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Hewitt serves, volleys and overcomes

Australian Lleyton Hewitt mixed serve and volley with his natural counter-punching style to reach the second round of the Sydney International yesterday.

The former world No. 1 pressured Frenchman Nicolas Mahut's service to come away with a solid 6-3, 6-4 win in 87 minutes to set up an all-Australian match with big-serving Davis Cup team-mate Chris Guccione today.

Hewitt, now ranked 21, is working under experienced coach Tony Roche, who has been on the practice court for hours with his new charge, tuning up his game for next week's Australian Open in Melbourne.

Hewitt, normally a rigid two-handed baseliner, has introduced more of a serve-volley game under Roche's tutelage and is not yet fully comfortable with the tactic in his bid to make up ground on world No. 1 Roger Federer in the rankings.

"It's not my natural game," Hewitt said after beating the 44th-ranked Mahut.

Mahut held match point against Andy Roddick in last year's final on grass at Queen's in London, only to lose to the American in a third-set tiebreaker.

"I'm definitely getting more comfortable [playing serve and volley], but I still have got to be able to put it into practice," Hewitt said.

Hewitt, the former Wimbledon and US Open champion, said he had a lot of break point opportunities on Mahut's serve to put pressure on the Frenchman.

"It was a matter of trying to stay on top of that and not get too worried about losing my serve," Hewitt said. "He played a pretty flashy game to break my serve in the first set, but I bounced back straight away breaking him again ... that was a huge positive."

Mahut's exit capped a dark day for the French men's contingent, with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who beat Hewitt in Adelaide last week, bowing out to Italian Andreas Seppi 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.

Paul-Henri Mathieu retired with a left hamstring injury after losing the opening set to Russian Evgeny Korolev.

Czech Radek Stepanek knocked out tournament second seed Tommy Robredo of Spain 6-4, 6-2, while Russian Dmitry Tursunov eased past Switzerland's Stanislas Wawrinka 6-3, 6-3.

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