Halle: Welcome To The H-Word

Lleyton Hewitt d. Roger Federer, 36 76(4) 64

The year of the former pigeon continues as Lleyton Hewitt overturned a run of fifteen straight defeats to Roger Federer to take the Halle title. I missed the first set, but from what I saw Federer became increasingly erratic and unfocussed as the match went on. Lleyton, by contrast, just became more and more cool and accurate with his groundstrokes and sealed the win in veteran style long after it felt like it was inevitable.

I just like this photo.

Clearly, the days in which you knew which Federer was going to turn up week to week are gone. This has been the case for a while, but it still seems to surprise, particularly when the victor is someone who Federer partly built his reputation on being able to consistently demolish at will. I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t mean terribly much for Wimbledon, except maybe that it makes it a tiny bit more interesting, but there’s no way that Federer is going to turn in the same kind of somewhat listless performance there he did here.

Somewhere in here is the knowledge of how to play this game.

I don’t want to take anything away from Rusty, because I thought he played brilliantly. And this is, let’s forget, when he’s still getting back into the swing of things after his second hip surgery. Age and adversity have definitely mellowed him, or maybe just my response to him, because I love to see him get a great win these days. And this time he can’t follow it up by beating Elf in the second round at Wimbledon. Yay.

‘maaaaawn the little Aussie battler.