Not for the first time, Lleyton Hewitt went to war for his country on Sunday, declaring January perfect for the Australian Open.

While Hewitt’s greatest rivals – Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray – would like the Open pushed back a fortnight, Hewitt insisted the biggest and richest event on the Australian sporting calender must stay put.

“As an Australian, I think it’s probably the ideal time for Australian sport,” Hewitt said on the eve of this year’s event at Melbourne Park.

“This is the time that I’ve always known it as the Australian Open, the dates that I’ve always come to, around these dates – late January – since I was coming here as a young kid to come and watch.

“For an Australian, it fits in so well with obviously the school holidays and getting kids out there.

“And I think for the sport of tennis in this country, that really helps as well, that the young kids can come out and watch a lot of it.

“Even on the back courts, you get a good atmosphere out here.

“Sport-wise, there’s not a lot on at this time of the year either, so it sort of stands out by itself as well, which is probably a good thing for our grand slam.

“So it’s a tough call. It’s obviously early in the year (but) a lot of overseas players have prepared well enough to win it in the past.”

Hewitt didn’t feel the need to directly relay his reasoning to those who believe a February start would allow players more time to prepare for the opening grand slam of the season.

“I haven’t actually spoken to any of those guys about it, what their thoughts are about it, but I’m sure Roger knows,” Hewitt said.

“He’s had a lot of success here in the past. It hasn’t really changed his performance.

“He’s lucky that he’s been able to come out after only one or two weeks’ preparation and still play extremely well.

“But obviously there’s a lot more to it than just worrying about the players for a couple weeks. The tournament has to worry about obviously ticket sales, kids being around the place, a whole lot of other things.”

Despite the Big Four’s leaning, Australia’s former world No.1 said he sensed players generally enjoyed opening the season down under.

“It’s in an awesome stadium, great arena. Obviously I love playing here, but I think everyone really enjoys it here. We get looked after really well.”

Federer on Sunday clarified his stance, saying although “in a perfect world” the Open would be staged in February, he understood why it wasn’t.

“It would be nicer to have a longer Australian swing, move around a little bit. But we don’t live in a perfect world,” Federer said.

“It’s still great, for instance, to have the Australian Open where it is because we’re having record numbers, prize money has gone up … players love this tournament.

“We have attended this tournament, what, for the last 15 years. Every top player has come. It’s really become a very, very prestigious grand slam to play and one of our favourites.

“It is basically the players’ slam.”

© AAP 2012

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