TENNIS/French Open: When the two stepped on to court it looked like a mismatch. Rafael Nadal, carrying the smooth-muscled power of a light heavyweight and Lleyton Hewitt with the wiry togetherness of a bare-knuckle fighter arrived as the game's two prize fighters.
This chance of a Roland Garros quarter-final was as close as tennis gets to a contact sport. With Hewitt's tenacity and bite, and Nadal's speed and power, they entered the arena with the burning eyes of adversaries and left it with the bar significantly raised for those who step on court today believing they can win the world's top clay court event.
Both players knew to what extent the other would go to win the match and both have been accurately characterised as the two warriors who do not ever give up. Even their regular tour opponents see them as the players against whom you have to win each point twice in order to win a match.
That's how it evolved and in the most compelling game of the competition so far, it was the Spanish 20-year-old who triumphed 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 in a match bejewelled with impossibly crafted returns and breathless drop shots, not all of them from Nadal.
But the crowd were routinely to their feet as he ripped his forehands, the racket strings pinging around the Philippe Chatrier centre court from the pressure and spin of his ferocious left arm.
More than once even the worst of lip readers could read the silently expressed profanities from Hewitt as Nadal fished spectacular returns from corners of the court that had never before seen footprints. The match was a triumph for Nadal in his toughest test so far as well as another demonstration of how he has been able to win consecutively 57 times on clay courts.
It was also his first career win over Hewitt in four attempts but the two had not met since the 2005 Australian Open. The Australian, seeded 14 to Nadal's two, had also come into the tournament game-shy due to injury and prior to his match in the previous round, against Dominik Hrbaty, had almost pulled out when he began to vomit in the locker-room. But there were no excuses from Hewitt.
"He is very much like (Roger) Federer, I guess," said the Australian.
"Winning so many matches that it's almost second nature to him. They get down a break point and they expect to get out of it. He's extremely tough. But I still feel there are small areas. As I said, you have to take those small chances against these guys, whether it's Nadal or Federer.
"You get that half-short ball and you see the opportunity. But then again, he makes you go for that a little bit more. That's why he is one of the best players in the world."
That's all Hewitt got, half chances, which in the end he could not take. A couple of double faults didn't help but really the match hinged on Nadal's ability to squeeze on every point all of the time. He broke Hewitt's serve twice in the first set for 6-2 before Hewitt took an hour to crowbar the second from his grasp to level the match.
But more and more Nadal claimed the big points and even when one of the ball boys took a Hewitt serve on the nose and began to spout blood, Nadal stopped play to have him assisted before continuing in the same vein.
A perfect drop shot at 4-4 in the third set proved pivotal to the match and allowed Nadal to successfully serve out for 6-4 before Hewitt's fight was finally quelled in the fourth, the number two seed breaking him three times for 6-2 and the match.
"Today I think I played my best match," said Nadal. "I could feel the ball, especially the first set I thought I played really good. But every match is difficult. Today I had difficult moments. Against (Paul-Henri) Mathieu I had difficult moments. Every match is difficult and every match I can lose, no?"
No, not if there is a repeat performance against Novak Djokovic, who Nadal meets in the quarter-final. Unseeded, Djokovic had a straight three-set win over the young French teenager Gael Monfils. With Monfils now out of the draw and also Julien Benneteau, who lost to Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic, France has no more local interest in the tournament.
Had Monfils and Benneteau won their matches, it would have been the first time in 16 years two Frenchmen made it so far into the second week.
On the other side of the ladder, top seed Federer meets another Croatian, Mario Ancic, for a place in the semi-final with Argentina's David Nalbandian facing sixth seed Nikolay Davydenko.
