HEWITT LOSES HIS LAST SINGLES MATCH
Former No. 1-ranked player, soon to be 35, tells crowd: “I’ve given 100 percent.”
melbourne, australia» There is a reason Lleyton Hewitt could keep tennis fans awake until after 4 in the morning, even when he was playing at home, years after winning Grand Slam tournament titles in far-away New York or London.
Hewitt contested every point. If he was smaller or less powerful than his rival across the net, he countered that by tenaciously chasing, retrieving and grinding opponents down.
His relentless intensity and never-give-in attitude had critics bristling when he emerged as a brash, up-and-coming teen wearing his cap back-to-front. But they later applauded him when he matured and slightly mellowed into a tennis elder.
Hewitt’s 20th bid to win the Australian Open ended Thursday night with a 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 loss to eighth-seeded David Ferrer in the second round — his last singles match as a pro.
Typically, it was a feisty affair. Hewitt launched a verbal volley at chair umpire Pascal Maria after the seventh game of the last set when he was angered by foot-fault calls at one end.
“Left nothing in the locker room. That’s something I can be proud of,” Hewitt, who turns 35 next month, told the crowd. “My whole career, I’ve given 100 percent.”
Nobody would argue with that. Before Roger Federer won the first of his record 17 Grand Slam tournament titles, at Wimbledon in 2003, Hewitt had won the 2001 U.S. Open and Wimbledon in 2002. They were roughly the same age. Hewitt was the youngest man to hold the world’s No. 1 ranking, at age 20 years and 8 months in November 2001. He held the top spot for a total of 80 weeks.
Federer said Hewitt helped revolutionize the sport.
“Yeah, possibly,” Hewitt replied in a matter-of-fact response when Federer’s assessment was mentioned. “I guess guys playing from the back of the court obviously started believing once they saw that I was able to do it, especially on all surfaces.
“It was really kind of the total changing of how tennis was played in a lot of ways, especially on grass.”
Apart from Andre Agassi, Hewitt said, “there wasn’t a lot of guys that would stay back and play from the back of the court.”
“A lot of guys learned or believed that they could do it playing that way. That was probably my biggest thing,” he said. “Obviously the other guys came in, and Roger and that took it to a totally new level.”
Tennis’ so-called Big Four — Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray — have become dominant, while Hewitt has struggled with hip and foot injuries, and has increasingly reduced his workload to the point where the Grand Slam tournaments and the majors were his only real focus.