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  • Indian Wells Third Round: Lleyton Hewitt vs. Mikhail Youzhny

    3/17/08 7:51 PM | Ricky Dimon
    - Grueling baseline rallies should be in store when Lleyton Hewitt and Mikhail Youzhny do battle in the third round of the Pacific Life Open. When it's all said and done will Hewitt be doing his trademark “vitch” or will it be Youzhny performing his four-corner salute?

    No. 24 seed Lleyton Hewitt and 13th-seeded Mikhail Youzhny will face off in what should be an entertaining and evenly-matched collision in the third round of the Pacific Life Open. The two players have met twice before, but both meetings came on grass and took place during Hewitt's heyday back in 2002. Therefore it shouldn't come as any surprise to know that Hewitt holds a 2-0 head-to-head edge over Youzhny.

    It's hard to say if things will be different this time around, as both players are in decent form but their records are marked by inconsistency. Other than his epic win over Baghdatis in Australia that ended after 4:30 in the morning, Hewitt has struggled for the most part this season. In Rotterdam he got caught looking ahead to a potential second-round clash with Rafael Nadal and lost to unheralded Andreas Seppi in a third-set tiebreaker. Most recently in Las Vegas, Hewitt took out slumping Marat Safin in round one before being stunned by Julien Benneteau. The Aussie looked good in his first effort in Indian Wells, however, taking out Las Vegas champion Sam Querrey in routine 6-4, 6-3 fashion.

    Youzhny got off to a hot start in 2008, but he has also been slumping of late. The Russian kicked off his campaign by winning the title in Chennai, where he crushed Rafael Nadal 6-0, 6-1 in the final. Youzhny followed that up with a quarterfinal appearance at the Australian Open (lost to eventual runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga). Since then, however, he has just a mediocre 4-3 match record, including two-straight first-round exits heading into this week. Does a 7-5, 6-4 victory over in-form Gilles Simon in the second round on Sunday have Youzhny back on track?

    Youzhny should control the destiny of this match. The players are similar in style, but Youzhny can do everything Hewitt can do and he can do it all just a little bit bigger and a little bit better. They can both stay at the baseline for hours and get ball after ball back in the court. Youzhny, however, has the better serve and Hewitt has no kind of weapon like the Youzhny one-handed backhand. But if the Russian gets off to a slow start and his recent lack of confidence begins to show early in the match, Hewitt could take advantage.

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