CHRIS Guccione's confidence is high - and it needs to be.
The giant Victorian is the last Australian male standing at the US Open - entering just the second round - and is about to lead a flagging Davis Cup side to hostile Chile.
With Lleyton Hewitt sidelined due to hip surgery, Guccione suddenly finds himself Australia's leading active male tennis player.
He opened the year's fourth and final Grand Slam tournament at Flushing Meadows yesterday with a hard-fought 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (8-6) victory against American Jesse Levine.
"I haven't won too many of these Grand Slam matches so this feels pretty good," said the 201cm lefthander, who did well to ignore the partisan crowd in the intimate surroundings of Court 11.
"It was really about self-belief. I am feeling more and more comfortable in best-of-five-set matches and I thought I handled it pretty well today."
Guccione next plays Radek Stepanek, who has been ranked as high as eight.
The Czech is currently ranked 30th, 57 places ahead of the Australian, but Guccione has beaten him before and believes he can do so again.
"I played him twice this year already and it's one-all. He beat me pretty convincingly last time so hopefully I can get a bit of revenge," he said.
"I had a really good match against James Blake at the Olympics. I feel like I can keep this roll going."
Guccione shrugged off any suggestion that Hewitt's absence might put any extra pressure on him.
"I don't really think about it," he said.
"If I did it would just be a distraction so there's no point. Once you get on the court you can only do what you're capable of."
Guccione will find himself in a similar position when Australia travel to Antofagasta for a tough Davis Cup World Group play-off against Chile next month, but he said he was ready to lead the team to victory there.
"It's in the back of my mind. It's going to be an interesting tie for us and a tough one because Chile are always difficult to play down there but we'll go in with good spirits and we'll do our best," Guccione said.
"Lleyton's not going to be around forever and we're going to have to learn to deal with that eventually."
In a unusual highlight yesterday, Andy Roddick was putting the finishing touches on his opening-round blitzing of Fabrice Santoro when a serve got away from him and led to the Frenchman not contesting the final point.
Two points away from a 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 win, Roddick's 225kmh serve nearly knocked down Santoro, who was standing to the right of the T. Santoro felt Roddick did it intentionally, and barely got in position for the final serve as he let it pass for Roddick's 15th ace.
Roddick apologised to Santoro when they met at the net and said he was aiming for the T and hoped Santoro didn't think it intentional. But he did.
"He served straight at me for sure," Santoro said.
"That's a good strategy during the match, but it was almost over. He realised it was kind of a mistake."
Roddick said he understood Santoro being upset and would seek him out and talk to him to reiterate what he said on the court.
"I'm not going to go for someone up 6-2 6-2 5-2," Roddick said. "It was a bad miss, but it was a miss I hit very hard.To end like that it was a little disappointing. I can understand where he was coming from and I probably would be a little ticked off, too."
The ending marred an otherwise brilliant performance by Roddick, whose fastest serve was clocked at 237kmh in a ruthless display of 41 winners.
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