TENNIS/French Open Championships:Yesterday the broken sunshine was a balm. It drew out the people, the smiles and for the first time spectators shook off their pashminas and bare arms flashed around Roland Garros. In these spring days court Philippe Chatrier becomes vibrant among the crushed brick and the folded-chair, old-world glamour.

Days like these and you can forget that beyond its superficial beauty the centre court has an unrivalled brutality to its character that sets it apart from the other three Grand Slams. Only the players that are prepared to suffer ever do well in Paris.

Of that group, it is Lleyton Hewitt whose heart quickens with the prospect of a war in midday heat. Yesterday Hewitt found his first battle against Argentina's Gaston Gaudio and not for the first time in his career, the 26-year-old Australian showed he is a mongrel by choice.

Hewitt started so slowly that after an hour and a half, he found himself two sets down and looking across the net at the French Open champion of three years ago warming to the idea of a place in the third round.

While Gaudio's ranking had dropped from 32 at the beginning of the year to 72, his instincts were telling him he just had to reach a little more to take this match.

A natural shot maker, Gaudio was hitting the lines with depth and precision and undoubtedly had Hewitt unnaturally quiet. The fist pumps, the ranting, were little in evidence.

"The first two sets he played fantastic I had to find a way to turn things around," said the Australian. "I felt I had to just hang in. I wasn't going to lay down out there."

Those who have watched Hewitt in the decade since winning his first professional tour title as a 16-year-old in Adelaide have rarely shied away from admiration for his doggedness. His profanity-driven game has soured some opinion but Hewitt's gloves-off hostility is second to none in the world of tennis.

In the third set Gaudio was called for a number of foot faults on his serve. That appeared to shake his confidence fractionally and Hewitt picked up on it. Serving for 2-1, another foot fault followed by a second serve that was too long handed over a critical break and Hewitt had found his first entry point to the match.

Gaudio at this point was working Hewitt so relentlessly off his backhand side that the ball was often kicking from a foot inside the service area and popping sideways into the corporate hospitality boxes to gasps from the crowd. But every so often Hewitt returned one, then two and it snowballed. He took the third set 6-2 and in the fourth immediately broke the Argentine in the first game for 1-0. After three hours and two sets each, Hewitt looked Gaudio in the eye on level terms for the first time.

By then the former French Open winner was broken. Gaudio's doubts had begun in the third set at around the same time as Hewitt's hawkish spirit inflated and his raging "Come On" began to cut across the stadium. After three hours and 28 minutes he had climbed out of the hole and bagged the match.

"As the match went on my level lifted a bit and that put pressure on him," added Hewitt. "In the fifth I think it's fair to say he was doing more running than in the first. Physically, I felt I outlasted him out there today."

Raphael Nadal had no such mountains to climb, dismissing Flavio Cipolla 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.