Cruz Hewitt, son of Lleyton, wins first ATP main draw match in Washington

Cruz Hewitt, the 17-year-old son of former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt, won his first ATP Tour main draw match on Tuesday, beating American Marcos Giron 6-3, 6-4 to reach the second round of the Mubadala DC Open. The Australian, ranked No. 612, next faces the winner of top seed Alex de Minaur and Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Hewitt closed out the match with a forehand winner and celebrated with a “vicht”, the trademark fist-pump his father used throughout his career. He won 83 percent of his first-serve points and did not face a single break point, according to Infosys ATP Stats, backing up numbers that had him converting 87 percent of his attacking points (26 of 30, against a tour average of 67 percent) and winning 41 percent of points in defence (15 of 37, against a tour average of 33 percent) against the No. 85-ranked Giron.

The win makes Hewitt the fourth man born in 2008 or later to win a tour-level match, excluding Davis Cup, joining Diego Dedura, Thijs Boogaard and Moise Kouame. Having come through qualifying, he jumps 255 places to a projected No. 357 in the PIF ATP Live Rankings, with the chance to crack the top 300 if he wins again in Washington.

The result also echoes his father’s own breakthrough: Lleyton Hewitt won his first tour-level match at 16 in January 1998 in Adelaide, a tournament he went on to win. The only other member of the ATP’s No. 1 Club whose son has also won a tour-level match is Bjorn Borg, whose son Leo Borg has done the same.

Hewitt arrives in Washington off a breakthrough junior season, having reached his first junior Grand Slam final at Wimbledon earlier this month, where he lost the championship match to American Jordan Lee – who is also playing in qualifying in Washington this week.