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Bye, Lleyton. Thanks for the validation

21st January, 2016
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Lleyton Hewitt must repair a fractured relationship between Kyrgios and Tomic. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo
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21st January, 2016
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And so we come to the end of an era. Lleyton Hewitt will no more be seen plying his trade on the courts of the world, and I think I speak for an entire nation when I say I was quite surprised to learn he hadn’t retired a couple of years ago.

But that was Hewitt for you. whenever you thought he was down and out, he’d pop back up and keep on fighting, keep on chasing, keep on plugging away for hours and hours and hours until it turned out that actually he had been down and out all along. If there’s ever been a sportsman better at delaying the inevitable, I’ve yet to see one.

That’s the Australian way, of course. When Hewitt was out there, running down every ball, playing every point to its finish, refusing to concede any rally until the bitter end, we saw ourselves. There is nothing more intrinsic to the Australian identity than the delusion that we are somehow a nation of indefatigable never-say-die underdog battlers, and Hewitt fed that delusion like no tennis player before or since.

More:
» The end of the road for Lleyton Hewitt
» Hewitt bows out as one of Australia’s best ever
» Thanks for the memories, Lleyton
» Every heart-breaking thought I had during Hewitt’s farewell

He was not possessed of a bullet-like serve, devastating groundstrokes or imposing physicality, but he won tennis matches in his own inimitable way – by hitting the ball past the other player or sometimes having the other player hit the ball in the wrong place. Sometimes, tennis is a very simple game, and sometimes, Hewitt was a very simple player.

But what made Hewitt the epitome of the Australian tennis star  was the mixed feelings he aroused in us all. Tennis is one of those sports in which, apart from the odd special tournament, players don’t represent teams or countries, but only themselves. Of course we like to think that they’re representing “us” – that way we can get terribly upset when they don’t do it in the way we prefer – but it’s merely a conceit.

Lleyton Hewitt was the mighty champion of that conceit. Nobody played up a patriotic persona like Lleyton. In doing so he gave us all a wonderful gift: when he did well, it was victory for us all. We could be proud of Little Lleyton, because he was doing nothing to disabused us of the notion that we were somehow connected to his success. And when he did badly – whether in tennis or behaviour – we delighted in scolding him based on the belief that it was our job to pass judgment, because like all sportspeople, he belonged to us.

This is why Hewitt was so much better than, say, Pat Rafter. Not better at tennis, obviously, but better at serving the psychological needs of his public. We wanted a champion, yes, but a champion who is also a bit of a dickhead is even better. Nothing is more satisfying than an elite sportsman who can perform feats of athleticism most of us can only dream of while also making us all feel morally superior to him.

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Thus through Lleyton were we made glorious. Back when he was on top of the world, he provided a chance to indulge the usual sporting fan’s logic. He is good and he is Australian; I am Australian therefore I am good. And in his worst moments, his moments of on-court abuse, of graceless arrogance, of gauche public displays of personality, he satisfied the logic of celebrity. He is bad and I have identified that fact; therefore I am good. It was win-win for the public.

We can only hope the new generation of Aussie tennis heroes can live up to the Hewitt ideal. Obviously Kyrgios and Tomic are enormously promising in this area and there is a running battle between them as to who can generate the most pious thinkpieces in a year. But they have yet to fulfil the other half of the equation: neither of them have reached the heights of on-court success that allow us to bask in the reflected glory of their triumph in between clicking our tongues at their excesses. Hopefully they will do so at some point, and inherit Hewitt’s mantle rather than that of Phillippoussis.

Then there’s Sam Stosur of course, but she falls down in two crucial areas when it comes to being a genuine Australian tennis icon: 1. she performs at her very worst at those times when the largest number of her fellow Australians are watching; and 2. she seems quite nice really.

But let’s not worry too much about the future. Now is the time to look back on a wonderful career, and to laud the achievements of Lleyton Hewitt, Occasional People’s Champion. No one tried harder, no one squeezed the lemon of talent more thoroughly. No one inspired more, or irritated more, or scaled such heights of public ambivalence.

Never has Australian sport known a character so able to embody the best of our national spirit: courage, determination, and rudeness. When we needed a hero, Lleyton was there. When we needed uplift, Lleyton was there. And when we needed someone to look down on, Lleyton was there.

What more could any nation ask for?

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