Tough Hewitt tries to temper cranky image June 26 San Francisco Chronicle
Bruce Jenkins


   Wimbledon, England -- THE HOT young American tennis players are some
really nice guys. Andy Roddick can be a pill sometimes, but he has an
endearing on-court manner, a knack for making people laugh and a big,
goofy smile.
   James Blake, Mardy Fish, Rob Ginepri, Taylor Dent -- who knows how far
they'll go, but they're terrific fellows. It's as if the old videotapes of
John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors are a living, enduring testament on how not
to act.
   Down in Australia, they're playing this record in reverse.
   The country's entire tennis history is class. From Rod Laver to John
Newcombe, through Pat Cash right ahead to Pat Rafter, the Aussies have
been honest, self-deprecating, hard-partying champions. Pete Sampras was
so enamored with the Laver era when he grew up, he pictured himself an
Aussie. Throw out the half-dozen beers after a big win, and his imitation
was dead-on.
   Something happened in Australia, something that cut a deep wound into the
game's international appeal. All of the good-bloke champions disappeared,
and they are left with Lleyton Hewitt. He's the country's first No.
1-ranked player in the history of the ATP rankings, but he has earned few
admirers along the way.
   His game, quite plainly, rocks. An astounding package of quickness,
tenacity and nervous energy, Hewitt took down Sampras in the final of last
year's U.S. Open. He once beat Brazilian great Gustavo Kuerten in a
clay-court Davis Cup match in Kuerten's hometown. Northern Californians
saw him take down Andre Agassi in San Jose this March, one of the greatest
matches outside the Grand Slams in recent years. And Hewitt was
devastatingly good in defeating Jonas Bjorkman 6-4, 7-5, 6-1 in his
first-round Wimbledon match Tuesday.
   The general reaction? "The little guy can deal. But I'd love to see
someone take him down."
   You want cranky? Hewitt is absolutely The Man in men's tennis right now,
but in the continuation of a long-held grudge, he doesn't talk to
Australian newspaper writers (only radio and TV people). At this year's
Australian Open, quite by accident, Hewitt and a local writer wound up in
the same official car leaving the grounds. "Pretty good match today," said
the scribe, breaking an uncomfortable silence. "No comment," snapped
Hewitt.
   He grew up a devoted fan of Australian Rules Football, dreaming of head-
banging collisions and in-your-face confrontations, and he looks the part.
He looks like a guy who might start a hooligan-style brawl, or who just
got out of the joint. But at 5-foot-11 and 150 pounds, he found his
athletic options were limited. He turned to tennis and became, some
believe, the second coming of Connors.
   "You play to kill people," Hewitt once said -- and to insult people,
apparently. He called a chair umpire "spastic" during a French Open match.
He insulted the fans of his own hometown, Adelaide, with nasty remarks.
His feisty on-court behavior -- particularly his primal screams on big
moments, even if it's the other guy's mistake -- drew public criticism
from Marat Safin, Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Alex Corretja, among others.
   Hewitt had a particularly ugly moment at last year's U.S. Open when he
loudly accused an African American linesman of favoring Blake (whose
father is black) on a series of calls. Instead of owning up to his mistake
and moving on,
   Hewitt spent a week in denial and lost respect in many quarters.
   "At some point," said Brad Gilbert, Andre Agassi's former coach and a
tempestuous player in his day, "I would be amazed if someone didn't whack
Lleyton in the locker room. If I was on the other end of his antics, I
would have snapped by now."
   Most of the Aussie legends say they kind of like the kid. They can't
relate to his stuck-to-the-baseline approach or his manners, but they're
drawn like magnets to his competitiveness. Cash calls him "tough as nails,
the sort of guy that if you had your house on the line, you'd want him
playing for you," and Newcombe believes the Blake incident changed him,
that "he's passing into a new era of his tennis life."
   So there was Hewitt at a news conference Tuesday, fending off the swords.
They asked about his image, his temper and the Australian press, and he
shrugged it all off with pleasant, noncommittal answers that suggested a
measure of maturity. "As you get older and wiser," he said, "I think you
learn from mistakes and you try not to let them happen again."
   Bjorkman, for one, has noticed a shift: "I think he acted a bit too much
sometimes when he was younger, but he gets a lot of respect now. I think
he's trying hard to be a good guy. So I wouldn't say that he's more likely
to get beaten up in the locker room than anyone else (laughter)."
   There's a slight change on the court, as well, Hewitt having ditched the
cap-on-backward nonsense for a hard-edged buzz cut. His opponents continue
to fall, though, as if felled by a George Foreman uppercut. Out there, the
pugilist image fits just right.