Former world number one and Australian tennis legend Lleyton Hewitt has been inducted into the 2021 International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Hewitt, who won two grand slams and 30 ATP titles across his career, was the leading vote-getter in the Hall of Fame’s Fan Voting, which took place late in 2020.
He remains the youngest player to reach number one in the open-era, achieving the honour at just 20 years, 9 months.
“I am hugely honoured to be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame," he said.
“When you are competing, you’re so focused on training and your results that week or that year, you don’t really look ahead to something like this.
“But when that is all compiled up and deemed deserving of becoming a Hall of Famer, well, it’s just the ultimate recognition for a player, and I’m so honoured.
“The Hall of Famers are people who I admired so much throughout my career – especially people like Rochey and Newk and Rocket and so many others. They were all motivating factors in my career and to be recognised alongside them in tennis history is an incredible honour.”
He is joined by the 'Original Nine', a trailblazing group of women who pushed to eradicate disparity in prize money and playing opportunities for women in professional tennis.
It includes Australians Judy Tegart-Dalton and Kerry Melville Reid, plus Americans Peaches Bartkowicz, Rosie Casals, Julie Heldman, Billie Jean King, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey, Valerie Ziegenfuss, becoming the first group to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
“For us to be given this honour is really something special and I think it's great recognition for what we did. It means a lot,” said Tegart-Dalton.
“One of the main things is that we achieved was recognition for women's tennis, but also for women's sport as a whole really. I think that for all of us, we worked so hard and when we took such a chance, but we didn't realise how significant it would be 50 years on.”
“I think it's so great that the Hall of Fame agreed to put us in the Hall as a group. It means a lot. It was a long time ago, 50 years ago that we broke away from the men and started the women's tour," Melville Reid added.
“We had a goal and we just worked really hard. Those early tournaments, we barely had time to practice even. We were doing so much PR, clinics, and everything else to try and promote the tournament. It took a lot of dedication, to do that.
“But I think we did a good job for women's tennis and women in general as it turned out.”
Innovative tennis coach Dennis Van der Meer rounds out the group, with the 'teacher of teachers' becoming the standard-bearer for coaches heading forward.
Van Der Meer was Jean King’s coach for her famous “Battle of the Sexes” match against Bobby Riggs in 1973