By Sean Bradley
© Perth Now
The 4th day of the Hopman Cup brings more excitement as teams get closer to Saturday’s final and the chase for the title. France and Great Britain played yesterday, as well as Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt playing a singles match against Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev and singles matches between Justine Henin and Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic and Ruben Bemelmans.
France stays alive as they beat the Great Britain 2-1 last night. Kristina Mladenovic beat fellow youngster Laura Robson 6-4, 3-6, 6-0 and the doubles team of Mladenovic and Nicolaus Mahut beat Robson and Andy Murray 6-4, 6-2, while Mahut lost to Murray 7-6, 7-6. With this loss, Great Britain is out of the running. Still, Murray kept his head up, “"It was an exciting match because there's a contrast in styles. He likes to serve and volley and I was sitting on a lot of passing shots, a lot of short, sharp rallies. I love going up against serve and volleyers because I grew up playing against my brother, who plays like that, so I got used to it from a young age.”
Lleyton Hewitt finished his singles games by beating Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev 6-3, 6-3. Hewitt won the game in an astounding 63 minutes, starting the game 5-1 in the first set. Of the match, Hewitt said, “I felt like I was able to be aggressive when I needed to. I had to serve well and he likes stepping in as we saw a couple of nights ago against Djokovic. Especially on the second serve return, so I really wanted to try and take that away from him and I think my percentage was pretty good out there.”
Ana Ivanovic also played yesterday, taking on Justine Henin and losing to her 6-4, 6-3, keeping Belgium’s hopes of a final still alive. Henin remains undefeated against Ivanovic and said, “I’m really happy the way I played. I had a tough start, my energy was pretty low at the beginning of the match and I was bit sleepy and the time. She put a lot of pressure at the beginning and after that I just tried to come back into the court, take every opportunity at the net and be aggressive at the returns, so I can be very happy with the way I played.” Novak Djokovic went on to play later, facing Ruben Bemelmans and beating him 6-3, 6-2. This win ensures that the top-seated Serbian makes it to the Cup finals on Saturday.