AFP
London, June 30

Top seed Lleyton Hewitt of Australia strolled into the last sixteen of Wimbledon here on Saturday with a 6-2, 6-1, 6-3 win over outclassed Austrian Julian Knowle.

Hewitt will next meet Russia's Mikhael Youzhny, who he beat last week at Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, for a place in the quarter-finals.

The Australian took just 88 minutes to wrap up his victory against the 28-year-old Knowle whose career has been marked by spectacular mediocrity.

The player ranked 95 in the world had only won one tour match all year going into Wimbledon and he was playing in only the third Grand Slam tournament of his career having lost in the first round at Roland Garros and Wimbledon last year.

More embarrassingly, he has tried unsuccessfully on 13 occasions to qualify for Grand Slams in the past and it showed here on Saturday with the statistics of the match telling a sorry tale.

Hewitt hit 16 aces to Knowle's five, no double faults to the Austrian's 9, just four unforced errors to 15 and 24 winners to a paltry five.

More tellingly, Knowle managed only to win five points off the Hewitt serve in the entire match.

The Australian, who is the world number one and reigning US Open champion, has yet to drop a set at Wimbledon and is one of three Aussies left in the competition with Wayne Arthurs and Mark Philippoussis in the lower half of the draw.

"It will be difficult against Youzhny. I played last week and didn't play my best tennis," said Hewitt who won that third round match in the Netherlands in three tough sets.

"But the courts weren't playing that quickly there and it's going to be a different sort of match."

Hewitt added that he is looking forward to the second week but is taking nothing for granted especially with just himself and Britain's Tim Henman being the only two seeds left from the top sixteen.

"You win a few matches and it gets a lot easier but I didn't know too much about Knowle.

"It's not often you have two matches in a row where you have hardly seen the guy play. But I have that never-say-die attitude and I showed him that a couple of times when I was 40-love down and kept fighting."