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Why we love Lleyton Hewitt

Lleyton Hewitt is temporary coming out of retirement for Australia's Davis Cup showdown with USA. (AFP PHOTO/Luis Acosta)
Roar Guru
13th January, 2016
2

Growing up as a tennis fan in the 2000s, there was really only one option if you wanted to support an Australian.

Yes, there was a brief period in which Mark Philippoussis was a Grand Slam contender, and the odd Australian qualified for a Grand Slam quarter-final every now and then, but on the whole, it was Lleyton Hewiit or bust.

And there was something about Lleyton that drew me, and thousands of other Australians, towards him. He possessed courage, grit and determination rarely seen on any sporting field or court.

Where most people quit when their mind tells them to, even if their body is not yet ready to, Lleyton didn’t. No matter how much pain he was in, he kept playing.

Win or lose, you always knew Lleyton had left everything he had out on the court. In these final few years he hasn’t been losing because he wasn’t putting in the effort or wasn’t concentrating, but simply because his body failed him.

When Hewitt first burst onto the scene he was brash, loud and to many he was arrogant. For better or for worse, I don’t remember this phase of Lleyton’s career. For worse because this was the period in which he became the sport’s youngest ever world number one and a two-time Grand Slam champion. For better because my view of him might be different if I had seen him in that state.

Over the past decade he has remained an aggressive, fiery character on the court, but in a positive manner. He has used his trademark “Come on” to fire himself up, not to put off his opponent. There have been no spitting controversies.

Whereas some in the locker room did not take too fondly to him early in his career, he is now seen as an elder statesman, one of the most respected people in the sport. And that is important for the young Australians moving up through the ranks today.

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When Lleyton burst onto the scene he was a boy, and didn’t know how to behave. Now he is a man and he knows exactly how to behave. Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic are currently boys; Hewitt plans on helping them become men.

To be competitive in an individual sport you have to be highly motivated, and willing to put your body through pain most normal people would never even consider. The differences in talent between the top competitors are so small that a lot of the time it is what’s inside the head that determine who wins and loses.

During individual sport there comes a point where you have to decide if you want to put your body through pain to achieve the best possible result. It’s not like team sport, where you can rely on your teammates to carry you and motivate you. It all comes down to how much you want it.

Hewitt could have retired more than a dozen times over the past decade – he had nothing left to prove. He was a Grand Slam champion, Davis Cup winner, former world number one, and had made more than enough money to live off without working another day for the rest of his life. But he was driven by a deep desire to keep playing and be the best tennis player he could.

That is why he had multiple surgeries and defied numerous surgeons telling him to retire. And that is what makes him so easy to admire. Where most people would just throw in the towel, he kept fighting. Deep down he probably knew that he was never going to win another Grand Slam, even if he never said it publicly. Professional athletes speak of how there comes a point where they realise they no longer wanted it; until now Lleyton always wanted it.

Unfortunately, as Hewitt’s career continued, it became clear he didn’t have the talent to mix it with the best in the world anymore. He was lacking the killer shot, the ability to pull the trigger and put his opponent away. He didn’t have the big serve that gave him cheap points and easy service games. Every point of every game was a battle.

Against the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, simply chasing the ball will never be enough. They were as good defensively as Hewitt but far better offensively. They remain in points, work their way back on top, and then hit the winner.

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When Hewitt did try to finish points with a ripping crosscourt backhand or a forehand down the line, his lack of match practice saw him struggle to find his mark. Too often these shots would go cannoning into the net or miss the sideline. Last week, during the Hopman Cup, the commentator said, “’Rusty’ is rusty”, unfortunately he has been rusty for much of the past eight years.

When Hewitt made the run to the Australian Open final in 2005 I was desperate for him to be the first Australian since Mark Edmonson in 1976 to lift the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup. After Marat Safin defeated the great Federer in the semi-final, the path appeared to have been laid clear.

After Lleyton’s blistering 6-1 victory in the opening set, I was sent to bed, disappointed that I would not be lucky enough to watch Hewitt in the best form of his life, blowing his opponent out of the water in the biggest tennis match in Australia for years. The fact that it remains one of the highest rating events in Australian television history speaks volumes for how much this match meant to the public.

Yet when I awoke the next morning, I was informed by my parents that Lleyton had in fact lost in four sets, 1-6 6-3 6-4 6-4.

It was devastating at the time, and looking back it is even more devastating. This was the closest Hewitt would get to a third Grand Slam title, he made two more semi-finals in 2005, and despite showing flashes of brilliance throughout the remainder of his career, he never returned to the form he displayed in January 2005.

Throughout the past decade I and many others longed for one more run deep into the second week of a Grand Slam. But for a quarter-final exit at Wimbledon in 2009 and a few fourth round exits, it didn’t happen. He simply wasn’t good enough.

Heading into next week’s Australian Open, plenty of Ausssies, especially Channel Seven, are hoping he will deliver that deep run; the fairytale exit a stalwart of Australian tennis deserves. Unfortunately, fairytale exits very rarely go to plan: just ask Brad Fittler or Darren Lockyer. The odds of Hewitt bowing out of the sport with a Grand Slam victory are effectively zero.

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But he won’t let that bother him, he will fight and savour every second he spends on the blue court of Melbourne Park. He will throw his body at every ball in a desperate attempt to prolong his career.

And that is why we will tune in: partly because we hope he makes a fairytale run, but mainly to watch a great of the sport do everything he possibly can to ensure he walks off Rod Laver Arena a winner.

Most Australians know the number of matches he wins largely depends on the draw the tennis gods deliver. But that won’t bother them, because any time Lleyton Hewitt takes the court it is must-watch viewing.

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