Lleyton Glynn Hewitt was born on February 24th 1981 in Adelaide, Australia. He played on the Australian Rules Football until age 13, when he decided to pursue a career in tennis. While in the juniors, he was ranked #1 in the Aussie under-18 division in 1996. He soon started to play professional tennis & turned pro in 1998 and won his first tournament the same year. His long blonde hair and brash style reminded many of the young Andre Agassi and Hewitt became a favorite heartthrob of teen tennis fans..

He first played for Australia's Davis Cup team in 1999, and competed at Sydney in the 2000 Summer Olympics. Hewitt beat Pete Sampras in the finals of the 2001 U.S. Open to claim his first Grand Slam-level championship. The next year he won the Wimbledon men's singles title with a straight-sets win over David Nalbandian. Hewitt has the best record among Australian tennis players over the past 20 years. He has won 22 singles titles and two doubles titles since turning professional in 1998.

He won his first professional tournament, in Adelaide, just before his 17th birthday. Since then Lleyton has captured an impressive number of titles. In 2001, he became the youngest in the history of ATP Rankings, and the only Aussie ever, to be #1-ranked in the ATP Rankings (he was 20 years old). His greatest victory has been the US Open title he claimed in 2001. He has yet to make it to the later rounds of the Australian Open, but has won several lead-up tournaments in recent years, including the Adidas International in Sydney in January. Over the past years, Lleyton has broken so many records, and defeated so many opponents, that he has clearly shown he had the tenacity, the perseverance and the talent to be the #1 player in the world.

Hewitt is a defensive baseline counterpuncher. He typically likes to stay back towards the baseline during a rally and will usually approach the net only to catch a short reply or drop shot from his opponent. His strength is his return game and he is often described as being among the best returners of serve in the game. Although he doesn't have the devastating return of Andre Agassiwho is often regarded as the best returner of serve ever, at the 2004 Cincinnati Masters final commentator MaliVai Washington said that Hewitt was even more difficult to "ace" than Agassi because he gets more returns in play. Hewitt's tactics typically involve putting difficult service returns in play, consistently chasing down attempted winning shots from his opponent, and waiting for his opponent to make an error.