Tennis: Henman crushes Corretja while Hewitt tumbles out

The Independent – United Kingdom
Mar 16, 2004

Matthew Cronin in Indian Wells

TIM HENMAN looked full of confidence as he won his Pacific Life Open
third-round match with Alex Corretja 6-4, 6-4 here yesterday.

Corretja lost his serve in the second game, at the end of which his
trainer was called on to treat what looked like a graze on the
knee. The Spaniard played on, and broke back in the seventh game with
a backhand passing shot down the line. Henman, however, broke back in
the 10th game to claim the first set as Corretja was wayward with
three forehands.

At deuce in Corretja’s first service game in the second set, the
Spaniard struck a shot down the line which caught the highest part of
the net and carried over the baseline to put Henman 2-0 up. The
Briton’s hopes of another three-game lead evaporated as he sent an
overhead smash into the net to give his opponent an instant break
back. After another deuce game on the Corretja serve, the Spaniard won
out to level at 2-2.

The fifth game was nervy for Henman on his serve but it went in his
favour at deuce and he edged 3-2 ahead. The match went with serve to
5-4 and Henman closed out the second set.

The Australian two-time defending champion Lleyton Hewitt lost to Juan
Ignacio Chela, 6-3, 4-6, 6-1 as the Argentinian put up a determined
performance to end Hewitt’s 13-match unbeaten run. “Even when I felt
like I had him on a stretch a couple of times, he came up with good
defensive shots,” Hewitt said. “I didn’t feel like I played too badly,
but I felt like he didn’t miss a lot of shots.”

Roger Federer, of Switzerland, made light work of Chile’s Fernando
Gonzalez in the third round, his 6-3, 6-2 victory taking 62
minutes. Federer, the top seed here, had breezed through the previous
round with a 6-1, 6-1 rout of Romania’s Andrei Pavel.

Also in the third round, Tommy Haas, of Germany, beat Spain’s Albert
Costa 7-6, 3-6, 6-3.

Andy Roddick beat his former doubles partner Jan-Michael Gambill 7-6,
6-2 late on Sunday to set up a meeting with the recent Australian Open
finalist Marat Safin, of Russia.

Roddick, who faced Gambill for the first time last week in Scottsdale,
hit 21 aces in the thin desert air and was never broken. The US Open
champion last met Safin in the Australian Open quarter-finals, where
the Russian won a titanic five-setter.

The fourth seed, Guillermo Coria, made a good first appearance on
American hard courts this season, beating the Armenian Sargis Sargsian
6-3, 6-4.

The seventh-seeded Carlos Moya, of Spain, hit a double-fault on match
point and fell to the Russian Irakli Labadze 2-6, 6-1, 6-3. The 11th
seed, Nicolas Massu, of Chile, retired with a sinus infection while
trailing 6-3, 1-0 to Spain’s Rafael Nadal.

l Greg Rusedski is expected to confirm today whether he intends to
pursue a compensation claim against the Association of Tennis
Professionals following his acquittal on doping charges last week. The
British No 2 and his legal team are believed to have examined the
possibility of pursuing a claim against the ATP.