Monday, 30 June 2008
Written by Alix Ramsay
And then there was one. As manic Monday dawned, there were only two champions left in the men's draw but come 3pm, there was only one: Roger Federer. Who else?
The Swiss cruised past Lleyton Hewitt, the 2002 champion, 7-6, 6-2, 6-4, to reach the quarter-finals. He showed only moments of brilliance, some moments of hesitation but, overall, far too much firepower for Adelaide's feistiest son. It was not Federer at his best, not by a long chalk, but it was Federer in charge of the situation.
It was a bit like watching the first few moments of an old home movie: the flickering lights, the camera shake, the fact that your dad always used to film people from the knees down. B then, after a few minutes your dad would find the focusing ring on the lens, the vaguely familiar image would become clear and as the projector warmed up, gradually sound and vision would combine in perfect harmony.
This was not an Oscar-winning production but it was enough for a sunny fourth round on Centre Court. Throughout the first set, Federer would unleash the odd venomous forehand or thumping ace, usually when Hewitt had dared to tiptoe towards the Swiss's service, but then the cogs on the projector would slip again and the picture of the all-conquering champion would judder and falter.
"Ah, the ankle-biter is playing well, then?" asked a Swiss colleague, arriving late towards the end of the first set. And he was. But like a little ankle-biting terrier, Hewitt has only one line of attack and if those diminutive legs cannot ferry him around the court at the speed of sound, he is going to struggle.
Before the match, Hewitt had talked lovingly of playing in SW19, and of coming back here as a member of the club and a former champion. "It just gives you goose bumps," he said in a misty-eyed sort of way. "It's a dream to still be playing here."
How much longer Hewitt will be able to play is a matter for the doctors. The 27-year-old has been struggling with a hip injury for most of the year and missed much of the clay court season. He has ducked out of having surgery so far and would like to delay his appointment with the medics until after the Olympics and US Open. So, at the moment, he is trying to play through the problem.
But if Hewitt cannot run, he cannot threaten the bigger, stronger men. As for threatening the best player in the world, he has not managed that since September 2003. Then in a Davis Cup semi final, Hewitt launched one of his eye-popping, blood curdling comebacks to beat the Swiss from two sets and a break down. But he has lost 11 successive matches to the Mighty Fed since. Worse still, he has only been able to win four sets during that run.
Against Federer here, he looked like the Hewitt of old. A bundle of nervous energy, it looked like he would heat a bedsit for a week if you plugged him into the electricity grid. But for all the nervous tics, the string plucking, cap fiddling and collar twitching, he was not truly himself. By the third set, he was in obvious pain from the hip and had lost half a yard as Federer pulled him this way and that.
Hopefully he will be back again – and for a good few years – because we will miss him when he goes. In a world of big men with bigger muscles, Hewitt's brand of "come over here if you think you're hard enough" tennis comes as a welcome relief and a fascinating contrast. And his outspoken views on anything to do with the ATP and tennis politics come as a breath of fresh air after the waves of bland young men who will only answer "tennis questions only, please".
With a baby daughter at home – Mia is the apple of his eye – another one on the way and about $18 million in prize money already banked, Hewitt does not need to put his body on the rack any more. He is as competitive as ever but if his body cannot cope with the pressure, he will not be content to hang around the 30s and 40s in the world rankings.
He promised that he was keen to try and get his ranking up from its current position of 27, and that he was willing to thrash himself around the circuit in order to get the matches to earn those ranking points "provided the body holds out". Whether it will or not, he will discover over the course of this summer.
Federer shows no mercy as Hewitt limps off
for the rest of the year
The ruthlessly efficient Roger Federer made sure of that, recording his 12th consecutive win since the Australian's last and most heroic, during the 2003 Davis Cup semi-final at Melbourne Park. Federer prevailed 7-6 (9-7), 6-2, 6-4 on centre court to confirm his expected place in the quarter-finals without dropping a set.
The pair has shared the past six Wimbledon titles - Hewitt's only one the precursor to Federer's five that may soon be six.
These are the occasions the Australian plays for now, yet it is also true to note that there are fewer and fewer of them, with not even a grand slam final on his resume since the Australian Open final of 2005. That may well be remembered as his last big hurrah, the devastating loss to Marat Safin, for it is hard to see Hewitt returning to anywhere near the top of the sport.
"I think he's in the game because he loves to play the game," said Boris Becker, suggesting Hewitt should continue for as long as he is physically able to compete.
Yet there was nothing spent about the force that was Hewitt early in the match. The first set tiebreaker was crucial, because Federer is a great frontrunner. Hewitt, to that stage, kept pace but was always behind, even if the Swiss needed four set points to take it in 48 hard-fought minutes.
The first game of the second set brought the first break point of the match, Hewitt having led 40-30 before a loose forehand, then a double-fault, followed by a netted backhand on a makeable passing shot let the game slip. Another break followed, as Federer accelerated, reeling off two love service games.
And so, in a blink, the deficit was a set and 0-4. Better players than Hewitt at this stage of his career would struggle to recover from a two-set deficit against the game's greatest player, and it duly proved beyond the world No.27, who moved more and more gingerly with his injured left hip.
Hewitt earned break chances - eight in total - in four consecutive games from late in the second set to early in the third, but was unable to convert. He spoke beforehand about the importance of taking his chances, but Federer was simply too good when it counted, serving brilliantly to gather 21 aces among 49 winners overall to Hewitt's 29.
Hewitt faces a surgery dilemma
IF SURGERY is needed to correct the hip injury that has troubled Lleyton Hewitt since March, it would ideally occur after the US hardcourt season and the Olympics, comfortably ahead of the Australian summer he will start at the Hopman Cup in Perth. But health issues rarely run to such a neat timetable.
"If we have to, we'll do it after Wimbledon," Hewitt's travelling physiotherapist and trainer, Ivan Gutierrez, said of the possible need for an operation. "We're just going to play it by ear.
"We were thinking that the grass was going to be very difficult, and it was at the beginning, but he's sort of got used to it a little bit, and then we think that the hardcourts are going to be even more difficult than grass, so every step he has an assessment and we just deal with it accordingly."
Earlier this year at tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami, Hewitt, 27, received a small tear in the labrum of his left hip. There is apparently no damage to the actual hip joint, and so, if surgery was required, the advice to Gutierrez is that Hewitt would be unable to run for four weeks, and prevented from playing for six. "If you are going to pick up an injury, you'd choose that one," he said.
Which runs contrary to the general assumption that the Wimbledon 20th seed has been stricken by the same type of problem that sabotaged the careers of multiple French Open champion Gustavo Kuerten, Magnus Norman, Harel Levy, Sargis Sargsian and others, and from which it is often impossible to recover fully.
"They all had joint problems, arthritic, so there's a wear and tear in the joint," said Gutierrez, who also has extensive AFL experience.
Hewitt's next commitments after Wimbledon are the Masters series events in Toronto and Cincinnati.
The Olympic tennis tournament in Beijing starts on August 11, followed by the US Open a fortnight later, then Australia's Davis Cup world group qualifying tie in Chile in September.
Tennis becoming hit and giggle June 21 by Paul Kent
JOHN Newcombe's problem is Australian tennis' problem.
All these kids that want to be No. 1 and train like they want to be 101.
Wimbledon starts Monday and Newcombe, moustache blazing, is as disillusioned as anybody that once again Australia's hopes lie on the plucky shoulders of Lleyton Hewitt and fall away at great speed after that. Tennis is not far above becoming a minority game in Australia. A Sunday social event, all hit and giggle.
Any pretence that it remains a major sport on the Australian landscape is held together by paper clips and rubber bands. Hosting the Australian Open each January and a few hardened pros looking to restore lost glory.
That is about it.
Newcombe got on a plane earlier this week for what will be his 46th trip to Wimbledon knowing that if Hewitt gets into the right quarter of the draw he will be our best and only hope, and you may as well send out a search party for the rest.
What disappoints him the most is that we have let it go rather than have it taken away from us.
By way of illustration he points to a story Tony Roche tells, when Roche trained Ivan Lendl and Lendl wanted to be at the courts every morning at 7am, before everyone else so he got centre court.
"There was one person who was always there before them," he says.
"Her name was Steffi Graf."
Years later Graf retired and her place on centre court was replaced in the early morning by two young sisters coming through called Venus and Serena Williams.
"And guess what," says Newcombe, "they're not there at seven in the morning any more."
Newcombe's attitude recalls the Willie Shoemaker school of commitment: Shoemaker, the great jockey, once explained his loss of desire this way: "It's hard to get out of bed in the morning when you're wearing silk pyjamas."
Newcombe is sick of seeing all these good young Aussie kids slipping into their silk pyjamas too early, before they ever really achieve anything. Instead, he looks around and sees all the kids on the court early these days are coming from the same place: "Eastern Europe and Russia."
A look at the tournament performers will confirm as much. There has been no rush on silk pyjamas in those parts.
Australia's juniors reached and then passed the tipping point between professionalism and indulgence some time ago.
It is a problem not unique to tennis and can often be identified as the reason why so many prodigious junior talents never quite make the step as a full-fledged pro.
Any No. 1 in the world knows that talent is not enough.
Underwriting all those natural gifts has to be a toughness.
A dedication to the grind that begins in practice and imprints the will. Later, when the question is put to them in competition, there is confidence they have the answer.
This soft underbelly in Australia's tennis players frustrates Newcombe.
Thankfully he has the solution.
It is so easy it is beautiful.
He wants what he calls self-starters. In other words, he will take some bright young talent's coach and conditioner and personal masseuse and throw them all out the window.
One after the other.
Then he will tell the kid he wants them to go away and come back in a month when they can do 300 sit-ups. By then the kid better be able to do 300 sit-ups. Or they better have that second serve working a hell of a lot better than it is working right now.
Whatever their problem is, Newcombe wants the responsibility put back on the athlete to work at it.
Nothing tests the commitment like a bucket of balls.
"And if you can't do 300 sit-ups don't even come back and see me," he says.
Junior coaching has also exceeded its tipping point, falling from professionalism to indulgence. Now, when the kid fails, they sack the coach.
All these systems and luxuries have been put in place in the name of professionalism, to smooth their way to success, and really the kids don't have a clue the problem is them.
Few even know what it is to work hard, any more. Really work hard.
"In a lot of sports you don't get a lot of athletes who understand what it is like to self-start," he says.
"They've got their coach and their trainer and their masseuse and if they're all not there the kid doesn't know what he has to do to start a training session."
It has nothing to do with knowledge, or professionalism, but everything to do with desire.
So Newcombe heads to Wimbledon for the 46th time with not a lot of hope.
He saves that for the future.
Australia won the junior Davis Cup last year, indicating once again the talent is there and ready to come though.
Better than that, a recent change in coaching has the kids working like drovers' dogs, and by the time these kids are of age he believes they will come to the tour battle-hardened and ready.
Nobody is silly enough to suggest it is our last hope.
But nobody is saying the opportunities are endless, either.
USA and Oz: Empires in decline?
Written by Ronald Atkin
Perhaps nothing has been more surprising at The Championships in recent years than the comparative decline of the English-speaking world in the men's singles competition.
Among Britons the decline can be summed up in a word: catastrophic. Seventy-two years have now passed since Fred Perry posted a ‘home’ victory on Centre Court, but the absence of winners from previously dominant nations like the United States and Australia is a dramatic indication that other countries have caught up, and sometimes surged past, the former giants of grass.
In the 22 years between the resumption of The Championships after World War II in 1946 and the advent of the Open era in 1968, the men's champion on 19 occasions was either American or Australian.
Even the beginning of the Open era suggested this trend would continue. But Rod Laver (1968-9) and John Newcombe (1970-1) actually represented the last great flourish for Australian tennis at Wimbledon. Since then, only Pat Cash in 1987 and Lleyton Hewitt in 2002 have been Australian-born singles champions.
Hewitt’s victory was the highlight of a mini-revival in Australian tennis. Pat Rafter had been runner-up in 2000 and 2001 prior to Hewitt’s win while Mark Philippoussis reached the final in 2003, only to become Roger Federer’s first final victim.
The Americans have enjoyed two spells of Open-era domination. Between 1972 and 1984, Stan Smith, Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe and John McEnroe all won Wimbledon titles. They would have been more successful except for the emergence of Bjorn Borg.
It was 1992 when Andre Agassi won his only Wimbledon, followed by Pete Sampras’ domination of the tournament — a seven times champion between 1993 and 2000.
There were other noteworthy Americans in the Sampras decade. Jim Courier was part of an all-American final in 1993 and Agassi contested the last all-American final, with Sampras in 1999.
Following Sampras, Andy Roddick, runner-up to Roger Federer in 2004 and 2005, has been the best performed American man and even he could only manage the quarter-finals in 2007.
Wimbledon is not the only Grand Slam to highlight the decline of the Australian and American men. Agassi (1999) is the only American champion of Roland Garros over the past 16 years, while no Australian since Laver in 1969 has lifted the French Open trophy.
This year there were no English-speaking players in the quarter-finals of Roland Garros in either the men or women’s draw.
The last home champion at the Australian Open remains Mark Edmondson in 1976. Americans have done much better at the US Open, thanks to the likes of Agassi, Sampras and Roddick, the last 11 years have seen a home-grown men's champion just three times.
It is an indication of the atrophy of tennis in these formerly great tennis nations that Hewitt and Roddick still represent their countries’ best hope.
Hewitt, the only Australian in the world's top 50, and Roddick, still one of the top ten, both have had recent injury concerns.
Hewitt has a persistent hip problem, while Roddick missed Roland Garros because of a problem with the shoulder of his serving arm.
Perhaps a better bet for Wimbledon 2008 comes for once from the Home Nations, in the form of Scotland's Andy Murray.
Lleyton Hewitt: paying tribute to the game
by Long John Silver June 1
It’s a wonderful concept: paying tribute to the game as an athlete. And there are a number of ways an athlete can do it.
For instance how Roger Federer goes about his game when witnessed in its entirety is a sheer pleasure to watch both for a commoner and a connoisseur. He is one of the rare few who pays tribute to the game simply by playing it.
In today’s world, when certain athletes consider themselves to be pseudo-movie stars, it is intriguing to witness the way an athlete pays tribute to the game. What we witnessed the past Saturday at Roland Garros (May 31), is a true testament to that.
Unfortunately, Lleyton Hewitt had to miss the entire clay court season until Roland Garros, due to a hip injury. It was, indeed, a last minute decision to fly half way across the globe to Paris from his hometown in Adelaide (South Australia).
With no time on the court or match practice, he flew in cold, underdone, and unprepared to Paris. Clay, of all the surfaces, takes its toll on the body and is probably the worst surface to play on with a hip injury. Hewitt quite comfortably dealt with Mahut and Fish in the first two rounds, for neither of them were a match to his consistency.
David Ferrer however, was an entirely different kind of challenge.
Ranked fifth in the world, Ferrer is your consummate clay courter, with heavy and penetrating ground strokes, and a solid backhand equally complemented by one of the best forehands in the sport. He would definitely make the top three clay court specialists list in the world, a list topped by Rafael Nadal.
No one gave Hewitt much of a chance.
In fact, 40 odd minutes into the match, with Hewitt down 3-6 0-3, I had a feeling that this could be a very unpleasant Saturday morning. But, as it has always been with Hewitt, it is not really about the court, the physical condition, the weather, the crowd, or the surface. It has never been!
It is very simple—it is about just stepping onto the court and playing tennis. He symbolizes the true Australian spirit, the "if you show up to play, you are fit" attitude. Slowly but steadily, the feisty, dogmatic Aussie clawed his way back into the match to level it at one set apiece.
Hewitt neutralized the surface, the court time, and the physical advantage that Ferrer had going into the match by just competing for every point ruthlessly. The roadrunner forehands perfectly complemented with delicate lobs, culminated in his winning the third set to go up two sets to one.
Ferrer pushed the match to a decider, when he won the fourth set. At 3-4 with Ferrer serving, Hewitt had a break point, a point I think was the last straw that decided the match.
What transpired was a 20-shot rally in which Hewitt managed to turn a defensive position into an offensive one, but netted the short mid-court inside-out forehand that let Ferrer off the hook.
Ferrer would go on to break Hewitt in the next game to take the match, much to his relief. One could clearly see that Hewitt’s movement was not at all close to where it was in the first three sets.
At the façade, a superior clay courter won a tennis match that he was expected to. Life is hardly that simple, though. Looking behind the veil, one can see a message that is quite inspirational.
Most of the advantages an opponent has going into a game can be neutralized by competitiveness and superior mental fortitude. Just plain and simple "I am here to play, you are going to have to beat me" competitiveness.
That is precisely how Lleyton paid his tribute to the game. At the least, it was revered, admirable, and innately inspirational. Good on you, Lleyton.
