt player over the last three years. Not many guys have come that close to him."

Spaniard Fernando "Hot Sauce" Verdasco provided the only upset of the day Saturday, coming back from a first-set loss to defeat his No. 12-seeded countryman David Ferrer in four sets.

Other seeded winners on the day were (6) Novak Djokovic (d. Patience 6-3 in the fifth), (16) Marcos Baghdatis (d. Hajek who retired with injury two sets down), and former champ (23) Carlos Moya (d. Brzezicki).

In all-unseeded play Russian Igor Andreev helped usher out the last of the Frenchmen in the draw, straight-setting Paul-Henri Mathieu, 7-6(4), 6-0, 6-3, while Jonas Bjorkman put up an impressive 6-7(7), 6-3, 6-0, 6-1 win over Spaniard Oscar Hernandez to gain the fourth round.

"These days everyone is so good on hitting the passing shots, so I'm more patient," Bjorkman said. "Trying to get my opponents to not be aware of when I'm coming to net, trying to take them by surprise all the time. Today was a perfect example. I got him to the stage where he was very frustrated. He didn't know when I was coming to net. In the end, I got a lot of unforced errors from him."

On court Sunday at Roland Garros are (1) Roger Federer vs. (13) Mikhail Youzhny, (4) Nikolay Davydenko vs. (15) David Nalbandian, (9) Tommy Robredo vs. (29) Filippo Volandri, and an all-Argentine in (19) Guillermo Canas vs. Juan Monaco.