Hewitt Not Sure How His Body Will Perform in Melbourne

Written by: Staff on 6th January 2012

Hewitt Not Sure How His Body Will Perform in Melbourne

Lleyton Hewitt of Australia reacts during his match against Fernando Verdasco of Spain during the men's singles session 2 match of the Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia, 01 January 2012. Spain won the match 6-3, 3-6, 7-5. EPA/TONY MCDONOUGH AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT |

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Lleyton Hewitt really had no idea how his game and body would react to being back on court again for the first time since he lost both matches he played in Australia’s mid-September Davis Cup defeat by Switzerland.

He faced challenging opposition, but took Fernando Verdasco and Richard Gasquet to three sets before beating Wu Di of China. That was a job well done, he thought.

“It’s been three really tough matches,” said Hewitt. “Yeah I’ve made progress. It’s been a good week. I needed three tough matches. I didn’t come here with high expectations whatsoever. I just wanted to get a matches practice and get out there and compete again.

“As I said at the start of the week, you know nothing’s really second nature at the moment on the tennis court. When you’re growing up and you’re playing week in and week out it just sort of happens for you out there. You don’t have to think about it and obviously still my movements are taking me a little bit of time to adjust to that as well.

“(But) I’ve got absolutely everything that I wanted to out of those weeks and hopefully in Sydney next week I can get a couple more matches before Melbourne.”

His body is holding up well and he feels that, although he is still something of a work in progress, he is heading in the right direction.

“Yeah, my fitness has been good which is a positive. Obviously the movement is still taking a little bit of time to get back and I’m busting my butt at the moment to try and do everything possible. Doing a lot of agility drills away from the tennis court as well just to try and get that movement, as I said, so it comes second nature so it’s not something I have to think about.”

And going in to the Australian Open in a little over a week, how does he see his chances?

“This year’s slightly different just not having a whole heap of matches last year and coming in (rusty), but sometimes that’s a blessing in disguise. You don’t go in there and put a lot of pressure on yourself. You go out there with not high expectations on yourself and just sort of play your game and concentrate. We’ll wait and see what the draw pans out as well, but that’s out of my control.”

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