Lleyton Hewitt has survived the zaniest match he's ever
played to keep his Wimbledon career flickering.
Generations overlapped when Hewitt and young gun Thanasi
Kokkinakis produced a spirited comeback to defeat 15th seeds Marin Draganja of
Croatia and Finn Henri Kontinen 6-7 (6-8) 3-6 7-6 (7-1) 6-2 8-6 in the first
round of the men's doubles.
Fighting back from two sets down in a four-hour thriller was
nothing knew for Hewitt.
But seeing his opponent serve under-arm certainly was after
Draganja, suffering from severe cramping that led to a controversial 10-minute
stoppage at one point, left the Australians flabbergasted.
"I don't know what was wrong with him," Hewitt
said.
"He wouldn't move for balls and then he started slicing
balls and he hit an under-arm serve.
"There was just a lot of weird things happening on the
court today. That was strange.
"It's just really hard to concentrate in that
situation. We were playing on a lot of emotion at the time after winning that
third set, so we didn't want to dip."
Kokkinakis also couldn't believe what was happening and
credited Hewitt, one of the game's fiercest competitors, for keeping his mind
on the job.
"I was starting to lose my focus a bit when I saw that
guy do whatever he was doing. It was one of the weirdest things I've
seen," he said.
"But Lleyton keeping his focus, it really shifted me
into gear."
The epic encounter followed Hewitt's sapping four-hour,
five-set first-round singles loss to Jarkko Nieminen on Monday.
Playing for the 17th and final time at the All England Club,
Hewitt surely would have been the first player in history to have had his
Wimbledon career ended in singles and doubles by two different Finns.
Instead he and Kokkinakis will play Swede Robin Lindstedt
and Austrian Jurgen Melzer on Saturday for a place in the third round.
The victory also gives Davis Cup captain Wally Masur another
doubles option for Australia's grasscourt quarter-final tie against Kazakhstan
in Darwin the week after Wimbledon.
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