Some people’s thoughts are turning to grass – Andy Murray, Tim Henman, Richard Gasquet and Marin Cilic among them. Cilic is a young Croat who has been given a wild card into the Artois Championships, starting on Monday week at Queen’s Club. It is an interesting gesture to offer extra grass-court time to a player from the country whom Great Britain meet in September in a critical Davis Cup tie on this very peculiar surface. John Lloyd, the captain, said it was strange, which is remarkably understated for him.

Cilic is a graduate of the San Remo Academy run by Bob Brett, the Australian who coached Boris Becker and Goran Ivanisevic to Wimbledon notoriety and was heavily favoured to become the LTA’s performance director four years ago before the previous regime plumped for David Felgate. Brett asked the tournament to consider Cilic’s progress – the 18-year-old, who stands at 6ft 5in, has qualified for the past two grand-slam tournaments – and they gave him the nod. The LTA may be having a quiet fume.

After an hour and three quarters of his second-round match at Roland Garros yesterday, Lleyton Hewitt might have been sniffing the scent of freshly mown grass. He was two sets down to Gastón Gaudio, the Argentinian who had beaten him en route to the 2004 title, and not a lot was happening on the positive side. Hewitt, the 2002 Wimbledon champion, has had a lean time of late, suffering a few bumps and bruises and having to travel without a coach or his once omnipresent parents, Glynn and Sherilyn.

But you will never shake the indomitability from Hewitt, whatever may happen to him. He rides through storms and tends to come out stronger for the experience. Thus it was not a real surprise – given his level of self-belief and Gaudio’s notorious flakiness – to see the Australian win 4-6, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4, 6-2 in 3hr 34min.

Much work remains to be done but there is a sense that a fourth-round meeting between Hewitt and Rafael Nadal – replicating the semi-final in Hamburg the week before last when the mighty Spaniard was nearly toppled by the Australian scrapper – is closing in. What a joy that would be, especially as there is a genuine fire back in Hewitt’s eyes after a ruinous Australian summer when Roger Rasheed, his coach, walked out on him and he lost in the third round of the Australian Open to Fernando González, the eventual runner-up.

“It’s been a bit stop-start, but if you get a lot of matches and wins under your belt, it becomes second nature,” Hewitt said. “I haven’t had serious injuries, I’ve been getting on a roll and then something niggling comes along that sets you back for a couple of weeks. I’ve just got back on the horse and started again.”

Some of that time was spent with Gil Reyes, Andre Agassi’s renowned fitness trainer, who offered a fresh insight into what levels of fitness a player of Hewitt’s advanced years – he’s 26 now – can attain. Reyes will have been thrilled with the response shown in the past month and, with Nadal and grass on the horizon, there could be more in the offing.

So much of clay-court success has to do with patience and it was rather apt that Olivier Patience, a wild card from France ranked No 129 in the world, should reach the last 32 for the first time, beating Mariano Zabaleta, of Argentina, in five sets and joining such understated figures as Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Michael Llodra still flying the tricolour.