Henman's aggression achieves emphatic victory

Tim Henman cruised to a straight-sets victory over the South Korean Hyung-Taik Lee to move into the third round of the Cincinnati Masters yesterday.

The British No 1 won 6-3, 6-3 and never really looked in danger of losing despite having his serve broken by Lee in the second set. Henman achieved the first break of serve in the fifth game of the opening set with a mixture of chip-charge tactics and cross-court drives.

Lee suffered his second break when a backhand pass from Henman earned him the first set. Henman survived a break point in the first game of the second set and then broke Lee's serve to take a 2-0 lead. After holding his serve Henman again used the chip-charge to good effect to earn a second break and a 4-0 lead.

But Lee was then given a glimmer of hope as he broke Henman for the first time and held his own serve to trail 4-2. The next two games went with serve and Henman looked in trouble as he faced two break points when serving for the match. But two fine first serves when he was 15-40 helped Henman survive both break points and he then closed out the set and the match.

Greg Rusedski also made it into the third round, but his passage was far less smooth against the Argentinian Gaston Gaudio. The player who had defeated Andre Agassi in the previous round took Rusedski to two tie-breaks, although the British No 2 took both of those comfortably for a 7-6, 7-6 win.

Although both men had the chance to break the first set went to a tie break, won 7-2 by Rusedski. The second set was also a tense affair, Rusedski often using his big serve to get him out of trouble before completing an easy 7-1 tie-break success.

It was a good day for the Australians on Tuesday when the fifth-seeded Lleyton Hewitt and the eighth-seeded Patrick Rafter won their first-round matches.

Rafter ignored the sweltering heat and the fact that he knew little about the game of the Spaniard Albert Portas to record a 7-5, 6-3 win. In the evening, under floodlights, Hewitt managed to break away from Magnus Norman, of Sweden, at the end of the first set to earn a comfortable 6-4, 6-1 victory.

The third seed, Marat Safin, was affected by an injured knee and suffered another first-round loss, this time to the unseeded Guillermo Cañas, of Argentina, 6-3, 6-3.

Pete Sampras, who has won the title here three times and is seeded ninth, advanced to the second round by defeating Nicolas Lapentti, of Ecuador, 6-3, 6-2. The defending champion, Thomas Enqvist, was comprehensively dispatched, 6-4, 6-0 by Nicolas Kiefer of Germany.