Hewitt tries to light a fire under himself

What happened to the fearsome Lleyton?

By Eleanor Preston
Special to tennisreporters.net

Susan Mullane/Camerawork USA, Inc.

FROM THE US OPEN – Lleyton Hewitt is a hard guy to figure out. The whirling, seething Mr. Angry who walks on court, eyes bulging, sounds nothing like the shy, gentle young man his friends describe.

This is the same guy who was so incensed at being asked to do a five minute interview with ESPN last summer that he ended up embroiled in a legal battle with the ATP that rages to this day. It's also a guy who gave up an hour of his time to run a pre-tournament coaching clinic with players with learning difficulties last week, grinning throughout.

After two unconvincing wins over lesser opponents, Hewitt must now beat Radek Stepanek for a foothold in the second week of the US Open. Stepanek is a talented player with a taste of big-name scalps but it was once the sort of match that Hewitt would eat for breakfast. Nowadays the feisty Australian is a lot less predictable than he used to be.

Perhaps we will never figure Hewitt out. Judging by his almost pathological hatred of the media he doesn't much want to be figured out, but that makes him all the more intriguing.

Take his year so far. In March, following what appeared at the time to be a blip against Younes El Aynaoui at the Australian Open, Hewitt hung on the No. 1 position which had been his for two years by winning back-to-back titles in Scottsdale and Indian Wells. At that point there seemed to be no end to his competitive drive. He was the undisputed King of the ATP Tour before, inexplicably, his crown began to slip.

Indian Wells was his last title, though he came within a match point of winning in LA before allowing Wayne Ferreira to steal the trophy from under his nose. At Wimbledon he walked on court against 6-foot, 10-inch Ivo Karlovic and walked away a broken man, the first defending Wimbledon champion in the Open era to be beaten in the first round.

In between he parted his coach Jason Stoltenberg, who has stayed loyally silent on the reasons behind the split but whose absence hasn't helped Hewitt's game any.

SLIPPING DOWN THE LADDER
Now down to No. 6 in the world, Hewitt is no longer talked about as a shoe-in for Grand Slam titles, and has slipped into the bottom the men's draw at Flushing Meadows virtually unnoticed – that is despite the fact that he won the US Open crown pretty handily less than two years ago.

He has won the year-end Masters Cup the last two years in a row, securing the year-end No. 1 ranking in the process. This year he will need a miracle to make the elite eight-man field. How he will fare against Stepanek is anyone's guess, and Hewitt himself admitted as much.

"I think there are times when you miss by a little bit," he said after beating Hyung Taik-Lee in four long, unconvincing sets. "Tennis is such a funny game. Today I had a lot of break points and didn't capitalize on them. I think probably a couple of years ago I probably made a lot more of those chances."

Hewitt seems to have lost his fire, and Hewitt without fire is like Superman after a dose of kryptonite. That fire may return now though, as Hewitt gets his teeth into the tournament and finds streak of meanness that made him so good in the first place. If he can get into the second week he could turn his year around in the space of a few days.

"I've still got all the weapons and the strengths but I feel like I'm not quite peaking at the moment," he said. "But one match can turn all that around. I think when we get towards the quarters and the semis, that's when I'm at my most dangerous. I know what you've got to do to win Slams."

Hewitt may be an enigma but it seldom pays to write him off.