Meet Lleyton Hewitt's son Cruz, 16, as former tennis No. 1 comes out of retirement for father-son doubles at ATP Challenger tournament

Cruz grew up training at the KDV Tennis Academy in Australia. In 2022, he began his junior tennis career at the age of 13 when he played at his first ITJ junior event at J1 Traralgon. That same year, he ended up winning the J5 event and was honored with the junior title. At 14, he got into the ITF tournament's qualifying draw, and at age 15, he made his Australian Open senior Grand Slam qualifying debut. In 2024, he was ranked number 15 in the World Junior Rankings. He is currently ranked number 16.

Cruz is the 16-year-old son of tennis pro Lleyton Hewitt and Rebecca June Hewitt, who is an actress, singer and TV presenter. He comes from a very sports-friendly family being that his aunt Jaslyn Hewitt-Shehadi was also a pro tennis player and his grandfather Glynn professionally played in the Australian Football League. Cruz grew up in the Bahamas where he first practiced soccer. After his dad first retired from tennis in 2016, his family immigrated to Australia and Cruz then trained at the KDV Tennis Academy, starting in 2021.

Cruz recently partnered with his father to be his doubles partner during the ATP Challenger Tour and Lleyton went out of retirement for the competition. They most recently beat doubles partners Hayden Jones and Pavle Marinkov 6-1, 6-0 on Wednesday, however, they lost the quarterfinals against Calum Puttergill and Dane Sweeny and the final score was 7-5, 6-4. 

Lleyton was the former world No.1. tennis player from Australia back in 2001 and he impressively held the top spot for 80 weeks. He has won two Grand Slam Titles, including the US Open in 2001 and Wimbledon in 2002. He has also secured 30 ATP singles titles and three doubles titles. The tennis pro was born in Australia and became the top junior player in 1996, before he went pro in 1998. He has a current ranking of 759.

He recalled his secrets of how he was able to get to the top spot of being the world's No. 1 tennis player and shared: "The only way you get the No. 1 ranking is to be unbelievably consistent, giving 100 percent every time I stepped on the court. I think that mental toughness really helped," per the ATP Tour.

Lleyton recently made an unexpected return to the tennis courts after years of retirement. He retired from the singles matches in 2016 and the doubles matches in 2020 at the Australian Open, when he played alongside Jordan Thompson as his doubles partner.