Does anyone care if Hewitt can control Kyrgios and Tomic?

The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’. Lleyton Hewitt leads Australia into a must win Davis Cup tie against Slovakia at the Ken Rosewall Arena in Sydney, starting today.

A defeat and Australia will be dumped out of the World Group, which means the once-dominant Australians will be back in a tennis wilderness.

Make no mistake, there’s been no prouder nor more passionate Davis Cup competitor than Hewitt.

He debuted in 1999, and over the next 17 years and 41 ties, Hewitt has been by far Australia’s most successful Davis Cupper with 58 wins and 19 losses that included another record 42 singles wins and 14 losses.

Today he will set out to instill his deep emotional passion to represent Australia in his two enfant terribles Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic.

There’s no nice way to put it, with both of them proving time and again they are right royal pains in the butt with their atrocious and inexcusable behaviour.

But today they aren’t representing themselves, they are representing Australia. If world rankings are any criteria, Kyrgios and Tomic should win the tie in a canter.

Kyrgios, ranked 15 in the world, takes on Slovak Andrej Martin,ranked 127 in the opening singles, followed by Tomic, ranked 21 against Josef Kovalik, ranked 123.

If there’s any danger of losing a rubber it’s the doubles with Sam Groth, who only has a huge serve and nothing else, ranked 272 in the world paired with unknown John Peers, ranked 456.

But Kyrgios and Tomic should win their reverse singles to give Australia a comfortable 4-1 win to avoid the wilderness.

For the younger Roarers, I earlier mentioned Australia’s dominance when our tennis players were household names, even more so than the cricketers, Wallabies, Kangaroos, and swimmers with the one exception of winning every individual and relay freestyle gold at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

In the 1950s, Australians won 21 Slam singles titles with Frank Sedgman winning four, Ken Rosewall (4), Lew Hoad (4), Ashley Cooper (4), Mervyn Rose (2), Neale Fraser (1), and Ken McGregor one.

In those ten years, Australia won eight Davis Cups.

In the 1960s Australia raised the bar to a massive 32 Slam titles – Roy Emerson (12), Rod Laver (11), Neale Fraser (2), Fred Stolle (2), John Newcome (2), Ken Rosewall (1), Tony Roche (1), and Bill Bowrey one.

In that decade, Australia won seven Davis Cups.

Now that was Australian dominance with 53 Slam singles and 15 Davis Cups over 20 years.

But in the next 56 years, repeat next 56 years, Australia has won only 14 Slam singles, and six Davis Cups with singles success to John Newcombe (5), Ken Rosewall (3), Pat Rafter (2), Lleyton Hewitt (2), Mark Edmondson (1), and Pat Cash one.

Australian will never dominate Slam tennis again, but winning the Davis Cup is certainly a viable option.

And that campaign starts today in the hands of Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic.

Don’t let Australia down.