Still Firing: Unseeded Hewitt upsets del Potro

Clive Brunskill/Getty Images The veteran Hewitt upset the fifth-seeded del Potro in their first career meeting.

By Steve Tignor

Uh oh, he’s pointing again.

That would be Lleyton Hewitt, of course, who kept jabbing his finger toward his loyal and long-suffering supporters in the stands this afternoon as he turned the clock back inside Centre Court. The aging, scrapping Aussie upset No. 5 seed Juan Martin del Potro, and briefly returned us to an earlier and . . . well, not a better time, exactly, but at least to a time when he was the No. 1 player in the world. Those two years, 2001 and 2002, the rarely mentioned interim period between the reigns of Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, will never be remembered as a glorious period for the sport. But for a couple of hours it felt like they had never ended.

So much was unchanged. The hat was still backwards. The stringy yellow mullet was still poking out below. The backhand was still straight-armed and the wheels were still churning along the baseline. The return and the lob were still first-class, while the serve, up to 122 and painting the sidelines, was better than ever. Even the moribund and much maligned “Come on!”/fist-pump-to-the-face combination was broken out after a crucial crosscourt pass late in the third set. The audience kept up a low but vivid hum of support through it all. It was like Federer and Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray—and Juan Martin del Potro—had never happened.

“I executed perfectly, hit the ball great,” Hewitt said afterward. He still looks as compact and solid and unadorned up at the mike as he always did. Most pros are bigger than they appear to be on TV—encountered on the street, they can seem like a race of supersized human dolls—but not Hewitt. He looks pretty much as you would expect, just redder. “I served unbelievable throughout the match. Took it to him right from the start.”

The first impression I had upon sitting down in the second set was how much closer to the grass Hewitt looked. He was low to the ground and blocking del Potro’s slap-shot ground strokes like a hockey goalie. Del Potro simply looked too tall out there. This was partly due to his size, but it was also due to what Hewitt was forcing him to do. The Aussie came into the match planning to move del Potro along the baseline, and, as Hewitt himself said, he executed that plan perfectly. When he needed a point, it usually went like this: Serve wide on the line, move forward, hit next shot into open court, watch del Potro almost trip over himself getting to it, then send next shot behind him for a winner. Those rare times when Hewitt found himself in trouble, he was able to handle del Potro’s pace and take the air out of the point with a softly carved slice up the line. (Underspin: It’s getting to be a theme around here this week.)

Del Potro himself thought there wasn’t much he could have done about it. “I thought I played a good match,” he said, while admitting that, as little as they might seem to have in common, Hewitt had been one of his idols growing up (so someone does remember the Hewitt Era!). In this sense, this match is virtually a carbon copy of Marat Safin's upset of Novak Djokovic in the second round last year. Again, the legend taught the student a lesson as his expense.

The student was asked to rate his performance on a scale of 1 to 10. When he thought for a second and came back with “8,” his questioner was incredulous. “An 8!?” Del Potro stuck by it, and it sounded like he was being honest. By the end of his presser, the Argentine had begun to come off as admirably level-headed in the face of defeat. He said that he had learned a lot from the match, especially how Hewitt hadn’t missed his returns on break points, and that this tournament and the French Open were already in the past in his mind—he had a lot more to worry about in the months ahead.

While I was in Centre Court, I had begun to ask myself whether del Potro would ever master the finer points of the game—he stoned one drop shot right into the air—to challenge for Slams. Was he really too machine-like in his approach, after all? Could he ever learn not to go for a dead flat winner on his return on a crucial point, the way he did so often today? If the first step to a solution is to realize you have a problem, DP is on his way. His presser made realize why he has always bounced back from losses like this in the past—Del Potro has the gift of rationality.

Yesterday, in talking about Maria Sharapova, I said that many of the sport’s beloved older champions began as villains. During his prime, Hewitt, who is blue collar and anti-establishment to the core, had a testy relationship with virtually the entire tennis world, from fans to press to tour authorities. His 2002 final-round win at Wimbledon had to be the least memorable in recent history (do you know who he beat?)—I know, I was there, and I walked out in the third set to watch a hot shot named Maria Sharapova lose the junior girls final.

All was forgiven, but not forgotten, in Centre Court today, as Hewitt ripped off his cap and shook out his sweaty locks after the final point—another déjà vu moment. I wonder sometimes, Does the game really evolve as much as we think? Does it change and improve every few years? This match made it obvious that it does. Hewitt had his old defensive, leg-based, low-to-the-ground game working its magic again. But just like the mullet, it looked dated and earthbound in the high-flying, highly physical, highly varied era of Federer, Nadal, and Murray. The men’s game has evolved for the good.

No matter. This time Hewitt was the scrappy hero rebelling against the new generation, a guy who had overcome years of decline and frustration, as well as last summer’s hip surgery, an operation that typically spells the end for tennis pros (ask Guga and Magnus Norman).

Hewitt refused to let it end when it looked bleak and pointless last year. I said at the time that "he really must not want to sit around changing diapers in Australia." Hewitt at least party verified my theory today. When he was asked whether he ever considered calling it a career, he thought for a few seconds and said, “The motivation was there. I think it really hit home more when the U.S. Open was on last year after I’d had the surgery and I was sitting back at home just twiddling my thumbs, changing nappies and stuff, but not a doing a lot of things. I was really missing, you know, not being at the U.S. Open, which is one of my favorite tournaments.”

Hey, we all have our reasons, and that sounds as good as any. If Hewitt’s game looks dated, his presence in this tournament is welcome. While the current No. 1 tries out a new outfit at Wimbledon each year, Hewitt sticks with the tried and true. He’s always known exactly who he is. You might think, now that he’s a father, that he might retire the old backwards hat. Trying to take it off him would probably be like trying to get him to hang up his racquet. It would be like trying to get a working man to leave his lunch bucket at home.

Steve Tignor, TENNIS' executive editor, is covering Wimbledon for the magazine and TENNIS.com.