Lleyton Hewitt
Lleyton Hewitt (born February 24, 1981), is an Australian professional tennis player and the winner of the 2001 US Open and 2002 Wimbledon men's singles titles.
Born in Adelaide, South Australia, Hewitt may well have followed in the footsteps of his Australian rules football-playing father. Instead, he became the youngest winner of an ATP tournament when, as an almost unknown youngster, he won the 1998 Adelaide Invitational.
In the next two years he quickly progressed up the world rankings and has been the top-ranked player at season's end for the past two years.
Hewitt's game is based primarily around his superior reaction time, fitness, motivation, and court speed - almost a male version of Arantxa Sanchez Vicario. He plays a traditional baseline game: retreiving every ball, hitting shots deep, with little topspin, and extraordinarily consistently. He grinds away at his opponent, counter-punching their shots and generally wearing them down. Such a game would be expected to favour the slow clay courts of the French Open - but so far he has had only limited success on clay.
Hewitt's first grand slam tournament win was at the US Open in 2001, where he defeated five time champion Pete Sampras in straight sets. He followed this with an impressive victory at Wimbledon in 2002, showing the world that though the tournament is dominated by serve-and-volleyers, a baseliner like Hewitt could still perform at the highest level on grass.
Hewitt has a decidedly mixed reputation with tennis fans. His fist-pumping and endless calls of "C'mon!" to himself annoy some fans. More seriously, he was accused of racism when at the 2001 US Open after being called for foot faults twice in a match against James Blake. Infuriated, he yelled at the chair umpire, "Look at him (the linesman) and tell me what the similarity is (beckoning towards Blake). I want him (the linesman) off the court."
Hewitt maintains that he meant nothing racial in the comment, and later apologised to both the linesman and the opponent (who reportedly are satisfied).
He is part of the Australian team which won the Davis Cup in 1999 and 2003, and reached the finals in 2000 and 2001. At the age of 22, he has recorded more wins in Davis Cup Singles than any other Australian Player.
In a well-publicised relationship, he dates highly-ranked Belgian tennis player Kim Clijsters. The two announced their engagement just before Christmas 2003.
After his 2002 Wimbledon victory, Hewitt's game and his ATP ranking began to slip as he was engaged in a nasty legal fight with the organization and began playing more Davis Cup matches instead of ATP events. Recently, however, he has reshaped his game and returned to the ATP. In 2004, he completed a rare event: he became the first man in history to lose in each Grand Slam to the eventual champion. In the Australian Open, he was defeated in the fourth round by Roger Federer; in the French Open he was defeated by Guillermo Coria in the quarterfinals; at Wimbledon, he was defeated by Roger Federer in the quarterfinals; and at the US Open, he was defeated in the finals by Swiss Roger Federer.
