Hewitt on course to maintain top status

The defending champion Lleyton Hewitt scrambled into the quarter-finals of the Pacific Life Open Masters Series event at Indian Wells in California yesterday after winning a 6-7, 6-4, 6-3 battle with Argentina's Guillermo Coria.

Hewitt will face either Marat Safin or the American qualifier Robby Ginepri and a victory in that match will ensure he maintains his world No 1 ranking ahead of Andre Agassi.

Hewitt took 2hr 35min to subdue Coria, who outplayed the Australian for much of the first set. Also through is the Australian Open finalist Rainer Schuettler of Germany. Schuettler beat Max Mirnyi of Belarus 6-3 6-4.

Meanwhile, Tim Henman believes he can only get better this season despite suffering his third competitive singles defeat in four matches.

The British No 1 struggled to cope with the power of Agustin Calleri's ground strokes and lost 6-4, 7-6, to the Argentinian in the second round on Wednesday. However, he felt there was no reason to be too downhearted as he continued to feel his way back to full fitness, having missed the opening months of the season with a shoulder injury.

"In terms of my game in general there isn't much wrong," he said. "I can certainly get better, but the more I put myself in these situations, the more matches I play, the better I will become."

Henman looked impressive in his first-round match against Jan-Michael Gambill, but from the start on Wednesday a repeat performance looked unlikely. The South American broke Henman in the first game of the match to win the first set 6-4 and won the second on a tie-break.

Henman said: "The better player won. It certainly wasn't through lack of effort. You break down the match into individual games and I pretty much donated my serve in the first set and couldn't create any opportunities on his serve.

"I think that's all credit to him because he was playing too well for me. But if you give a guy a break of serve like that, it just goes to heighten his confidence even more. My shoulder definitely knows it's had a tough work-out. I'm confident there won't be a reaction. But I'm back competing now and I've got to build from it."

In yesterday's first women's quarter-final, the top seed, Kim Clijsters of Belgium, beat the American Chanda Rubin, the No 8 seed, 6-2, 6-3.