Half an hour, one game won
Sebastian Gorzny took the opening set 6-1 in under thirty minutes. Cruz Hewitt, seventeen years old and in the draw on a wild card, had won a single game and looked a long way from competitive. The rest of the match went the other way. He forced a tiebreak in the second and took it 7-3, then broke Gorzny in the penultimate game of the third to close out a 1-6, 7-6(3), 6-4 win overnight at Wake Forest University.
It was the second ATP Tour main-draw win of his career. The first came four weeks ago at the Washington Open, where he beat Marcos Giron, then ranked 77th in the world, before Alex de Minaur stopped him in the second round. Two tour-level wins from a handful of wild-card appearances is a return most seventeen-year-olds on the circuit would take.
Losing an opening set 6-1 usually settles a best-of-three match. It did not settle this one, and the way the son of Lleyton Hewitt reorganised himself between the first game of the second set and the last game of the third is the part worth filing away.
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Four Australians, four wins
Hewitt was one of four Australians through the first round in North Carolina. James Duckworth, ranked 79th, allowed ATP Tour debutant Quinn Vandecasteele almost nothing, winning 6-2, 6-1 while taking 55 percent of the American’s service points.
Adam Walton did not lose his serve once against top-100 opponent Jesper de Jong, saving five break points on the way to a 6-2, 6-4 win. Rinky Hijikata had gone through the day before, beating world number 241 Darwin Blanch 6-4, 7-6(2).
The last rehearsal before New York
Winston-Salem is the final ATP event before the US Open, which explains the size of the Australian contingent on site. Seven Australian men are set to appear in the men’s singles draw in New York, led by seventh seed Alex de Minaur. Duckworth, Hijikata, Walton, Aleksandar Vukic and Alexei Popyrin are all on the entry list, with Thanasi Kokkinakis holding a protected ranking place.
Four more are still working for it. Alex Bolt, Bernard Tomic, Chris O’Connell and Tristan Schoolkate are in qualifying this week, each three wins away from the main draw.
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