Lleyton Hewitt fared better at the U.S. Open as a villain. As a fan favorite, the unseeded Australian tasted heartbreaking defeat.
Hewitt, who won a U.S. Open title 12 years ago and seldom had the support of the crowd going up against American greats Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi in the early part of his career, had the backing of virtually all of Louis Armstrong Stadium yesterday. But the 66th-ranked Aussie’s 32-year-old legs didn’t have enough life left to complete his second major upset of the Grand Slam.
Despite a two-sets-to-one lead and sizable edges in the fourth and fifth sets, Hewitt dropped a gut-wrenching fourth-round decision to No. 21 Mikhail Youzhny, 6-3, 3-6, 6-7 (3), 6-4, 7-5, in his 200th Grand Slam match.
“It’s obviously disappointing to lose,” Hewitt said after the thrilling 3-hour and 58-minute marathon. “But I left it all out there. There’s not a whole heap more I could have done.”
Hewitt seemed well on his way to a quarterfinal showdown with No. 1 Novak Djokovic, leading 4-1 in the fourth set and 5-2 in the fifth. Instead of reaching his first Open quarterfinal since 2006, he was left to ponder what might have been, after dropping the final five games of each of the final two sets.
Hewitt reached the fourth round the hard way, without a single straight sets victory. He shocked No. 6 Juan Martin Del Potro in the second round, a five-set, 4-hour 3-minute match he said “took a lot out of me” and needed four sets to get by Evgeny Donskoy in the third — lengthy contests that came back to haunt him.
Hewitt began his career at the Open as a champion and a villain, winning the crown in 2001 over Sampras at the age of 20. He was also in the middle of controversy.
During the 2001 Open, he complained after being called for two foot-faults by a linesman and requested the official be moved.
“Look at him. Look at him and you tell me what the similarity is. Just get him off the court,” Hewitt said at the time. The “ similarity” was a likely reference to opponent James Blake and the linesman both being African Americans.
It was forgotten yesterday, as the Armstrong crowd got behind the relentless underdog in the twilight of his career. They chanted “Let’s go Lleyton” throughout the match, stark contrast to the beginning of his career in Queens.
“It’s great, obviously,” he said after losing to Youzhny for just the second time in seven encounters. “I had a lot of support out there today. I had a lot of support all my matches this week. It’s an electric kind of atmosphere out there, which suits my personality and my game style.”
A two-time semifinalist at the Open, Youzhny, the 31-year-old Russian, helped sway at least part of the crowd with his dogged effort, refusing to lose after finding himself in a hole. He caught a second wind late in the fifth set, using his wicked one-handed backhand as a weapon Hewitt was unable to answer.
It was a wildly unpredictable match featuring 18 breaks of serve, 102 winners, forever rallies that lasted as long as 46 strokes and frequent challenges by both players at the net.
“I fought back in the fourth and fifth sets because I didn’t want to be heading home just yet,” Youzhny said. “The crowd wasn’t against me but for Lleyton. It gave me power to keep coming back. Lleyton is a great player. When he is on the court, he always fights.”
Hewitt started typically slow against Youzhny — dropping the first set and trailing 3-1 in the second — before rallying with a flurry of winners. He won the second set, forced a tiebreaker in the third and jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead in the fourth. But after building leads in the fourth and fifth sets, Hewitt was unable to finish Youzhny off. Shots he was making earlier he began hitting into the net, and a run that captivated the Flushing fans came to an abrupt end.
“I left it all out there this whole week, week and a half,” Hewitt said. “You don’t have regrets.”