Reigning French Open champion Rafael Nadal and former U.S. Open titlist Lleyton Hewitt were among Wednesday's winners at the USTA National Tennis Center. The second seeded Nadal, meanwhile, became the first player to reach the third round, as he straight-setted feisty American Scoville Jenkins, 6-4, 7-5, 6-4. With the match tied at 5-5 in the second set, Nadal broke Jenkins with a chance to then serve out the set. Jenkins, though, moved within a point of breaking right back only to see Nadal win the final five points to lock up the set and take a commanding two sets lead. The 19-year-old Nadal then got an early break in the third set to wrap up the match. Nadal is playing in his third U.S. Open, having been knocked out in the second round in both 2003 and '04. The 2001 champion Hewitt humbled 2002 French Open champion Albert Costa of Spain 6-1, 6-2, 6-1 in a mere 1 hour, 20 minutes amid windy and humid conditions at Ashe Stadium. Hewitt broke Costa's serve on seven occasions and held his own serve all 11 times, and Costa committed 35 unforced errors, compared to only 17 miscues for the speedy Aussie star. The 24-year-old Hewitt is now a stellar 30-5 for his career in Flushing Meadows, where he'll meet Argentine Jose Acasuso in the second round of this 2005 fortnight. The former world No. 1 Hewitt, seeded third here, was last year's U.S. Open runner-up to Roger Federer and beat the legendary Pete Sampras in the '01 final. Hewitt was the Australian Open runner-up to big Russian Marat Safin back in January. American Taylor Dent also punched his ticket to the round of 64 by besting German Lars Burgsmuller 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4. The 25th-seeded Dent fired 18 aces on his way to a second-round bout against Spaniard Nicolas Almagro. Fifteenth-seeded Slovakian Dominik Hrbaty won his opener by holding off Italian Andreas Seppi 6-2, 6-4, 6-7 (6-8), 6-2, while the men's opening round officially concluded when 17th-seeded Spaniard David Ferrer outlasted Argentine Agustin Calleri 4-6, 6-4, 6-7 (4-7), 6-1, 6-1 in 4 hours, 11 minutes. Other first-round wins came for the aforementioned Acasuso and Almagro, Swiss Michael Lammer and Slovakian Karol Kucera, who topped 1998 U.S. Open runner-up Mark Philippoussis 6-4, 6-2, 7-5.