HYUNDAI HOPMAN CUP XXIV – Transcript Lleyton Hewitt (Australia)

Written by: Staff on 5th January 2012

HYUNDAI HOPMAN CUP XXIV - Transcript Lleyton Hewitt (Australia)

Lleyton Hewitt of Australia in action against Wu Di of China during the singles match at the Hopman Cup, Perth, Australia, 05 January 2012. EPA/TONY MCDONOUGH AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT |

5^th January 2012

Congratulations mate, a couple of near misses, a win tonight and now the season is well and truly under way.

Yeah absolutely. It’s been three really tough matches. Wu Di obviously didn’t have a lot to lose this whole week and I think he got better as the week went on. I scheduled him third match, which is probably when he was playing his best tennis out there. He was tough; he didn’t give me a lot of chances out there. He was mixing it up well. He doesn’t give you too any free points. I’m fortunate I saw him playing Davis Cup. He actually beat one of our guys – Matosevic in five sets, and the Tie before that he actually beat Lu from Taipei in 9-7 in the fifth. So he’s a quality player, especially when he’s playing for his country.

You personally – do you feel like you’re making progress throughout this week?

Yeah I’ve made progress; it’s been a good week. I needed three tough matches. I didn’t come here with high expectations what so ever. 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 your 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. 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.

The last couple of games of that matches, you really tightened up. You really looked like you flipped into the zone; there were a few fist pumps. You looked like you were really on track there.

Yeah it’s frustrating – I felt like I had half chance in the first set, I went up the break and went 40-15 up and I felt for the most part I served pretty well out there. Even though he’s not a big guy he’s not easy to serve against, purely because he wants to attack the whole time. He doesn’t give you any cheap points off the return, so he was really trying to step on my second serve. For the most part IU served pretty well, I was just a bit frustrated when I got broken in the first set and also early in the second set – I was actually 40-15 up in both those games and lost them. I really felt like I should have consolidated the break.

There’s been a lot of talk about your body and apparently your big toe is not the prettiest looking toe going around. But avoiding clichés, physically how are you? You’ve played three matches in five days. How is the body? Are you happy with the way it’s going?

Yeah well I’m still walking.

And getting around the court?

Yeah pretty well. 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 as the tennis band wagon as always rolls on very quickly, off to Sydney for you next?

Yeah that’s the next tournament. I’m an ambassador of the Apia International in Sydney, so it’s nice to be doing a little bit of stuff behind the scenes to try and really promote that tournament. Obviously when I’m in Australia I spend a fair bit of time in Sydney and I think it has the legs to be a great tournament. In the last few years we haven’t quite got to the peak that it should be for one of the greater cities in the world. We need to promote it as much as possible. We need a lot more kids of NSW coming through and playing Davis Cup. It’s good to see a guy like James Duckworth have a win in Brisbane this week as well. You know we need those, it’s the biggest state there and we don’t have many guys in the Davis Cup squad from NSW.

Then we roll on to the big daddy – the Australian Open back to Melbourne. You’ve always had a massive fan base there. It’s going to be an exciting time to get back out there and get back in a major?

Yeah it’s fantastic. Australian Open is one of my favourite, obviously that and Wimbledon are two special events for me. This year’s slightly different just not having a whole heap of matches last year and coming in, 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.

We’ve loved watching you on the court, we’ve loved listening to you in commentary, and we’ve loved having you up here – good luck in Sydney.

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