Roger Federer used to fear Lleyton Hewitt.  His groundstrokes, he knew, were better than his.  Federer would come to the net and take his chances there.  Federer knew, if he were ever to become number 1, that he needed to improve his baseline game.  By 2004, when Hewitt had a 7-2 win-loss record, Federer turned it around.  And for the next 15 matches, Federer won and won and won.

Federer was hoping to regain his magic at Halle where he had never lost.  He was up 6-3, and at 4-all, he had Hewitt down 0-40.  Hewitt would win 4 points in a row and then work a little to hold serve, push it into a tiebreak and then Federer played a few sloppy points and lost the tiebreak handily.

In the third set, Hewitt took advantage of a few sloppy points on Federer’s part to get an early break and basically held for the rest of the match.  Of all the surfaces, Hewitt probably feels his best chances are on grass where he has won at Wimbledon, alas, so many years ago.  Hewitt’s rank may have slipped, but in his mind, he probably thinks of himself as that number 1 player, even as it has been many a year since he held the top rank.

As Federer has gotten older, these matches are more common.  Federer doesn’t dominate his opponents as he used to.  He doesn’t dig himself out of messes like he may have.  Hewitt had to take off the French Open because he had hip surgery and was recovering.  He’s hoping to play well at Wimbledon again.

There’s still one tournament final to go.  Sam Querrey will face fellow American Mardy Fish.  Querrey predicted a tie in the US-England World Cup match (and was right) while Fish predicted a 7-2 win for England, though he claimed not to know anything about this “football”.

Federer will surely spin this in a positive way saying he got a few matches in, played good, and remains confident for Wimbledon.

But, in the meanwhile, Hewitt can say “No one beats me 16 times in a row” and wins one of his rare victories over an opponent he’s known for a decade.