Good Will, Tennis From Hewitt

This, as it turned out, was a sequel not with a snarl, but with a smile.

Quite simply, James Blake had to laugh after watching Lleyton Hewitt scurry across the court, again, to make another improbable retrieval.

The good will had legs. After all, it took Hewitt an hour and 24 minutes to unleash a trademark ear-splitting “Come on-n-n!!” after breaking Blake’s serve for the first time.

Later, in the fourth set, one of Blake’s forehand winners whipped across the court and Hewitt stunned the crowded house with his response. The toughest, fiercest of competitors acknowledged the shot by clapping his racket. And after his 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 third-round victory against Blake at the U.S. Open on Saturday, they exchanged pats on the shoulder.

Though these are universal gestures, they are not usually found in Hewitt’s arsenal. Mutual admiration during an athletic contest isn’t part of the script in his beloved “Rocky” movies.

An exorcism of sorts came down at Arthur Ashe Stadium. For 3 hours and 34 minutes, the defending champion and No. 1-seeded Hewitt and Blake traded good will and groundstrokes.

If the high quality of play didn’t completely erase the bitterness of their match here last year, in which Hewitt made a remark thought to carry racial overtones, then Blake made sure he let Hewitt know he had moved on.

In the eighth game of the fourth set, with Hewitt serving at 3-4, a female fan was heard to shout, “James, don’t let him beat you, he’s a racist.”

The words, which came from behind Blake, made him turn around. In that game, Hewitt lost his serve by double faulting for only the fourth time in the match. Blake then held at love to push it to a fifth set, in which the decisive break came in the sixth game when Blake played a series of loose shots, dropping his serve at love.

What happened in the fourth set stayed with Blake when they shook hands, and he apologized to Hewitt for the fan.

“I just apologized for any fans that were speaking out negatively,” Blake said. “That’s something that I was embarrassed by when a few fans did that. I hope that you guys [reporters] would treat him better this year, as well.”

If anything, the 22-year-old Blake seems to have an uncanny sense about his role, almost in the mold of the late Ashe. Hewitt helped Blake make his name in last year’s epic second-round match, and suddenly there was another top young American other than Andy Roddick. For his part, Blake helped Hewitt get back his name by taking the high road.

“He’s a nice guy, no doubt about that,” Hewitt said.

“I think everyone knows that. I say a lot of ‘good shots’ to a lot of opponents. It’s not just because I’m playing James out there. Maybe he hits more good shots than some other guys I play.

“To see us not give an inch the whole match for three and a half hours to four hours, I think it’s something we can both be proud of.”

Said Blake: “We both laid it on the line. We fought our hearts out till the end....

“The way we conducted ourselves, I really like the fact that if any kid was watching that, they could say, ‘I want to be like either of those two.’ That’s good for the game of tennis. I’m glad I was part of it.”

Hewitt approached the Blake match like a Davis Cup adventure in hostile territory. He had only a couple of brief lapses in concentration, most notably losing a 5-2 lead in the first-set tiebreaker and double faulting at 5-5 to give Blake a set point, which he converted.

Their electric third-round match was the highlight on an otherwise ordinary day. Defending champion and No. 2 Venus Williams has lost six games in three matches, three of them in a 6-1, 6-2 victory over Martina Muller of Germany.

The only concern the Williams family seems to have these days is the German man who has been stalking Serena. He was arrested in the early hours Saturday morning, apprehended by police when he was spotted looking for Williams through a fence at the National Tennis Center.

Meanwhile, No. 6 Andre Agassi was in devastating form. Agassi defeated Ramon Delgado of Paraguay, 6-2, 6-1, 6-2, in 91 minutes in the third round. He has dropped 16 games in nine sets.

Sixth-seeded Monica Seles, a sentimental favorite, came close to losing to a 23-year-old qualifier from South Korea ranked No. 106 in the world.

Seles held a 6-1, 5-1 lead against Yoon-Joeng Cho, dropped seven straight games to lose the second set and trailed, 1-0, in the third before rallying to win, 6-1, 5-7, 6-3.

“My brain went away from the court,” Seles said.