Australian Open: Farewell to Lleyton Hewitt, the great Australian battler

Former world No 1 is pushing himself harder than ever for his 20th and final Australian Open. Despite his age, he tells Paul Newman he can still match the best

Lleyton Hewitt on his way to victory against Jack Sock in the Hopman Cup in Perth last week (Getty Images)

If you were preparing for a season that you knew would last barely four weeks and not the 10 or 11 months that your rivals would be facing, the temptation for most tennis players would surely be to ease up and cut a few corners.

Lleyton Hewitt, however, is not like most tennis players. The former world No 1, whose fighting qualities can make the most hardened boxers seem like pacifists, has long had next week’s Australian Open here mapped out as the last tournament of his career, but that was never going to stop him putting everything into his final pre-season.

In November Hewitt flew to London, where he was honoured at the season-ending Barclays ATP World Tour finals, but was on a return flight 12 hours later. On landing in Sydney he went straight from the plane to his first day of pre-season training.

Over the next few weeks he split his training time between Sydney and the Bahamas, where he now lives, to ensure that he would be in the best possible condition for his 20th successive appearance here at Melbourne Park.

Considering that the 34-year-old has had more than his fair share of injuries in recent years, it is remarkable that Hewitt has never missed his home Grand Slam event since his debut in 1997, when he won three matches in qualifying before losing to the two-time French Open champion Sergi Bruguera in the opening round.

Hewitt, who will concentrate on his new role as Australia’s Davis Cup captain once his tournament is over, is not one to compromise. “I still want to push myself as hard as possible,” he said. “I know now I’ll just be a bloody fit captain after that. I’ll be a good hitting partner for the boys. I pride myself on going out there and doing the hard work. I enjoy doing it.”

He has needed his powers of endurance during what has amounted to a whistle-stop farewell tour of his home country. There is huge interest here in the final bow of a player who, until the emergence of Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios, strove single-handedly to maintain an Australian presence at the top of the men’s game.

Hewitt competed in national colours for the last time at last week’s Hopman Cup in Perth, played Rafael Nadal in Sydney on Monday in an event to promoted the “FAST4” short format and faced Fernando Verdasco and Marin Cilic on Tuesday and Wednesday in exhibition matches in his home city of Adelaide, where he won the first of his 30 career titles in 1998 as a raw 16-year-old. Ever the professional, he was back on the practice court here yesterday afternoon.

Crowds everywhere have risen to acclaim Hewitt wherever he has played and the enduring quality of his tennis - he beat Jack Sock, the world No 26, in Perth last week – has left some observers wondering why he is quitting.

“I still feel like I can match it with the best guys in the world out there,” Hewitt said. “If you didn’t get old then I’d obviously love to keep playing. The adrenalin rush, the buzz and the goose bumps that you get from coming out – and for me playing in Australia in front of my home crowd, that’s the biggest thing I’m going to miss from the game. I just love doing it, I love competing, I love pushing myself and I’ve had one hell of a ride.”

He is clearly enjoying the farewell tour. “It is fun, but obviously you have a lot of things going through your head as well,” he said. “I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible. I feel like I had a really good pre-season. I did a lot of hard work and I’ll just give it one more shot.”

Hewitt played his first Australian Open at the age of 15, but one of his regrets is that he never won the title on home turf. The closest he came was in 2005, when he lost in the final to Marat Safin of Russia. That was the only occasion when he made it beyond the fourth round.

Although Hewitt won his two Grand Slam titles as long ago as 2001 and 2002, at the US Open and Wimbledon respectively, his talent and passion have never waned, despite the regular surgery he has undergone following a succession of injuries.

In one radical operation he had a metal plate screwed into the chronically arthritic big toe on his left foot, locking it into a permanent position.

Hewitt admitted he did not know how he would cope without the cut and thrust of competition. “I guess every professional athlete goes through that when they retire,” he said. “That’s the reason why we’re such a special breed, I guess, going out there and pushing our bodies to the limit and playing on the big stage. I think every athlete has to deal with it in a different way.

“There’s a lot of pressure and stress, both on your body and mentally as well, as you go into battle. It’s something that I will miss.”

While Hewitt described himself as “a part-time player” and Davis Cup captaincy as “my full-time job”, he will be concentrating on his own game rather than that of his younger compatriots over the next few days.

“Leading into the Australian Open, I’ve got to focus on getting myself right,” he said. “Once I’m out of the Open, then I’m all theirs.”