Teen sinks world No.12
January 13, 2004
EXCITING Sydney teenager Todd Reid followed the lead of Lleyton Hewitt and joined his illustrious Davis Cup hitting partner in the second round of the adidas International at Olympic Park.
Hewitt yesterday completed a triumphant return to ranked tournament competition, feeding off the high of Davis Cup success to maintain an unbeaten run stretching back to the US Open.
The former world champion demolished tough Armenian Sargis Sargsian 6-4 6-2 to safely reach the second round - where he will face either Slovakian Karol Kucera or Spaniard Felician Lopez - to add an ominous touch to his Australian Open preparations.
While Hewitt breezed through, Reid showed all the fighting qualities of his hero to advance.
Reid, 19, of Coogee, has become one of the hottest properties in world tennis - last night recovering from 4-0 down in the deciding set to triumph 7-6 (7-5) 2-6 6-4 over Chile's sixth seed and world No.12 Nicolas Massu.
Massu, the first seed to tumble out of the Australian Open lead-up event, was Reid's biggest scalp to date and extended the 19-year-old's impressive summer record to 21 wins from his past 23 matches.
The Australian wildcard's run of success has catapulted him from 243rd to 172nd in the rankings.
The 2002 junior Wimbledon champion, fresh from his quarter-final appearance at the AAPT Championships in Adelaide, gave himself a great opportunity to make the last eight in back-to-back weeks with a gutsy display straight out of the Hewitt textbook.
Trailing by a double-break of serve in the third set, Reid reeled off six straight games to take the match in stunning fashion and set up a second-round clash with either Richard Gasquet of France or Spain's Felix Mantilla.
Reid attributed much of his success to being part of the Davis Cup team.
"I saw Wally Masur (Davis Cup coach) in the stands and I was thinking to myself, 'how are you going to play Davis Cup one day if you can't come back from here?' " he said.
"So that sort of spurred me on a little bit. I think Davis Cup has helped me a lot."
Revelling under the aggressive counsel of coach Roger Rasheed, Hewitt was not fazed by an unforced error count of 34, instead being elated with the 22 winners that rocketed from his racquet.
"I was expecting a tough match," said Hewitt, whose sporadic tour appearances since the US Open include wins over Roger Federer, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Atilla Savolt, Xavier Malisse and Kucera.
"I think he (Sargsian) beat Philippoussis in the Aussie Open last year in the third round and he's a very tough player on this court. He hits the ball pretty flat (and) he's a great mover around the court."
While there has been little quantity surrounding Hewitt's tennis since the Wimbledon and US Open winner was forced off the circuit to have a wart removed from his left foot, the quality which carted the baseliner to the peak of the game has returned.
So much so, Hewitt yesterday declared he is hitting the ball as well as ever on the eve of an Australian Open.
"I feel like I'm hitting the ball just as well, if not better," Hewitt said, referring to his two-season stint as world No.1.
The Daily Telegraph
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