Home favourite Lleyton Hewitt advanced to the second round of the Australian Open courtesy of a four-sets win over Zhang Ze this morning.
The former world number one overcame a second-set wobble to beat his Chinese opponent 6-3 1-6 6-0 6-4 in Melbourne, where he reached the final in 2005.
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In his 19th consecutive appearance at the tournament, Hewitt started well by breaking at the first attempt, although Zhang responded to bring the scores back on serve.
Adelaide-born Hewitt went ahead once more by taking his third break point in game eight, and he closed out the set against an opponent who is 100 places below him in the world rankings at 187.
Zhang showed some of the fighting spirit that Hewitt is famous for by prevailing in a tightly-fought second in which all but two games went to deuce, recording successive breaks at the start to open up a 5-0 lead.
He soon levelled the match at a set apiece, but lost all of his momentum when several errors allowed Hewitt to break to love in the second game of the third, and then break twice more to whitewash the set.
The Aussie faithful were in full voice as the evening session at the Rod Laver Arena came to an end and roared their two-time Grand Slam champion on in a fourth set which he led 4-1 after an early break of serve.
Zhang hung on by winning three games in a row, but a seventh and final break of the match for Hewitt, which came at the fifth attempt in the 10th game, saw him become the 10th Aussie through to the second round.
