Cruz walked onto the court for his first ATP Tour main-draw match and left with a victory, a higher ranking and a story worth telling about the day he stopped being just Lleyton Hewitt’s son and started being a professional tennis player in his own right.
The 17-year-old Australian beat Marcos Giron 6-3, 6-4 in Washington D.C. on Tuesday without facing a single break point, producing one of the cleaner debut performances the tour has seen from a teenager in some time. Giron, a former world No. 37 who was ranked 85 at the time of the match, is no easy opponent for a first assignment at this level, and he handled him with an assurance that belied his age and experience.
The result made Hewitt the fourth man born in 2008 or later to win a match at the tour level and the youngest player to win in Washington since Kei Nishikori in 2007, a comparison that sits nicely in the early chapters of what appears to be a promising tennis life.
Fresh off Wimbledon, now winning on tour
The young Australian arrived at the Washington tournament on the back of a run to the Wimbledon boys final, which itself had already marked him as one of the more exciting junior prospects in the world. The transition from junior tennis to the professional tour is one the game’s calendar frequently invites, and he moved through it with a confidence that his father and mentor, the former world No. 1 and two-time Grand Slam champion Lleyton Hewitt, had helped him prepare for.
Lleyton, the 2004 Washington champion himself, warmed up with his son before the match and delivered advice that was more philosophical than tactical. He told Cruz to soak in the experience, enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the crowd and take the points as they came rather than getting ahead of himself. He described the guidance as exactly what he needed and credited his father with helping him stay present throughout the match.
The win vaulted Hewitt 255 places up the ATP rankings in live calculations, lifting him to approximately No. 357. For a 17-year-old making his main-draw debut, that kind of jump in a single result represents a significant accelerant to what was already going to be an upward career trajectory.
Carrying the name with grace
The pressure of being Lleyton Hewitt’s son in Australian tennis is not theoretical. The elder Hewitt is among the most celebrated players his country has produced, and his name carries expectations wherever it appears. Cruz was asked directly about that weight on Tuesday and addressed it with a maturity that matched his performance.
Hewitt said he was handling it as best he could, acknowledged that some pressure exists, and added that Hewitt tries to find the positives in the situation rather than letting it weigh on him. He described himself as happy with how he had managed the dynamic so far, and said he was thrilled simply to have gotten through to the next round after competing well from the first game.
It is the kind of answer a player gives when he has genuinely thought about who he is, and when he has made peace with a distinction that matters more to others than it does to him.
What comes next
In the second round, Hewitt will play the winner of a match between fellow Australian Alex De Minaur and former world No. 3 Stefanos Tsitsipas. De Minaur is defending his title in Washington and carries both the advantage of recent form in this city and the distinct energy of a man who just got married.
De Minaur wed fellow professional Katie Boulter in Tuscany in late July and described the days that followed as an experience that exceeded anything he had imagined. He and Boulter squeezed in a brief honeymoon in Portofino before flying directly to Washington to resume their respective seasons, a journey from wedding to warm-up that required a significant mental recalibration.
He described it as their own small movie before noting that the film had ended and it was time to be a tennis player again.
For Cruz Hewitt, the film is just beginning.
