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Hewitt, Molik give Australia win in Hopman Cup

Lleyton Hewitt produced his best performance of the Hopman Cup on Thursday, beating Andrey Golubev 6-3, 6-3 to help Australia beat Kazakhstan in the mixed team competition.

Hewitt won his first singles match of the team tournament against Ruben Bemelmans of Belgium but lost the second to Novak Djokovic. On Thursday, Hewitt said he played aggressive when he needed to.

‘I played him at the French Open a couple of years ago and he’s a great shot maker, so it was important for me to go out there and weather the storm against him,’ Hewitt said. ‘But not get too far back either where he can feel like he’s getting a lot of mid-court balls that he can dictate play and put me on the defensive. It was a bit of a balance for me.’

Also, Alicia Molik gave the Australians the win by beating Sesil Karatantcheva 6-3, 6-2 in the women’s singles match to make it 2-0. The mixed doubles match will follow.

Molik had lost her two previous matches while Karatantcheva was called in to replace the injured Yaroslava Shvedova.

In the other match, Justine Henin defeated Ana Ivanovic 6-4, 6-3 to give Belgium a 1-0 lead over Serbia.

The former top-ranked Henin, who had looked shaky in her earlier victories over Molik and Karatantcheva, seemed to have overcome her lingering elbow injury despite dropping a break early on.

After winning the first set, she took an early lead in the second set and extended it to 4-1 before closing out the match.

Djokovic will next play Bemelmans as Serbia needs to win just one of the three matches to reach Saturday’s final.