The Age”s Greg Baum recently took a s
wipe at all things Australian tennis when he observed, “Sartre once said, “In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposition.” Australia knows what he meant.”
While 18-year-old up-and-comer Bernard Tomic scored the first two top-50 wins of his young career (Jeremy Chardy and Feliciano Lopez) in reaching the third round of his home-country Slam in Melbourne earlier this month (and even impressed onlookers with his raw abilities in his eventual loss to world No. 1 Rafa Nadal), and Sam Stosur last year became the first Aussie woman to crack the top five in a quarter century, things have been a bit, shall we say, sparse, for a nation that prides itself on its rich tennis heritage.
Gone are the days of the Roches/Rafters/Rosewalls of the world, the Lavers, Newcombes, Woodies, Hoads, Goolagongs, etc. And with father-of-three Lleyton Hewitt on the verge of 30 and wrestling with hip issues, many Aussies are wondering what life will be like without the fight-to-the-death two-time Slam champ, who likely has but a year or two of competitive play left in him.
“I”m similar to a guy like Andy Roddick in a lot of ways,” Hewitt told Inside Tennis from his home in the Bahamas, where he”s gearing up for the Feb. 7-13 SAP Open in San Jose. “He sort of carried the U.S. and Davis Cup over the years and I feel I”ve done the same with Australian tennis. Obviously, we would both love players from our countries to come up. It”s not as easy as people think. There are so many nations that have learned and are doing well in the sport. A lot of the Eastern European countries are doing unbelievably, and even though there are small countries out there, they”re able to produce so many great players.”
It”s only fitting that Hewitt should empathize with the “03 U.S. Open champ Roddick, who has long been saddled with the hopes and dreams of his countrymen, who yearn for the Sampras–Agassi–Courier–Chang days, the McEnroe–Connors era.
“I feel like casino pa natet I”ve been the elder statesman ever since Andre retired,” confided Roddick at the Australian Open, where he was knocked out in the fourth round by Stan Wawrinka. “That”s coming up on five years ago now…It”s tough. I remember last summer when I was catching all the heat for not having an American guy in the top 10 for the first time in 15 years. Didn”t really make sense to me that I was the one taking heat when I was the only guy that had been there for the last six years. I didn”t know how I was catching it for that one. It”s a responsibility that has great benefits, and it”s hard sometimes as well. The benefits for me have far outweighed the downside of it. So I wouldn”t change it. But, obviously, I would love to have guys there with me.”
“A lot”s got to do with how spoiled we are in the States and also Australia and the U.K. for different options in different sports,” continued Hewitt, whose marathon AO first-rounder against Argentine David Nalbandian resulted in a hard-fought 3-6, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(1), 9-7 loss. “And there”s a lot more choices out there for our kids growing up. There”s no doubt we”ve got talented kids in each of our great countries, but whether they choose tennis or not is another story. I”m sure a lot of those gifted kids would be good at any sport, depending which one they chose. A lot of these other countries see it as a great “out” for their country and a good opportunity to earn money and earn a great career by playing tennis. They sort of lay all their eggs in one basket to become a great tennis player.”
Does Hewitt chalk it up solely to the globalization of the sport, or does he buy into the argument that all things are cyclical; that Australia will once again have its day in the sun?
“You”re never going to see it like it was in the “50s and “60s and “70s. That”s just part of the sport changing,” he said. “It”s a lot more global now and, obviously, so many more countries are playing. Back when my coach [Tony Roche] played, there really wasn”t that many guys from a lot of different countries, which made it a lot easier to perform well in Davis Cups and also have a lot of Grand Slam champions out there as well. I don”t think you”ll see one or two countries dominating like we did back then.”
