General / Editor / 07 February 2007 /

Lleyton Hewitt is ready to lead Australia in their Davis Cup clash in Belgium and is not worried by the prospect of playing on clay.

The Aussies suffered a 5-0 whitewash at the semi-final stage last year at Parque Roca in Buenos Aires, with the clay-court specialists from South America far too good for the Australians.

Hewitt has slipped out of the world's top ten and suffered a third-round, four-set defeat to Chilean Fernando Gonzalez at the Australian Open back in January.

The right-hander has been troubled with injury in recent times and it was touch-and-go whether or not he would make the year's first Grand Slam in Melbourne.

However, the controversial Adelaide-born star is now fully fit and has been practicing for the past ten days in Belgium ahead of the Davis Cup showdown and feels his recent results on clay can give him confidence going into the weekend's match-up in Liege.

"Beating (Albert) Costa in Spain and (Gustavo) Kuerten in Brazil, you don't get much bigger than that," he said.

"I know what I'm capable of and I know how to do it in big situations when the pressure's on and I look forward to the challenge yet again.

"I've hit for enough hours in the last week, week and a half now. I'm happy where my game is on clay at the moment."

Hewitt leads an Australian side that includes Chris Guccione, Peter Luczak and Paul Hanley, while the Belgians boast world number 34 Olivier Rochus and his brother Christophe, as well as Kristof Vliegen and Dick Norman.

Hewitt admitted that playing on clay is not ideal for his team, who are used to the faster hard courts, but feels they have prepared accordingly for such an important match.

"It's hard for everyone coming from a different surface, the sliding on clay," he added. "I feel like all the guys in our team have done absolutely everything we can do to have a result fall our way over the weekend."

In an emerging market Betfair punters make Belgium the 1.5 favourites for the tie with Australia available at 2.72.

'.$sign_up['title'].'

'; } } ?>

:

:

:

?

: