Alize Cornet overcame jet lag and French teammate Gilles Simon some rustiness from the offseason to beat Taiwan on Saturday at the Hopman Cup. Cornet beat Hsieh Su-wei 6-4, 6-4 and Simon, who moved up in the rankings from No. 29 to 7 last year, defeated Lu Yen-hsun 6-3, 7-6 (8) to give France a 2-0 winning lead after the two singles matches. Cornet and Simon beat Hsieh and Lu 6-4, 7-6 (9) in mixed doubles to complete a 3-0 win, saving five set points in the tiebreaker. The French duo next play Italy on Tuesday. Simon had problems closing out the Taiwanese player in the second set, allowing Lu to break his service in the sixth game to get back into the match and force a tiebreaker. “I played great tennis and then when I was 6-3, 3-1 up I just lost my concentration and he played better,” Simon said. “I'm a little bit lucky because I should have lost the second set.” Both Cornet and Hsieh had problems with their serves in the opening set, and Hsieh was 0-for-4 in her breakpoint chances. Cornet succeeded once in five tries - in the ninth game when she took a 5-4 lead - then held serve and won the set with an ace. Before the second set started, Hsieh has a medical time out to receive treatment for a stiff neck, and the physiotherapist was back several times between games to give the Taiwanese player additional treatment. “It's something like 3 A.M. in France right now, so I was not in the best of shape,” Cornet said. “I felt out of breath at times, but it's nice to get the win.” It was the only Saturday match at the mixed teams event. On Sunday, Russia, featuring the brother-sister combination of Marat Safin and Dinara Safina, plays Italy's Flavia Pennetta and Simone Bolelli. Lleyton Hewitt, who hasn't played since the Beijing Olympics due to a hip injury and subsequent surgery, partners Casey Dellacqua when Australia takes on Germany in one of two matches Monday. The defending champion United States, represented by Meghann Shaughnessy and James Blake, takes on Slovakia in the other Monday match. The US, Australia, Germany and Slovakia are playing in Group A while Russia, France, Italy and Taiwan are in Group B. The winners of each group play in the final next Friday. Ivanovic to play Kvitova Top-seeded Ana Ivanovic will meet Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic in the first round of the Brisbane International. The reigning French Open champion, who has been training in Australia for the past three weeks, was drawn Saturday to play Kvitova in a center-court match at the new Pat Rafter Arena on Monday. Former world's No. 1 Ivanovic, 21, lost to Maria Sharapova in last year's Australian Open final. The Brisbane International, being played for the first time, is a joint ATP-WTA event and is one of several tune-up tournaments for the Australian Open which begins Jan. 19. Men's top-seeded Novak Djokovic, the defending Australian Open champion, was drawn Saturday to play Ernests Gulbis of Latvia. He is 2-0 against Gulbis in previous matches. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France, the No. 2 seed and losing finalist to Djokovic at Melbourne last year, will play Agustin Calleri of Argentina.
