| Wednesday, 25 June 2008 Written by Barry Newcombe Lleyton Hewitt, champion here in 2002, overwhelmed Spain's Albert Montanes 7-6 (7-4), 6-0, 6-2 to win through to the third round and keep alive the prospect that he will face defending champion Roger Federer in the last 16.
Backed by a noisy crowd of Australian supporters, the 20th seed ensured that he stayed on the victory path in his 10th Championships with a strong performance in the final two sets.
Despite a lack of experience and solid results on grass, the 27-year-old Montanes contested the first set with total commitment and gave Hewitt some close calls on Court 2, holding two break points in the ninth game and two more in the 11th as the first set moved towards a tie-break.
Only then did Hewitt start to assert the authority that should be the hallmark of a former winner. He began the tie-break with an ace and opened up from the eighth point onwards to run off the next three points for the set, ending when he forced a backhand error from Montanes.
If that set was meant to be a guide to the rest of the match it was completely misleading. The Spaniard’s first-round win this week was only his second victory at Wimbledon and the fact that he had stayed so close to Hewitt at the start must have given him confidence for the rest of the match.
Instead, Hewitt dominated the next two sets, racing through the second in only half an hour without losing a game, and taking a 2-0 lead in the third before Montanes managed to win a game.
The third set was the shortest at 28 minutes and Hewitt won on his first match point with his ninth ace.
"It was good to get through in straight sets," Hewitt said. "The first set was difficult, though, because it was such a different opponent to the other day. He was serving well. It was hard to get into his service games. "When I did get 15-30 or 0-30 a couple of times in the first set, he came out with some good first serves. “He's got a very under-rated serve. It's not the best serve, it's not the biggest out there, but it's very hard to do anything with. As the match went on, though, I felt more and more comfortable with how I was playing."
Hewitt's liking for Wimbledon as a tournament is one of the driving forces behind his performances here and this was another example of how his match play is stimulated by the challenge.
His next opponent will be Italian Simone Bolelli, who beat 15th seed Fernando Gonzalez of Chile. After that lies the potential fourth-round clash with Federer, the only player to have won more grass court titles than him of the men who remain in contention here.
| Court 2 - Gentlemen's Singles - 2nd Round | |
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