Alex de Minaur: ‘Take our bid seriously’: Lleyton Hewitt doubles down on criticism after Italy sends Australia packing from Davis Cup
Australia’s captain Lleyton Hewitt has delivered a parting shot to event organisers after Australia was knocked out of the Davis Cup on Sunday morning.
Hewitt doubled down on his opinion that Australia is at a disadvantage because the team always has to travel for the finals of the team competition.
“Once again we’re a long way from Australia, aren’t we?” he said.
“It will be nice when they take our bid seriously to host the finals, Australia will put on a bloody good event.”
Last week, Hewitt declared the European teams received an advantage that he found “frustrating”.
Top-ranked Italians Jannik Sinner and Matteo Berrettini won matches on Saturday in front of a supportive crowd in Malaga, Spain to lift defending champions Italy past Australia 2-0 and back into a Davis Cup final.
Sinner extended his tour-level winning streak to 24 singles sets in a row by beating No. 9 Alex de Minaur 6-3, 6-4 after Berrettini came back to defeat Thanasi Kokkinakis 6-7 (6), 6-3, 7-5.
“We have shown that it was not lucky last year,” Sinner said of potentially securing back-to-back titles.
The much shorter trip for Italian fans than Australians meant the 9,200-seat arena sounded like a home environment on Saturday for Berrettini, with repeated chants of “I-ta-lia!” or “Ole, ole, ole, ole! Matte’! Matte’!” amplified by megaphones and accompanied by drums and trumpets.
Chair umpire James Keothavong repeatedly asked spectators to stop whistling as Kokkinakis served.
Kokkinakis described the situation as “tough”.
“I felt I was playing an away tie, it was tough on Australia. We’re playing in Spain but I thought we were in Italy,” he said post-match.
Of course, Sinner received the same sort of backing, although he might not have needed as much with the way he has played all year, including taking the title at the ATP Finals last weekend.
“We are very lucky that the Italian fans … are very passionate. They are very loud,” Sinner said.
“This gives us something very, very positive, in a way, and especially when we struggle.”
Not that he finds himself in that sort of situation too often.
Sinner improved to 9-0 against de Minaur over their careers, including taking the last 17 sets they have played against each other.
“He hasn’t won a million matches this year for no reason. It was tough,” de Minaur said, exaggerating Sinner’s 72-6 win-loss record in 2024.
Italy will meet first-time finalist Netherlands on Sunday for the title. The Dutch followed up their victory over Rafael Nadal and Spain in the quarter-finals by eliminating Germany in the semi-finals.
“We took a step today,” Italian captain Filippo Volandri said.
“We need to take another.”
Italy, which got past Australia in last year’s final, is trying to become the first country to win the Davis Cup for the second time consecutively since the Czech Republic in 2012 and 2013.
The biggest suspense on the indoor hard court at the Palacio de Deportes Jose Maria Martina Carpena in southern Spain came in the Berrettini-Kokkinakis match.
Berrettini, the runner-up at Wimbledon in 2021, needed to put aside the way he gave away the opening set, wasting three chances to finish it — and managed to do just that.
He grabbed the last three games of the match, breaking to lead 6-5, then closing it out with his 14th ace after two hours, 44 minutes.
“After I lost the first set it wasn’t easy to digest that, but when I’m fighting for my country with this crowd … I kept on fighting,” Berrettini said.
The big hitter has been ranked as high as No.6 and is currently No.35 after missing chunks of time the past two seasons because of injuries or illness. He sat out two of this year’s four major tournaments and lost in the second round at each of the other two.
But when healthy, he is among the world’s top tennis players, capable of speedy serves and booming forehands. He was in control for much of the match against No.77 Kokkinakis, who was the 2022 Australian Open men’s doubles champion with Nick Kyrgios and helped his country get past the United States in the quarter-finals.
Berrettini, his teammate Sinner said, “has been working a lot to get to this position”.
Malaga, located on the shores of the Mediterranean, has hosted the finals the past three years.
The last 16 Davis Cup finals have also all been played in Europe with seven of those located in Spain.
Despite being the second-most successful team in the tournament’s history with 28 titles, Australia has not hosted the event since 2003 — the year the nation won its last crown.
