Lleyton Hewitt secured his 21st career ATP title when he beat Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero 6-7 (7/1) 7-5 6-4 in the final of the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam.

The Australian, who had beaten British number one Tim Henman in the semi-finals, had to work hard for his second title of the year, though.

Despite taking a 2-0 lead in the first set, Hewitt saw Ferrero fight back to force the tie-break, in which the Spaniard never looked like losing after moving 5-0 ahead.

However, Hewitt, who turns 23 next week, showed all of the determination which took him to the top of the world rankings as he broke Ferrero in the final games of each of the next two sets to claim the title.

Hewitt will now climb back into the top 10 of the INDESIT ATP Entry Ranking system, and in the process will replace Mark Philippoussis as the Australian number one.

"It was an extremely tough match. It was never going to be easy, I had to play my best tennis and Ferrero played extremely well," said Hewitt.

"Every time we've played against each other we have had very tough matches. This was just another one of those.

"I dug deep today and kept fighting.

"From the baseline we were having a bit of a slugfest out there. I just had to try to hang in there and find a way to win."

Ferrero's run in Holland sees him jumps into second place in the rankings, but admitted he felt the pace after playing three sets in four of his five matches, beating defending champion Max Mirnyi en route to the final.

"I played a lot of sets, I think it was too much," reflected the Spaniard.

"In the third set I wasn't feeling as comfortable as I had wanted.

"He was fighting all the time like always. It's always difficult to beat him."

He added: "I'm disappointed, but I also think I could have lost in third set of the second or third round, or in the quarter-final, so I had a lot of luck this week."