Warrior Lleyton Hewitt has a toe in door at Wimbledon

THE doctors Lleyton Hewitt canvassed about his troublesome toe must have watched with amazement his cavorting celebrations on court one.

THE handful of doctors Lleyton Hewitt canvassed about his troublesome toe must have watched with amazement his cavorting celebrations on court one on the opening day at Wimbledon.

Here was the elder journeyman of tennis, ranked 70 in the world and more than a decade since he had lifted the trophy, who just knocked off the 11th seeded Stanislas Wawrinka in straight sets. This was the same player who had been repeatedly told that his big toe, misshapen and chronically arthritic, was so wretched that "you're done".

Hewitt's next opponent, the German dreadlocked big server Dustin Brown, might have wished Hewitt took the many good doctors' opinions and hobbled off to a media commentary career. The Australian has found a purple patch of form since progressing through to the semi-finals at Queen's Club last week and is utterly relishing the underdog status of his 2013 Wimbledon campaign.

Brown, most notable for a low-key doubles win in Casablanca last year, was being scouted by Tony Roche as Hewitt's match was in progress, such was the little information known of the rangy player. Brown had extracted a small surprise win himself, beating Spain's Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-3 6-3 6-3.

"I've never hit with him, never really seen a lot of him," Hewitt said. "Yeah, he's a serve-volleyer, an aggressive sort of player, from what little I've seen. Big forehand, big serve as well. Yeah, I'll have to be on my game. But for now I'll enjoy the win."

Hewitt, now pain-free due to his radical surgery last year, has taken heart from his medical fightback.

"In all my research beforehand, which was very extensive, I never found another athlete that had it done, or had it done and tried to come back and play any kind of sport," he said. "So it's something I'm pretty proud of as well."

Hewitt said that in last year's Wimbledon round-one match he was barely 50 per cent fit, so to be in great shape and playing with force with his solid first-round 6-4 7-5 6-3 victory over Wawrinka was now to be savoured - hence his enthusiastic histrionics post-match that involved leaping about, fist-pumping and borrowing one of the Fanatics caps and plonking it on his head backwards.

Hewitt's victory was the only Australian celebration of day one, after Marinko Matosevic and Matt Reid lost their first-round matches. Matosevic stretched Frenchman Guillaume Rufin to four sets but lost 6-1 4-6 6-4 6-3.

Qualifier Reid, 22, said he would benefit from the experience of his grand slam debut, going down 6-2 6-2 6-4 to Czech veteran Radek Stepanek.