C'mon! Is it time Hewitt got an attitude check?
If all goes according to Team Hewitt's carefully laid plans, the fist-pumping pride of Adelaide will hold aloft the Australian Open men's singles trophy on Sunday night.
It will be a dream come true for Hewitt, a precocious talent who won the U.S. Open and Wimbledon titles before the age of 21 but wilted under the enormous pressure to prove himself on home soil.
Win or lose, Hewitt has displayed in abundance his never-say- die, gritty, battling qualities in the past two weeks, especially in five-set thrillers against Spain's Rafael Nadal and Argentina's David Nalbandian.
Not everybody, however, has been impressed by his antics, especially other players. American James Blake did a mocking impression of Hewitt's bellowing "c'mon" during their match; a seemingly annoyed Juan Antonio Chela spat in the Australian's direction; Nalbandian brushed shoulders with Hewitt, and then gave him a long, defiant stare.
After such incidents, this year's Open has not only served to show Hewitt's trademark tenacity, but, for some, also displayed a rough-around-the-edges, win-at-all-costs attitude -- the "winning ugly" philosophy of gamesmanship espoused by Andre Agassi's former coach Brad Gilbert.
Yet, as crass, brash and in your face as Hewitt is -- a figure who is easy to dislike -- it seems a stretch to roundly accuse him of underhanded, unsportsmanlike conduct.
For one, the Hewitt yell and occasional chest-thumping are nothing new, although he inevitably uses them with more regularity in clinch situations.
The Blake incident occurred after Hewitt hit a winner after a long rally, which the American proceeded to applaud for several seconds at the net. Blake's gesture was not so much one of sportsmanship for a job well done as a come-on of sorts -- and Hewitt refused to take the bait.
Chela, literally, was spitting mad as the match slipped away from him. His shared gripe with his compatriot Nalbandian about Hewitt egging on the crowd seems a bad case of sour grapes
Change the location to Buenos Aires, and it's highly doubtful a South American crowd would sportingly cheer on the opposition.
The most serious incident was the changeover clash, reminiscent of when Romanian Irina Spirlea barged into Venus Williams at the US Open a couple of years ago.
Despite its lingering country club, preppy image, tennis is a game of aggression and raw emotion; Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford has termed it the noncontact sport that most closely resembles a boxing match.
Even in the tensest encounters, with seething bad blood between players, the umpire is on hand to mediate. Unlike other sports, the few incidents where players have nearly come to blows -- such as the rancorous Wimbledon semifinal in the late 1970s between Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe -- are memorable simply for their rarity.
In fact, it was Nalbandian who seemed primed for a fight before the quarterfinal, discussing his dislike of Hewitt's histrionics.
Gamesmanship in tennis takes many forms. It can be a hastily developed injury when the going gets tough, or a toilet break in a time of trouble to disrupt an opponent's concentration. It also can be some ear-splitting screeching, or, conversely, asking the umpire to tell your opponent to turn down the volume, as Natalie Tauziat and Martina Navratilova did to Monica Seles at Wimbledon in 1992 (Maria Sharapova, listen up).
A former top 20 player told me once that it was a nightmare to play Aranxta Sanchez Vicario, one of the most popular players of the 1990s, for her stalling tactics and attempts to get crowd support over line calls whenever she fell behind.
And tennis is also about personalities, and rivalries. The duels of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe were made more meaningful because of the contrast of the poker-faced Swede and the temperamental New Yorker.
The same is true for "ice maiden" Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, her opposite as a supremely talented but emotional raw nerve, or kvetching Billie Jean King against the impassive Margaret Court.
Only time and maturity will tell if Hewitt continues to get under his opponents' skin. But yesterday's bad boys often become today's reformed heroes -- Jimmy Connors at the end of his career and married father of two Andre Agassi are cases in point.
Maturing, and losing a few matches, are great humblers. For the time being, if his opponents don't like Hewitt's roar, then they should silence him with their rackets.
-- Bruce Emond