Lleyton Hewitt has teamed up with his son Cruz to end his five-year hiatus from the ATP Tour and play in a Challenger event in Australia.
The former world No.1 and two-time Grand Slam champion showed little sign of rust throughout his opening match at the NSW Open in Sydney. Playing alongside 18-year-old Cruz, the father-and-son duo stormed to a comprehensive 6-1, 6-0 victory over fellow Australians Pavle Marinkov and Hayden Jones. Wednesday’s encounter was Hewitt’s first taste of competitive tennis on the ATP Tour since the 2020 Australian Open, when he was playing alongside Jordan Thompson.
“It’s obviously something pretty unique and special,” Hewitt told Tennis Australia before his latest match. “It’s not too often [that the opportunity arises] and there probably will be a time where I won’t be good enough or physically able to play with him. And now he’s obviously stepped up to the mark and is good enough to play, so it sort of just crosses over nicely.”
As for playing in Sydney, Hewitt said the city is sentimental to him for a variety of reasons.
“Sydney’s a pretty special place as well. Obviously Cruz was born there and we have a lot of family and friends in Sydney, but I won four Sydney International titles as well,” he explained.
“I played the Olympics there in Sydney in 2000 when I’d just come on the tour, and I also won the Tennis Masters Cup in Sydney in 2001 to get to world No.1.”
During his career, Hewitt won 30 ATP singles titles and spent 80 weeks as world No.1. Now working as his country’s Davis Cup captain, he was recently inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
As for Cruz, he is currently at a ranking high of No.759 in singles and reached the final of an ITF M25 tournament in Launceston earlier this year. At this week’s NSE Open, he won his opening singles match against Omar Jasika before losing in the second round to Japan’s Matsuoka Hayato.
The Hewitts will next play Dane Sweeny and Calum Puttergill at the NSW Open later this week.
