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Now for the title No. 1 Hewitt closes on season-ending Masters Cup
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Already assured of finishing the year at No. 1, Lleyton Hewitt moved Saturday to within one match of concluding the 2001 ATP tour with his sixth title. The 20-year-old Aussie cruised through his semifinal against 21-year-old Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero to move into Sunday's final against Sebastien Grosjean at the season-ending Masters Cup. And he did it while struggling with a leg injury and less than 20 hours after defeating compatriot Patrick Rafter to overhaul Gustavo Kuerten on the Champions Race and become the youngest man to hold the No. 1 ranking. He didn't show any signs of trouble in his 6-4, 6-3 win over Ferrero, although he said he only really played to satisfy a near capacity crowd at the 17,500-seat SuperDome in Sydney. "I didn't know if I was going to be able to play," said Hewitt, who injured his left hamstring in a round-robin match against Andre Agassi and aggravated it against Rafter. "I came out, mainly for the crowd. "I didn't give myself much of a chance when I went out on court but I just tried to forget about it and see what happened." Hewitt said he would continue treatment overnight and hoped to be fit for the decider, but conceded that the title wasn't his only priority: "If I win or lose, it's no big deal." He now has a season-high 78 wins, including his first Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open. Grosjean advanced on a 6-4, 6-2 win over No. 5 Yevgeny Kafelnikov. The 23-year-old Frenchman, who beat Kafelnikov at the Paris Indoor final earlier this month, opened here with a loss against Hewitt but has improved with every subsequent match. "With Lleyton you have to be at 100 percent all the time," Grosjean said. "You can never slacken off -- even the slightest bit -- or he's straight at you. That's what happened to me in Monday's match." The pair are scheduled to meet again when Australia hosts France in the Nov. 30-Dec. 2 Davis Cup final at Melbourne, but both players say the different surface and format means the Masters Cup results have no bearing on the Davis Cup. Grosjean needed five set points to win the opening set against Kafelnikov but dominated the second with a five-game winning sequence. "It's unbelievable. I played so well," said Grosjean. "For the last three weeks I have been playing great tennis ... I'm confident for tomorrow. "I'm going to play the new No. 1, here in Sydney, so I have nothing to lose." Grosjean, who reached the semifinals at the Australian and the French Open this year, moved ahead of Patrick Rafter to No. 6 in the rankings -- his first top 10 year-end ranking. He attributed his recent winning form to a rest from the tour when he was recovering from an ankle injury. "I didn't play for six weeks this summer, so I want to play," he said. "I'm enjoying being on the court and, you know, I'm not really tired." Hewitt took the first set of his semifinal in 46 minutes when Ferrero, A Masters Cup rookie, skewed a return wide. After losing the opening four games of the second, Ferrero rallied to 4-3 before Hewitt held serve to go 5-3 and then broke serve again to win. Kuerten, the defending titlist, lost all three of his round-robin matches here and dropped nine of his last 10 matches this season. The Brazilian made a dramatic charge to No. 1 last year, dropping his first match at the Masters Cup in Portugal before clinching the title and the top spot with back-to-back wins against Pete Sampras and Agassi. He will finish 2001 at No. 2, with Andre Agassi at No. 3. Before Hewitt, Jimmy Connors had been the youngest player to achieve the year-end No. 1 ranking. He achieved the feat at 22 and three months in 1974, the year after computerized rankings were introduced. Hewitt is one month younger than Marat Safin was when the Russian briefly held the top spot in November 2000.
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