Australian top seed Lleyton Hewitt is the principal challenger to defending champion Juan Carlos Ferrero when the $4.7 million ATP Italian international tennis tournament gets underway here on Monday.

Hewitt may not be the greatest of players on red clay but he has shown progress on the slow surface recently and will be hoping to prove it as he bids to reach a final where he would be likely to meet either Ferrero or Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil.

Both those men are frequent winners on clay but Hewitt will be hoping to continue his progress by picking up another notable triumph at the Foro Italico.

He has a relatively favourable draw with a likely last 16 encounter with Argentina’s 15th-seeded Guillermo Canas set to present his first real stiff test.

In the first round it will be experienced Swedish campaigner Jonas Bjorkman who will test Hewitt’s mettle.

Ferrero, like many Spanish players, loves the clay as he proved last year by beating Kuerten in the final in the lead-up to the French Open for which this tournament is often a good indicator of who will be fighting for honours at Roland Garros.

A repeat of that final is impossible as Kuerten, seeded two, and Ferrero, ranked three, are scheduled to meet at the semifinal stage. Ferrero will face a tough opponent in the first round in Germany’s Rainer Schuttler.

Despite his impressive campaign Sanguinetti will need to be at the peak of his game if he is going to see off ‘Guga’, as Kuerten is known in Brazil.

American veteran Pete Sampras, seeded 12, is still dreaming of what would be a first French Open title, the one Grand Slam title to elude him in his history-making career and ‘Pistol Pete’ kicks off with a match against Spain’s Felix Mantilla.

Sampras achieved a rare win here on clay in 1994 but even if he gets past Mantilla he faces a potentially tough last 16 match with Russia’s Marat Safin, ranked six here.

Giorgio Galimberti, like Sanguinetti, also did badly when he landed a first-round meeting with Spain’s Alex Corretja, another former winner and clay specialist who is seeded 16.