Hewitt Victorious On Washington Return; Youzhny Steps Up

© Getty ImagesRussian Mikhail Youzhny is making his Washington debut this week.

Playing his first match since Wimbledon, 2004 Washington champion Lleyton Hewitt advanced to the second round of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic on Monday with a 7-5, 6-2 win over American wild card Donald Young in a match that featured nine breaks of serve.

Hewitt said that he was happy to make a winning start to his US Open Series campaign at the ATP World Tour 500 hard-court tennis tournament. “It’s a different surface with a high bounce, so it’s a lot different to playing on grass. It’s nice to have a straight sets win,” he said.

Hewitt had never played Young before and used advice from fellow Australians Chris Guccione and Carsten Ball to help him prepare for the match. “It’s a little hard when you haven’t played someone before. You try to do as much homework as you can before a match but until you get out there you don’t know 100 per cent what to do. He’s very talented but he probably hasn’t fulfilled his potential yet.”

Hewitt, who is No. 42 in the South African Airways 2009 ATP Rankings, has a chance to press his claim for a Top 20 spot this summer after missing the entire US hard-court swing last year. The two-time ATP World Tour Champion last year played just one event after Wimbledon – the Beijing Olympics – after undergoing hip surgery.

“I’ve got no points to defend the rest of the year, so it’s important to make a stand the next few weeks, especially at the Masters [1000s, in Montreal and Cincinnati],” he said. “It took a lot of physical and mental strength to come back. But I’ve had a good run at the French and then at Wimbledon, where I beat [Juan Martin] del Potro and lost a tight one to [Andy] Roddick.”

The 28 year old is playing in Washington for the fourth time, and reached the quarter-finals on his last visit three years ago (l. to Clement). In his last appearance on U.S. soil this past April, Hewitt clinched his 27th ATP World Tour title at Houston.

Young was making just his second ATP World Tour main draw appearance of the season and was attempting to post his first match win since last year’s Washington opener (d. Horna, l. to Isner).

Russian Mikhail Youzhny won on his Washington debut as he defeated American Robert Kendrick 7-5, 3-6, 6-1. After dropping his first service game, Youzhny launched his comeback with his opponent serving for the first set. He capitalised on his two break point chances, winning four straight games to reverse the lead. Youzhny successfully closed out the match in the third set as he limited Kendrick to nine points total.

Youzhny, a former World No. 8, is looking to reclaim the form that carried him into the US Open semi-finals in 2006 and next faces Roland Garros finalist Robin Soderling. The 65th-ranked Youzhny defeated the Swede in their only previous meeting two years ago in the Dubai semi-finals.

Last week at the clay-court tournament in Gstaad, Youzhny snapped a seven-match losing streak that began with a quarter-final exit to James Blake at the Queen’s Club in London. Prior to that, he had reached his ninth ATP World Tour final on clay at Munich (l. to Berdych).

American John Isner returned to the site of his best tour-level performance, and opened with a 7-6(8), 6-3 win over Kazakhstani Andrey Golubev. The 6’9” Isner reached the final in 2007 (l. to Roddick) after winning a record five straight matches in a third set tie-break, and fired a total of 144 aces during the week.

The 24 year old currently stands at No. 4 in the US Open Series Bonus Challenge standings after reaching the semi-finals in Indianapolis (l. to Ginepri) and quarter-finals in Los Angeles (l. to Ball). He next faces third-seeded Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei posted his first match win since June as he battled past American wild card Michael Russell in two hours and 47 minutes. He converted all three of his break point chances in the decisive set to clinch the 4-6, 6-1, 7-5 win and set up a second-round clash with defending champion and No. 2 seed Juan Martin del Potro.

In other first-round matches Monday, Frenchman Marc Gicquel defeated Polish wild card Jerzy Janowicz 7-5, 2-6, 6-4 and German Philipp Petzschner rallied past Russia's Teimuraz Gabashvili 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Meanwhile, Russian Igor Kunitsyn, Canadian Frank Dancevic and qualifiers Somdev Devvarman and Alejandro Falla were straight-sets winners.