De Minaur earns cringe win over the younger Hewitt

Alex de Minaur saved face in an excruciating all-Aussie clash at the ATP event in Washington as he defeated the teenaged son of Australian icon Lleyton Hewitt to reach the quarter-finals.

The freshly married de Minaur played for the first time in more than three weeks after losing a Wimbledon fourth-round and then getting hitched to British player Katie Boulter.

Cruz Hewitt, 17-year-old son of Lleyton, took the 6-2, 6-3 loss as de Minaur reached the last eight of the pre-US open tune-up.

But facing the son of one of your tennis mentors was not easy for the sixth-ranked winner. who admitted that his own awkward form needs some quick improvement.

“It was definitely weird, I knew I was going to play him (Cruz) on the Tour some day, but I didn’t actually expect it to be this week,” de Minaur said.

“Even all the lead up, seeing all the incredible pictures that we have together and how we’ve both grown up. I’m glad I managed to get through, but I’m sure we’re going to have many battles in the years to come.”

But those sentiments could not distract from the oddity of paying the son of a mentor and Davis Cup captain.

“I expected Lleyton to be),in the box, and helping his son. But we both didn’t know how to kind of act, right?

“It was definitely a weird situation, but now that this has happened the next time we’ll all be ready for it, that’s for sure.”

De Minaur, 27, will now line up against Brandon Nakashima, a winner over seventh seed Jakub Mensik 7-6 (5), 3-  6-4.

De Minaur is defending his 2025 title in the US capital and somehow felt lucky to escape with the win over Hewitt, Jr after a long-ish layoff.

“(This is the ) longest I’ve been without touching a racket and it’s probably the worst I felt on court after this. The body was in bits, aching all over the place.

“I felt like I aged about 20 years over 13 days but the one thing I definitely told my team was that, ‘Yeah, I can’t take this much time off’. 

“I need the body to at least keep moving because if not it’s tough to get back on the horse.”