TENNIS/French Open:Perhaps the crowd had got an inkling of things to come. Perhaps it was the way Lleyton Hewitt communicated to them in the opening set of yesterday's fourth-round meeting with Rafael Nadal that drew them to their feet for the first decent point he won in the opening skirmishes.
That arrived in the fifth game for 4-1 after a rally Hewitt slapped cross-court for the winner. The crowd erupted. Perhaps even then they could sense the Australian was in trouble. What no one could say is just how irreversible the problems were to be.
Yesterday's match in a humid Paris against the defending champion Nadal and 14th-seed Hewitt was a meeting many had taken to be more meaningful after a first week of cleaning out qualifiers and wildcards. Finally the Spaniard faced a former world number one and a US Open and Wimbledon champion, a player who could draw the venom from the best in the world.
It was also to be a mid-term test, a marker that would say what sort of shape Nadal's game was in the second year of defending his Roland Garros title and with his main threat, Roger Federer, in the shadows. In the wreckage of Hewitt's championship charge we now know.
The 26-year-old chased that first set from 5-1 down and never once got a glimpse. You can't do that. Not with Nadal. Not on clay. Not in a Grand Slam. Not, especially, in the French Open.
Nadal dropped serve once in the first set, Hewitt three times for the second seed to take it 6-3. The second fell into Nadal's pocket with even greater velocity, the 36 minutes it took to win set one bettered by three minutes as Nadal bullied and pushed Hewitt wherever he wished, using extraordinary ability to cover the ground.
Nadal was hitting the lines and the corners, Hewitt was short or out. Anything mid-court was a likely winner for the left-hander and so Hewitt was under constant pressure to hit dinner-plate sized areas around the court or face the likelihood of a whipped forehand from the 20-year-old.
"He moves so well, you feel you have to hit perfect shots against him," said Hewitt afterwards. "He's an exceptional mover and he gets a lot of balls back."
The second set fell 6-1 and even the resurrection powers that Hewitt showed in the previous round, when he came back from two sets down to beat Gaston Gaudio, were never going to be enough and while Hewitt met the challenge better in the third set and forced it to a tiebreak there was no dominance. He did manage to knock Nadal off rhythm but in a couple of episodes where he saw light, the blinds closed quickly.
When it counted a forehand that would have given him 6-4 in the third-set tiebreak, hit the net, again going for too much to be sure it wouldn't come back. That was the chance and he missed it as Nadal took the tiebreak 7-5, the third set 7-6 and the match.
"He was flying up the line and early on he was in the zone," said Hewitt. "It was hard for me to get anything on him. He just hits the ball so differently from anyone. The spin of his forehand is amazing. On clay there's no doubt that Nadal has the best forehand."
Hewitt had taken a set off Nadal in Hamburg a few weeks ago, only the second player to have done so in 2007. Hewitt also came in as one of four players who have a better winning record against Nadal. That's the level of the Spaniard's form.
He next meets former champion and compatriot Carlos Moya in the quarter-final. The 1998 champion beat the oldest player in the field, Jonas Bjorkman (35), in straight sets 7-6 (5), 6-2, 7-5 in just over two and a half hours. The second quarter-final pairing has dark horse Novak Djokovic against the unseeded Russian, Igor Andreev.
The Serb, Djokovic, seeded sixth, came through in straight sets against Spain's Fernando Verdasco 6-3, 6-3, 7-6, with Andreev taking four sets to evict the Cypriot, Marcos Baghdatis, from the draw.
