MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 30 -- Marat Safin just needed a little time to get loosened up against Lleyton Hewitt in the Australian Open final.
Once he overcame a terrible start and put his game on track, Safin proved unstoppable, winning in four sets Sunday night and deflating a crowd hungering for an Australian to win this event.
A win by Marat Safin, above, kept Lleyton Hewitt from becoming the first Australian male to win his national title since '76.
(Adrees Latif -- Reuters)
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Safin won his second Grand Slam title, and his first in five years, with a 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory that helped make up for two finals losses in the Russian's last three appearances on Melbourne Park's hard courts.
"It's really difficult to believe it," Safin said, looking at the winner's trophy. "You need to get to your room, sit down and believe this is yours."
Hewitt was trying to become the first Aussie man to win the Australian Open since Mark Edmondson in 1976, when the tournament was played on grass at Kooyong.
Looking tight, the fourth-seeded Safin was broken on four backhand errors in his first service game and won only three points while falling behind 3-0. His biggest weapon, his serve, was erratic.
"The first set, you really couldn't call it tennis," said Safin, who took a 6-5 career edge in matches with Hewitt. "I didn't believe I could play that badly."
He chalked it up to nerves.
"I tried to calm down," he said. "Then in the second set, I more or less got it together."
After the third-seeded Hewitt hit a forehand out on match point, the outgoing Safin was surprisingly subdued, making only one fist pump.
Safin, who got a good luck cell phone text message from the only other Russian to win a men's Grand Slam title -- Yevgeny Kafelnikov at the 1996 French Open and 1999 at Melbourne Park -- thanked everyone, including the crowd, "even though 90 percent of you were for Hewitt."
Seventh-seeded Serena Williams downed top-ranked Lindsay Davenport in the women's final Saturday and will rise to second in the new rankings. Australians Scott Draper and Samantha Stosur, a wild-card pair playing together for the first time, won the mixed doubles earlier Sunday, defeating Kevin Ullyett of Zimbabwe and Liezel Huber of South Africa, 6-2, 2-6, 7-6 (8-6).
Safin won the U.S. Open in 2000 and rose soon afterward to No. 1, then plunged to 86th after injuries in 2003. He started his comeback here last year and avenged his loss in the final to Roger Federer by ending the top-ranked Swiss star's 26-match winning streak in the semifinals.
The drought between Safin's first and second Grand Slam singles titles was the longest for any men's player in the Open era.
