Hewitt Brings Star Power, Energy to Sybase / Young Aussie compared with Conners, McEnroe source and date of article not known

At age 19, Lleyton Hewitt would seem to have it all. He is talented, strikingly good-looking, a millionaire and ridiculously famous, all of which is old news if you happen to reside Down Under.
They love their sports stars in Australia, worship them beyond comprehension. And so the question begs: Whose image adorns the walls of more teenage girls' rooms in Oz, Hewitt, the rising tennis champion, or strapping swimmer Ian Thorpe, he of the five Olympic medals?

"Well, Ian Thorpe won a lot of gold medals (three), so I would have to say him," Hewitt guessed with a laugh.

Certainly Hewitt can't be far behind. Four days shy of his 20th birthday, Hewitt has taken men's tennis by storm, using a power game and powerful personality to lift himself from relative obscurity at age 16 to his current No. 11 ranking in the ATP tour computer.

Armed with monster groundstrokes and a fiery on-court persona that draws comparisons with former tennis greats and hotheads Jimmy Conners and John McEnroe, Hewitt is as flashy as he is legitimate.

When he makes his Bay Area debut in the Sybase Open Feb. 26-March 4 at San Jose Arena, Hewitt might well grab attention by hurling his racket, arguing calls or firing up the crowd with his customary double-pump of the fist. But in these days of stalled interest in men's tennis, the stodgy old game can use a healthy dose of temperament.

"I think he's the sort of player, like Jimmy Conners, who polarizes opinion, which I see as a positive," ATP executive and former player Brad Dewitt said. "Lleyton creates a great deal of passion, especially with the younger fans. Everyone knows who Lleyton Hewitt is. No one could ever accuse him of being bland."

At least Hewitt has the results to back his bravado.

He has won seven ATP tournament titles as a teenager, more than Conners, McEnroe or even Pete Sampras managed before their 20th birthdays. Hewitt's 12 Davis Cup victories stir pride in Aussies' hearts, and his matinee-idol looks strike a chord with casual fans.

The ATP has featured Hewitt in its "New Balls, Please" campaign, designed to promote the new crop of young international champions. Shoe giant Nike latched onto Hewitt's star power early, signing the blue-eyed blonde to his first marketing contract at age 16.

That same year, 1998, Hewitt rode a wild-card entry in his hometown ATP event in Adelaide all the way to the tournament title, his first. With that, he became the youngest tour winner (16 years, 10 months) since Michael Chang and the lowest-ranked (550th) tour winner in history.

But American tennis fans didn't fully appreciate Hewitt's ability until last year's U.S. Open, when he came dangerously close to upsetting Pete Sampras in an epic semifinal match.

"It was a bit of a changing of the guard," said Tom Ross, a senior vice-president at San Francisco-based Octagon, Hewitt's management company. So much so that Nike recently upped its stake in Hewitt, signing him to a lucrative contract extension estimated at more than $15 million.

"We feel that he is confident, committed, and he's one of those guys who's going to track every ball down and he's going to grind you to death," said Mike Nakajima, Nike's U.S. director of tennis sports marketing. "A lot of young kids can hit the ball hard. But guys like Lleyton are extremely tough to find."

So is privacy, if you're the dashing young Hewitt. Heavily scrutinized by the Australian press, Hewitt feels the intense glare of publicity, and it hasn't always been kind.

"It's something that I got thrown into at an early age," the likable Hewitt said in a phone interview last week from Belgium. "I won Adelaide at 16, so I was put in the public spotlight straight away, and that was something I had deal with very quickly.

"Now it's not such a hard thing. I've kind of grown up on the Davis Cup squad, and I've been up there now with Pat Rafter, Mark Philippoussis, all these guys who have been Australian icons for so many years. I've seen how well they've handled it, on- and off- court. So it's been sort of a learning experience for me."

Lleyton's heart beats all the rest

By MARTIN FLANAGAN
Thursday 25 January 2001


Tennis moves ever more into the global entertainment industry. The wealth of Russian player Yevgeny Kafelnikov has variously been put at $20 million and $40 million, but he believes tennis players are underpaid and wants more. Andre Agassi spoke for so many of us when he suggested Kafelnikov take some of his prize money and use it to buy some perspective, but it would still be interesting to pursue the matter further with the Russian.

The sort of capitalism that has emerged in Russia since the collapse of communism is conspicuously lacking in sentiment. I imagine Kafelnikov would say that if you get a commercial advantage in this dog-eat-dog world you exploit it to the maximum. The problem is that most people don't go to sport just to see a series of actions executed with skill and precision. They go for the drama and, dare I say it, the romance. Pete Sampras implied Kafelnikov, who plays virtually non-stop, is in it for the money. Not much romance in that. Which brings us to the person who has most animated the crowds at this year's Australian Open - Our Lleyton. Is a surname required? Surely not!

In the course of requesting that a woman journalist interview him naked, Damir Dokic, father of the year and general philosopher, declared Australia could never be a nation, having been founded by convicts and prostitutes. His daughter's former Australian teammates urged her to reconsider transferring her nationality to Yugoslavia as if the matter was on a par with swapping houses before the school sports. Meanwhile, the Scud, Mark Philippoussis, remains elusive on taking out his racquet to defend the national honor. No such problem with Lleyton, who is unambiguously Australian; unfortunately for those Australians who regard him as vulgar, embarrassingly so.

In great sport, something has to be laid bare. There has to be a moment of inquiry into the character of one or all of the participants. It doesn't happen often, and for some of us it seems to be happening less and less. Over the past decade, tennis, a game played by globe-trotting tax exiles who appear in Frankfurt one week and London the next, has had more than its share of bland encounters. Even an awesomely complete player like Sampras rarely excites or involves me. Lleyton, on the other hand, does.

The Americans make movies out of kids like Lleyton, the cocky one who arrives in town with nothing but his skill with, say, a billiard cue and backs himself. Usually he takes a terrible beating somewhere along the way and emerges a better, more rounded person. If the main charge against Lleyton is that he works the crowd against his opponents, it's worth remembering he learned in last year's Davis Cup final in Spain what it is to be on the receiving end of such tactics.

In what I saw of him at this year's Open, his shouts punctuated his matches at genuinely climactic moments. He beats his heart but any player who relies as much as he does on the red, raw qualities it symbolises is entitled to do so. The one time I thought he behaved tastelessly towards an opponent was in the first round when he continued working the crowd after Jonas Bjorkman, who had played a great match, was effectively beaten. To quote former Footscray coach Charlie Sutton: humility in victory, courage in defeat.

There is almost something comic about Lleyton. The odds, it seems to me, are against him because he lacks two of the major weapons of men's tennis - he doesn't have a big serve and, being small, can't dominate the net. At best, he is an occasional volleyer. He has exceptional court speed, but that edge will be worn away soon enough. In a curious way, time is against him.

But not only is he a young man who thinks he can make it to the top of the mountain, he's a young man who thinks the mountain still exists. That may sound absurd, and probably is, but it's what makes him worth watching.

Martin Flanagan is a staff writer.