PARIS -- They had played once before, in the quarterfinals at Miami. They will play again -- oh, maybe three or four thousand times, probably a few dozen in the finals of Grand Slam tournaments or Davis Cup deals. But as Andy Roddick, 18, of the United States, and Lleyton Hewitt, 20, of Australia -- their ballcaps backward; their determination and confidence out front; the skill, grit and "You Want Some of ME?" testosteronian 'tude raging even more than their hormones -- kept drilling tennis balls at each other across la terre battue late Friday afternoon, everybody knew this was something special. The dawn of a new era. The rejoining of a long-dormant battle between the game's two previously dominating nations. A stark contrast of styles between a 6'3" slugger from flatland Omaha and a 5'11" counter-puncher from coastal Adelaide. The beginning of maybe the game's Next Great Rivalry.

Unless, of course, something totally unexpected intervened. Fire. Flood. Substance abuse. A date with Jenna at Chuy's.

Which, of course, is exactly what happened after the two young guns had split sets, 1-1, and were just about to split games 2-2. In that fourth game of the third set, after two deuces, nine points and with Hewitt serving to hold, another sharp groundie from the Australian sent Roddick racing into the far corner of Court Philippe Chartrier. But this time the American slipped on the damp dirt, rolled over grotesquely on his ankle ... and didn't get up.

Indeed, the teenager -- who was coming off that dramatic passion play of two nights earlier in which he served 37 aces past Michael Chang while fighting off painful cramps -- lay in a heap, first yelping then obviously fighting off tears, knowing his lithe young body had failed him again. It wasn't his ankle, but his left hamstring that was strained.

Eventually, Roddick got up and limped to the sideline. A trainer wrapped his thigh and the kid tried to continue playing -- even as his coach, Tarik Benhabiles, and his Davis Cup mentor, Pat McEnroe, both waved the baseball sign for "safe," to signal him to quit. But when Roddick couldn't keep the ball in play -- he got to 15-40 on his serve in the next game -- he knew it was time to give up.

"I'm not going to stop without trying. I wanted to hit one last winner at Roland Garros this year," he said smiling. "I stepped into one forehand, got greedy, wanted another one. But I fenced it and I decided 'okay.' "

Hewitt, the blond-haired sprinter who won seven tournaments as a teenager, had comprehensively beaten Roddick at the Erricson, 6-3, 6-2, when his opponent was also betrayed by a muscle pull in his hand. While Miami already had been a breakthrough event for Roddick -- he had defeated former No. 1s Marcelo Rios and Pete Sampras in previous rounds -- his initial confrontation there with his new-found Aussie playmate could turn out to be historically much more noteworthy.

While Roddick can impose his enormous power on most opponents, Hewitt could be already the fastest man in the game -- and in Paris he simply raced Roddick's rockets down (from his huge first and second deliveries to his slingshot forehand) and sent them hurtling back into empty spaces. Indeed, he easily out-served the master server for the two plus hours the pair was on the clay by a stunning 15 to nil.

Roddick with no aces? Moreover, Roddick had to stave off seven Hewitt set points in the opening frame before the tall Cornhusker won it in a tiebreak (8-6). Looking not a whit concerned, Hewitt took control in the second, winning 6-4 and looking the more confident player.

"We were battling," said Roddick, who constantly applauded his opponent and kept shouting "nice shot" on many of Hewitt's winners.

"I mean, it was good tennis, great. Two contrasting styles. The personality aspect. I was having a lot of fun out there. I wish we could have finished it. I know three sets, four sets, five sets against Lleyton, I was going to have to hit a lot of balls."

Not to mention, a wall. Roddick said his legs were still sore from the Chang match and he was having trouble moving to his right early in the second set. "It was starting to tighten up, my upper hamstring," he said. The slip and the fall "strained it a little bit too much."

It was over a year ago that Roddick had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee; he was back playing within two weeks. But there has been concern over the wear his intensely twisting and torquing physical game tears at his raw, teenage body. His older brother, John (now the assistant coach of the recent NCAA championship team at Georgia), was a blossoming star before he wrecked his back while playing for the Bulldogs. Locker room sources say A-Rod requires as much inflammatories and treatment as many tour veterans.

"There's no serious damage," Roddick said. He insisted he would be ready to play in a few weeks on the grass in London, both at Queens and at Wimbledon. "You know, what I feel, I mean, I'm walking on it," he said. "I can walk, with a little bit of a limp. But I can walk." As for the rivalry with Hewitt? "I definitely think it has the potential," Roddick laughed. "He's going to hold up his end of the bargain. I just hope I can."

"We're going to have a lot of great matches, a lot of different surfaces," a mutually complimentary Hewitt said. "[Andy] is going to be seeded in these kinds of tournaments very shortly, which is going to help us get closer to playing each other in the later rounds."

Most of them, hopefully, to a more compelling closure.

***

Did you say Bill Russell? Leon Russell? Brussels sprouts? In the qualies (the qualifying tournament, for those who have not studied at the Sorbonne), Oliver Patience of France had an obscure American down, 6-4, 5-4, 30-40, match point, about to finish him off with an easy volley as his opponent was stranded helpless in the alley. Instead, Patience got an attack of the dread disease "Im," framed the sitter into the net ... and eventually lost.

In the second round a former back-to-back French champion, Sergi Bruguera, had an unknown American down 6-4, 7-5, 3-6, when Bruguera came down with sinusitis, a fever and a cold -- these Paris summers can be dangerous -- walked off the court ... and lost.

In the third round on Friday Xavier Malisse, the ponytailed Belgian who has a ton of Johnny Depp in him if not a lot of depth, had whipped through a 6-1 fourth set against a mostly unrecognizable American -- "But I know him, it should be good for me," Malisse had boasted -- and had break point in the 10th game of the fifth set when he started suffering cramps. Malisse couldn't convert, faltered, dropped the game and the set ... and also lost.

Voila! Just like that, the only American man left at Roland Garros -- at least with hair because Andre Agassi is still alive in the lower half of the bracket -- is Michael Russell, from that glamorous tennis hotbed ... Detroit. "This is great," he said, "Now I don't have to go through the drive-through at McDonald's anymore."

In truth Russell, a stocky, freckle-faced 23-year old, who before this week had piled up precisely two victories on the major tour level, seems much more fun after his matches than he is during them -- when he uses his massive, fullback's thighs to run all day and in Paris seemed to rely on mysterious sequences of events to befall his beleagured foes. "I don't know ...I guess it's a blessing ... It is pretty amazing," he said. "But once I get in a main draw, I know my fitness is my main strength so I know playing three out of five, it's going to be tough to beat me."

Actually, you could have fooled a lot of no-name people who have beaten the daylights out of Russell since he left the University of Miami as the seventh-ranked college player in the land. (Internationally, that translates to approximately 7000th, All-Lands). Nonetheless: "Playing satellites I went from being ranked in the 1400s to the 300s in two months," he said. "So many European players, they don't play college and go right to the pros. I figured I would try."

Russell has spent the past couple of years figuring a way to try and get out of places like New Delhi and Ho Chi Minh City. "I don't know if you've talked to many players who spent a whole month in India," he said. (Hardly any of his audience had talked to Indians who'd spent a whole month in India.) "I was nine weeks in Asia and proceeded to get about five ATP points." So he prayed for hot water in the hotels and lost 20 pounds before straightening up and flying right -- at least off that particular continent. Before last summer, Russell spent five or six weeks on clay and didn't win a match. But he kept grinding -- like the Spaniards he used to admire on TV. He kept training. "Like an animal. I would play a match and then run three miles. I could always tell myself when it gets tough in the fifth, 'I've done fitness before, harder than this. I've been more tired.'"

That's if the son of the general manager of the ATP tennis center in Florida ever got to a fifth. Much less, into a draw. In Paris, Russell was renting an old apartment with a room on the sunny side of the building and no air conditioning and was waking up in the middle of the night sweating in 100 degree temperatures. Then he switched to a room in the shade. Then he switched again. "Fourth round and finally I get air conditioning," he said.

Who knew what happens when you make the final sixteen? Who knew squat about anything at a major?

Russell was asked what he thought about facing his next opponent, who just happens to be Gustavo Kuerten, the defending champion.

"Who is he? What's his name?" the unknown American said. He was smiling. Ear to ear. Tennis players who chart a career from Detroit to Ho Chi Minh City learn to always keep smiling.

***

Answer of the day: From (Sweet) Yevgeny Kafelnikov.

Reporter: "You've played two lucky losers ... a guy who was playing in the main draw for the first time ... When you play this type of guy, does he present a different problem than Pete Sampras?"

Kafelnikov: "I'd rather play Sampras on the clay than those guys."

Curry Kirkpatrick, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, first covered the French Open in 1976. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.