Australia’s Hewitt may come out of retirement for Davis Cup

Hewitt was also not nominated for Saturday’s doubles, preferring doubles specialist John Peers and Groth against Bob and Mike Bryan.

Hewitt called time on his career at the Australian Open in January but remained fit and had been busy on the practise court, the team’s coach Jason Stoltenberg told local media this week. “I won’t cramp”, Hewitt said on Thursday.

Australia’s Nick Kyrgios was ruled out of playing in the Davis Cup tie by team medical staff, ha …

Still, said Courier: “It is certainly not something that coming down here to Australia we were anticipating”.

Lleyton Hewitt (C), seen here with family members, announced his retirement at this year’s Austr …

If Hewitt does come out of retirement, he would become the first Davis Cup captain in history to play a live rubber. According to his mother, the Australian player of Greek origin had caught a virus the previous week while he competed in Dubai in the tournamentwhere he got eliminated by Stan Wawrinka, the following victor, in the semifinals.

Both US players practised on the drop-in grass court at Kooyong on Monday, with Kyrgios and Tomic scheduled to have their first hit on the temporary centre court on Tuesday. He went straight to Kooyong within a few hours of touching down and said while he might be short of full fitness for the tie, he would compete well.

“(Kyrgios) just had a bit of a virus, so at the moment he’s just taking it easy and just trying to get over that 100 percent and then he’ll be right to go”, Hewitt said.

“It’s bad timing for us but it was really out of our hands at the end”.

There is still an opportunity for Hewitt to play in the tie in Sunday’s reverse singles, depending on the state of play.

He deserved better than to say goodbye in the second round of this year’s Australian Open.

The Australian team has until 9 a.m. (AEDT) tomorrow to finalise their lineup before the official draw begins.

Kyrgios practised briefly on Wednesday in a bid to prove himself fit to play but Hewitt said he was left with little choice but to put a red line through the world No. 27 who won his first ATP title last month.