{"id":295403,"date":"2025-11-20T12:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T12:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/295403\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T12:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T12:16:11","slug":"former-tennis-no-1s-return-from-retirement-ends-with-loss-alongside-his-teenage-son-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/295403\/","title":{"rendered":"Former tennis No.1’s return from retirement ends with loss alongside his teenage son | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lleyton Hewitt\u2019s return from retirement<\/a> ended in defeat as the two-time Major winner and his 16-year-old son, Cruz, lost in the quarter-finals of the NSW Open. The father-and-son duo were awarded a wildcard into this week\u2019s Challenger event in Sydney and won their opening match in 48 minutes<\/a>, dropping just one game.<\/p>\n

But former world No. 1 Hewitt\u2019s comeback didn\u2019t last long. He and Cruz went down 7-5 6-4 to fellow all-Aussie duo Callum Puttergill and Dane Sweeny. Hewitt\u2019s son had also suffered a second-round defeat in the singles draw a day earlier.<\/p>\n

Hewitt played his last career singles match in 2016 and retired from doubles at the 2020 Australian Open<\/a>. But he came out of retirement to join forces with his teenage son, who has become a promising young tennis player.<\/p>\n

Cruz has already competed at junior Grand Slam tournaments<\/a> and even got a wildcard into<\/a> men\u2019s Australian Open qualifying this year. The world No. 759 has started progressing to the Challenger tour in recent weeks, and his dad decided to join him on the court in Sydney.<\/p>\n

Former Wimbledon<\/a> champion Hewitt showed flashes of his brilliant best when he and Cruz took on countrymen Hayden Jones and Pavle Marinkov in their opening match on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

They clinched a 6-0 6-1 victory to advance to the quarter-finals, and Hewitt got the job done with a winner at the net. \u201cIt was a lot of fun,\u201d the 30-time tour title winner said afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously a little bit unknown coming out here today, and it\u2019s nice coming back on this court. I\u2019ve had a lot of special memories and this is right up there. It\u2019s something that I don\u2019t think many fathers get the chance to do, so to be able to come out and him obviously being good enough at this level now is pretty impressive at his age.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s where their run ended, and Puttergill\/Sweeny won a rollercoaster quarter-final match that saw 12 breaks of serve. While Hewitt\u2019s brief stint out of retirement is over, Cruz is on the entry list to compete in qualifying for next week\u2019s Playford Challenger. There are also three wildcard spots up for grabs that the teenager will be hoping to get.<\/p>\n

The 16-year-old earned his first win at Challenger level in Brisbane last week when he beat world No. 192 James McCabe before losing to Wu Tung-lin in the second round.<\/p>\n

He rose 59 spots up the rankings for his efforts, and then earned another win in the singles draw of the Sydney Challenger. Cruz defeated Omar Jasika and then lost 5-7 6-3 7-5 to Matsuoka Hayato. After getting a win over Jasika, Hewitt\u2019s son is expected to rise to a new career-high ranking again next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lleyton Hewitt\u2019s return from retirement ended in defeat as the two-time Major winner and his 16-year-old son, Cruz,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,133163,86792,133164,82,133165,593,621],"class_list":["post-295403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cruz-hewitt","tag-lleyton-hewitt","tag-nsw-open","tag-sports","tag-sydney-challenger","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}