It Wasn’t a G’Day for Hewitt, Coria in Sydney

You hear it so many times that the four words have practically turned a wish into a demand: Tennis Needs A Rivalry.

(Women need not worry. There are plenty out there when everyone is, well, somewhat injury-free.)

So men’s tennis finally delivered one over the weekend: Lleyton Hewitt of Australia vs. the Argentine Davis Cup squad, most notably Guillermo Coria.

Coria vs. Hewitt harkened back to the days of Connors vs. McEnroe -- the bitterness, the name calling and the gesturing. There were also reports of spitting, clutching, grabbing and, oh yeah, some very fine moments of tennis during Hewitt’s four-set victory on the opening day of the Davis Cup quarterfinal in Sydney.

Apparently, Hewitt’s exhortations of “Come on!” pushed Coria to tell reporters afterward that, on the court, “you really feel like killing him.”

Hewitt called Coria “a sore loser,” said his opponent spit at someone from Hewitt’s fan club, The Fanatics, and compared Argentine tennis stars to Argentine soccer players in terms of behavior.

Some of The Fanatics wore T-shirts that read “Where’s Willy?” -- a reference to the ongoing drug case involving Guillermo Canas of Argentina. Canas did not play in the matches at Sydney, having recently revealed that he is under investigation for a positive drug test.

As for Hewitt, he later suffered his first Davis Cup singles defeat since the 2001 final. David Nalbandian beat him on Sunday in straight sets, ending Hewitt’s nine-match winning streak in singles.

“It was a weird situation on the weekend ... I didn’t feel like I did anything wrong at all throughout the match,” Hewitt said on a conference call Monday with American reporters. “I felt like their captain Alberto Mancini was definitely trying to put Coria in that frame of mind right from the start, him questioning and going to the referee the whole time.

”... There was spitting involved again. There were a lot of incidents that added up to it not quite being a tennis match.”

He was asked if the bad blood might carry over.

“There’s a couple of guys there I definitely wouldn’t go and have a beer with, that’s for sure,” Hewitt said. “That’s just the way I see it. They’re obviously very fortunate -- there’s a lot of [Argentines] on the tour and in the locker rooms they can hang around with and a lot of their close mates out there.

“At the moment, the only English-speaking guys are Andy Roddick, James Blake, a couple of the American guys, Tim Henman and myself. We’re outweighed in the actual speaking department in the locker room.”

*

Croatia Rolling

Things were a bit quieter over in Split, Croatia.

Croatia’s victory against the United States in the first round of Davis Cup at Carson in March might have been its high point in 2005

Croatia will play host to Russia in a semifinal in September.

Ljubicic and Ancic have had mixed results on the tour since the first round of Davis Cup.

Ancic won a tournament on grass in the Netherlands, but lost to Feliciano Lopez of Spain in the fourth round of Wimbledon. Other than the grass-court title, he has not gotten past the round of 16 since Carson.

Similarly, Ljubicic, who started the year in fine form by reaching four finals, has slumped since Carson, with one exception -- he won a clay-court event in Zagreb, Croatia. But he lost in the first round at the French Open and Wimbledon and hasn’t been able to reach a quarterfinal other than the Zagreb tournament.

*

Ups and Downs

Andy Murray’s first pro tournament in California was an unqualified success. The 18-year-old Scot, who seized center stage this year at Wimbledon by reaching the third round and taking Nalbandian to five sets, won a $75,000 Challenger event Sunday at the Seascape Sports Club in Aptos, beating another wild-card entrant, Rajeev Ram, 6-4, 6-3.

Murray, the youngest winner of the tournament, did not lose a set in five matches. The performance has landed him in the top 200 in the world.

He has changed his schedule and is planning to stay in North America rather than return home, opting to play a sensible mix of challengers and tour-level ATP tournaments, starting with this week’s event at Indianapolis.

After that, he will head to Canada for two challengers, one in Grandby and a $100,000 tournament in Vancouver.

At the other end of it, former Wimbledon semifinalist Alexandra Stevenson has struggled in her first few events since returning from right shoulder surgery.

Stevenson lost her opening match at tournaments in Los Gatos, Calif., and Louisville, and went out in the second round of qualifying at a WTA Tour event at Cincinnati, 6-4, 6-1, to Liga Dekmeijere of Latvia. Her ranking has dropped to 1,008.

*

Notable

* Lindsay Davenport, citing the back injury she suffered in the Wimbledon final, pulled out of her World Team Tennis matches this week. Davenport, who was scheduled to play for the Springfield Lasers Tuesday and Wednesday, said Monday she hoped to be ready for next week’s tour event at Stanford.

* Testing of electronic line-calling technology at Arthur Ashe Stadium is scheduled to run through Friday. Officials will then decide whether the system, called Hawkeye, will be used during the U.S. Open.

* Mike McClune, 15, of Irvine secured a spot in qualifying for the Mercedes-Benz Cup at UCLA. McClune won a pre-qualifying event at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, beating USC’s Kaes Van’t Hof, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, in the final.

Singles qualifying is Saturday and Sunday, and the main draw starts Monday. The draw will be held Friday night. Possibilities for wild cards include Blake and Mark Philippoussis.