Lleyton Hewitt came out of retirement to team up with his 16-year-old son Cruz at the Sydney Challenger, and the father/son duo claimed an impressive 6-1 6-0 win over Hayden Jones and Pavle Marinkov in just 48 minutes of play.
Hewitt, who played his last singles match at the 2016 Australian Open, continued to occasionally play doubles until 2020. But after picking up a first-round defeat with Jordan Thompson at Melbourne Park in 2020, the former two-time Grand Slam champion decided to ditch playing doubles as well.
That was until today, when Hewitt returned to the court at his home tournament in Sydney after being awarded a doubles wildcard. Playing with his son Cruz - who is ranked at No. 759 in singles and No. 881 in doubles - the former world No. 1 showed no signs of rustiness as he and the 16-year-old astonishingly won 11 games in a row from 1-1 in the first set to destroy another Australian duo, Jones and Marinkov.
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The Hewitt duo won 83 percent of their first serve points, converted five of six of their break point chances, and also saved all four break points they faced. In the Sydney doubles quarterfinal, their next rivals will be Australia's Callum Puttergill and Dane Sweeny.
Hewitt on teaming up with his son Cruz
Its obviously something pretty unique and special. Its not too often [that the opportunity arises] and there probably will be a time where I won't be good enough or physically able to play with him. And now he's obviously stepped up to the mark and is good enough to play, so it sort of just crosses over nicely," the former world No. 1 told Tennis Australia just before their opening match.
Sydneys a pretty special place as well. Obviously Cruz was born there and we have a lot of family and friends in Sydney, but I won four Sydney International titles as well. I played the Olympics there in 2000 when I'd just come on the tour, and I also won the Tennis Masters Cup in Sydney in 2001 to get to world No.1.
