Stephen Bierley: Hewitt Sweating to Beat Home Jinx With More Time in the Gym

It was a summer to forget but a year to remember for Australia's Lleyton Hewitt. Defeat in the quarter- finals at Queen's saw him lose the Stella Artois title he had held for three years, and much worse was to follow when, as reigning champion, he was beaten in the first round at Wimbledon by the unknown 6ft 10in Croatian Ivo Karlovic. But then came Australia's victory in the Davis Cup final.

Next week Hewitt returns to the scene of that team triumph for his eighth appearance in the Australian Open since making his debut as a 15-year-old in 1997. And on this occasion he will be dreaming that those five magic words "Game, set and match Australia" that rang out to tumultuous applause after he had clinched victory over Spain will be replaced, a fortnight tomorrow, by "Game, set and match Hewitt".

Before last autumn's Davis Cup triumph, Hewitt's memories of the Melbourne tennis centre were decidedly mixed, including three first-round defeats, coupled with failure to get beyond the last 16 of his home grand slam - and this despite winning the US Open title in 2001 and Wimbledon the following year.

Not since 1976, when Mark Edmondson defeated John Newcombe in an all- Australian final, has the title stayed down under, but Hewitt's heroics in the Davis Cup in the Rod Laver Arena have convinced the former world No1 that he can now play his best tennis in Melbourne. Most notable of those cup victories was the semi- final against Switzerland when he came back from two sets down to beat the Wimbledon champion Roger Federer.

"There's always pressure and expectation coming into the Open," Hewitt said this week. "You try and put it in the back of our mind as much as possible, and this time it will be great that the emotion will still be there from the Davis Cup. I think tennis is on a bit of a high in Australia at the moment."

For the past two years Hewitt has entered the tournament as the top seed, only to lose his opening match in 2002, having not recovered from a bout of chickenpox, and then go out last year in the fourth round against Morocco's Younes El Aynaoui. "I know everybody would love to see an Australian winner," he said, "and I suppose that probably puts that same pressure on me this time as being the No1 seed the last two years."

There have been times in his extraordinary rise - and he was the world No1 for 75 successive weeks between November 2001 and April 2003 - when he would have scoffed at the very idea of pressure. Then, last spring, after he had won his 18th and 19th career titles in Scottsdale and Indian Wells, his career hit the skids. His coach Jason Stoltenberg, who had parted company with him before Wimbledon, said that he was "stressed out".

Hewitt, now 22, has always been susceptible to viruses and allergies, and his style of play - "the greatest wheels on the circuit", as Pete Sampras said of him - is extraordinarily demanding. Last year, with the Davis Cup his avowed priority, he attempted to strike a more realistic and less punishing tournament balance, but this only left him generally ill-prepared for the grand slams, with a quarter-final at the US Open the furthest he progressed.

It is the mix of playing and resting which Hewitt hopes to get right this year, although he still remains in doubt: "I'm not really sure what's the right balance. Until you hold up the trophy, you'll never know what's the best for you."

One obvious change in Hewitt this year is that he has bulked up considerably, having worked tremendously hard in the gym with Roger Rasheed and Jim Choussous, both of them from Adelaide, where the talk of the town is Hewitt's new luxury home, which he had bought before he popped the question to Kim Clijsters on a Sydney harbour cruise.

Last year Hewitt played the fewest tournaments and matches since his rookie professional year in 1998, dropping out of the world top 10 in the process. To a degree, and although he is loth to admit it, this year represents a new start, although he felt he was playing some of the best tennis of his career both in the Davis Cup and the US Open last year.

"This year the preparation for the Australian Open has been totally different from recent times," he said. "Whereas the years before I've always come off the end-of-season Masters Cup and playing a lot of matches, this time I just focused on the Davis Cup final and did a lot of hard work and training so that I'd last right through the Australian summer."

There were those who wondered if all the hard running was making Hewitt a dull boy and that, like Martina Hingis before him, he had been a touch fortunate to gain his grand slam successes during a time of transition, in his case when Sampras was waning fast and Federer, Andy Roddick and Juan Carlos Ferrero were still searching for the breakthrough which came last year.

There seems no doubt that Hewitt will now find it much tougher to reimpose himself or regain his place at the top, although there is nobody more fiercely competitive or determined on the circuit. Right from the start the experts questioned his lack of a major weapon - and he still needs to improve his first-serve percentage considerably - but he has made a habit of proving the experts wrong.