Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt had a bitter rivalry at the beginning of their careers. The Australian almost always dominated the Swiss, until his duel in the 2003 Davis Cup semifinals changed the momentum forever.
Late summer 2003. Roger Federer He has achieved it, he is finally a Grand Slam champion, also at Wimbledon, where he left his mark years ago as a junior. The Swiss has met the expectations, with the voices that placed him as a generational leader, but above all he has fulfilled the promise he made to his former coach, Peter Carter, died the previous summer in a car accident. Roger decided that he was going to be what Carter told him he could be: the best tennis player on the planet, not just the most talented or the most gifted; the best. With that idea he woke up every day, a horizon between eyebrows, although there were still enemies that could hinder his path.
Lleyton Hewitt was one of them. Both born in 1981, the Australian was only six months older than the one from Basel, although the time he entered the circuit had nothing to do with it. At 15 years old he had already passed the qualifying phase of the Australian Open and at 16 he already had an ATP title. What was he doing while the Swiss? Watching from a distance how that kid from Adelaide devoured deadlines without any caution. In 1999, while one became the best junior in the world, the other became a professional. While Roger struggled to make the final leap to the elite, Lleyton stepped into the world top 25 and raised the Davis cup with Australia, knocking down France in its own house. It is precisely about this competition that I come to talk to you.
In September 2003Just two decades ago, the Davis Cup semifinals left us with a scandal: Spain-Argentina and Australia-Switzerland. Hewitt and Federer arrived at the event at the age of 22 and in direct competition that no longer went unnoticed. They had faced each other eight times – a balance of 6-2 in favor of Lleyton – and the ninth would soon arrive. The Oceanians arrived after devastating Great Britain (4-1) and Sweden (5-0), nothing to do with the route of their opponents. Switzerland had to suffer against Holland (2-3), where Federer added his two individual points, and suffer against France (2-3), again with Roger in the star plan being part of the three points won. The duel promised and did not disappoint, although not all pools were correct in their prediction.
PENDING ACCOUNTS
There was something more at stake than a ticket to the Davis Cup final, something that only occurred when these two nations met. After the death of Peter Carter – Australian by birth but coach for many years in the Swiss federation – it was agreed to found the Trofeo Memorial Peter Carter, an award that was awarded to the winning team every time these two powers met in the competition. That semi-final, played in Melbourne Park on surface Rebound Ace –unfeasible to play on grass with the current Wimbledon champion on the other side– began with a minute of silence in commemoration of the coach who tragically disappeared at just 37 years old. This was a celebration, but also an opportunity to honor his memory through a victory. Come on, there was more pressure than usual.
Hewitt opened the scoring by winning the first point against Michal Kratochvil (6-4, 6-4, 6-1). Minutes later, Federer tied things up, beating Mark Philippoussis (6-3, 6-4, 7-6), exactly the same as months ago in the Wimbledon final. The double entered the scene on Saturday and there the balance was tipped for the locals, with a brutal victory for Arthurs/Woodbridge against Federer/Rosset (4-6, 7-6, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4) . The giant Rosset served as captain-player in the days when it was still allowed. At 2-1 we reached Sunday and the plan could not be more exciting, a Federer-Hewitt with everything at stake, although it was the Swiss who could not fail. If he wanted to return his country to the final 11 years later, he had to win that match civilly or criminally.
And it didn’t start badly, winning the first set 7-5 and the second 6-2. Even clearly dominating the third set, going 5-3 on serve. With 30-30 in that game, everyone assumed that there would be a fifth point, it was impossible for something so obvious to escape them. What’s more, although it was unthinkable at the time, the 22-year-old Hewitt had already written the best pages of his career. He had already been US Open champion (2001), Wimbledon champion (2002) and two-time champion of the masters tournament (2001, 2002). He had already spent 80 weeks at No. 1 in the world, removed from the top by Andre Agassi, Juan Carlos Ferrero and Andy Roddick. That week, after not making it past the quarterfinals in any of the 2003 Grand Slams, he appeared as No. 7 in the ranking. But the Davis Cup was another story, he had something that especially motivated him, to the point of turning him into the devil himself.
Maybe it was his personality, or his multiple victories against Federer, or maybe it was the Australian blood that ran through his veins. A country that had lifted the Salad Bowl 27 times, as Peter Carter had told the young Federer so many times. The Swiss dreamed of playing this tournament in the future and, if possible, facing the Australians in hostile territory. His life had brought him right to that meeting point, two balls away from meeting his goal and forcing a fifth point. Would Philippoussis’ legs shake at the final point? Could Kratochvil or Bastl make a splash? We never knew.
At 30-30, Hewitt scores two shots that leave Roger frozen, causing the stadium to fall at the same speed as the Swiss. No one would have bet on Lleyton at that moment, not his captain John Fitzgerald, not his partner Kim Clijsters, not even Peter Carter’s parents, all of them present in the stands. “For Lleyton it was important to fight against the best because, when he felt that he was fighting like Rocky Balboa, he became psyched in a way that only he understood. He was beginning to believe that anything was possible: ‘I can turn this around, I’m strong again‘. “It was like Popeye gobbling up a can of spinach,” says his former coach. Roger Rasheedin the book MASTER, by Christopher Clarey.
A WOUND FOREVER
Those two returns led to a tiebreak that ended up at the hands of the Adelaide tennis player, exactly the same as the fourth set, where a break was enough to disorient the Swiss. Federer collapsed in the fifth round, completely destroyed physically and mentally, unable to understand how he had been able to waste that advantage. The smaller he became, the more giant Lleyton became. “This is better than winning Wimbledon or the US Open“, declared the Australian after completing a historic comeback (5-7, 2-6, 7-6, 7-5, 6-1) and sealing the tie. Two months later, after defeating Spain in the final, he would give his country the 28th Davis Cup, although this is another story. Returning to the facts, those present in that locker room say that they will never forget what they witnessed. “He had never seen anyone cry like that, no one dared to say anything to him. After a while I approached him, but he continued covering his face with his hands“he confessed Georges Deniau about Federer, French coach integrated into the staff Swiss.
Nothing remained at that time of the Wimbledon champion, a completely diluted star. Once again Hewitt had shown him that not everything was about power or technique, that talent was not just about playing beautifully. Nine games against the Australian, seven defeats. But this one hurt more, much more. Here he had failed himself, he had failed his team, his country, and even Peter Carter. After all, every stumble he had on the track led him to Carts, as he called him. One of his toughest defeats? Without a doubt, in addition to being the first defeat in his career after winning the first two sets. Then only David Nalbandian (Masters Cup 2005), Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (Wimbledon 2011), Novak Djokovic (US Open 2011) and Kevin Anderson (Wimbledon 2018) would achieve it.
It was a complex moment for Federer, someone with unstoppable tennis when the wind was blowing in his favor, but who still needed to add the secret ingredient of champions: the mental touch. He knew that he was close to delving into a higher level, possibly a range of play never seen before, and he demonstrated it at the end of that season and throughout the subsequent five years. Roger first needed to go through a few disappointments – not all of them as bitter as this one – to define one of his great hallmarks: the ability to recover quickly from disappointmenteven if it was a brutal disappointment.
One last fact. Between 2004 and 2014, Federer and Hewitt met again 18 times, of which the Australian was only able to win two. Nobody spoke of this rivalry again.
2023-09-19 13:48:54
#Roger #Federer #Lleyton #Hewitt #Davis #Cup #semifinals
