Hewitt and Safin earn impressive wins in windy Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, Feb 28 (Reuters) Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Safin, two former world number ones, made light of strong winds to earn morale-boosting victories in their opening round-robin matches at the Las Vegas Open.

Second seed Hewitt, who missed last week's event in Rotterdam because of a hamstring tear, beat American Vince Spadea 6-3 6-3.

Safin, fresh after a week off, defeated Austrian Stefan Koubek 7-5 6-2.

Two-time former champion Hewitt, renowned as one of the best wind players on the ATP Tour, continued his mental stranglehold over Spadea as he made it seven wins out of seven against the American.

Spadea gave himself a glimmer of hope when he fought back from 3-0 in the second set to level at 3-3 but Hewitt broke for 5-3 and held on to clinch the match.

Victory over Swede Thomas Johansson in his second match will ensure he advances to the quarter-finals.

''It's never easy in those conditions,'' the Australian said yesterday.

''You just have to be consistent, get a lot of balls in the court and try not to self-destruct.'' Third seed Safin came through a testing first set before beating 30-year-old Koubek for the third time in three meetings.

The Russian did not face a single break point on his serve in the match and putting him in pole position to qualify for the last eight. He plays compatriot Igor Kunitsyn in his second match.

Safin said: ''At the beginning of the match it was pretty tough but at the end I started to play much better. When the weather is normal, you can start to play your best tennis, when it's like this it's more mental than normal tennis.'' Seventh seed Tim Henman, playing for the first time this year after injury and illness, crushed Nicolas Mahut of France 6-1 6-2 in his first round-robin match.

The world number 37 Briton, who took a wildcard into the event having not played since late October, was in fine form, wrapping up victory in just over an hour.

''To really play as consistently as I did, to not drop serve and having not played competitively for so long, it was a little bit surprising, to be honest,'' Henman said.

Top seed James Blake begins the defence of his title later on Tuesday when he plays Russian Evgeny Korolev.

Reuters SBA RN0449