Even after winning two grand slam titles, Lleyton Hewitt’s first sporting love tempted the tennis great to make a stunning career change.<\/p>\n
Hewitt has spoken about what happened in 2003 when he was “actually considering” an attempt to play AFL.<\/p>\n
While Port Adelaide coach and family friend Mark Williams ultimately could not lure him from tennis, the idea gave Hewitt pause for thought.<\/p>\n
A famous Davis Cup win over Roger Federer that year convinced Hewitt to stay put. On Monday night, he was one of seven inductees into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Hewitt was born into Australian Rules. His father and uncle had solid football careers and when Adelaide joined the AFL in 1991, he was a big fan.<\/p>\n
“That was in my blood, that’s what I wanted to do as a young kid,” Hewitt said.<\/p>\n
But he also showed major tennis potential as a teenager. His parents convinced him to make the “bloody tough” decision to focus on the international sport.<\/p>\n
By 2003, he had been world number one, as well as winning the US Open and Wimbledon in 2001-02.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lleyton Hewitt says his win over Roger Federer at Melbourne Park in the Davis Cup changed his mind about switching to football. (Getty Images: Mark Dadswell)<\/p>\n
After his ’03 Wimbledon title defence did not make it past the first round, and he lost the number one ranking, Hewitt contemplated what might come next.<\/p>\n
Williams said a few years ago that Hewitt contacted him about potentially switching sports, but the tennis star says the Power coach made the approach.<\/p>\n
There was talk of Hewitt playing a pre-season game and potentially joining Port as a rookie-listed player.<\/p>\n
Stream End Game with Tony Armstrong on ABC iview<\/a><\/p>\n Tony Armstrong tackles Australia’s overdue reckoning with racism in sport with the help of some of its biggest sports stars.<\/p>\n Regardless of who was driving the idea, eventually it fizzled and Hewitt, a keen Adelaide supporter, did not have to consider joining the Crows’ fierce local rivals.<\/p>\n “I grew up absolutely hating the Power, the Port Adelaide Magpies,” he said.<\/p>\n “But at the time, I was actually considering it.<\/p>\n “I didn’t love the contract and the money.<\/p>\n “He [Williams] ended up giving me a few weeks to think about it.”<\/p>\n The clincher was Hewitt rallying from two sets down to beat Swiss great Federer in an epic ’03 Davis Cup semi-final. There would be no defection.<\/p>\n “It was one of my greatest victories and I called Choco [Williams] and said ‘no,”‘Hewitt said.<\/p>\n AAP<\/p>\n ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even after winning two grand slam titles, Lleyton Hewitt’s first sporting love tempted the tennis great to make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[638,64,9512,63,12551,1806,37660,965,85,747],"class_list":["post-291383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-aussie-rules","tag-australia","tag-australian-rules-football","tag-grand-slam","tag-lleyton-hewitt","tag-roger-federer","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n