The sharp mind of Lleyton Hewitt was straight onto the job when he noticed Andrey Rublev start to cramp deep into the fifth set.
With Rublev on fire and leading 4-0, he started to pull up short as he ran from one side of the baseline to the other and subtly flexed his calf between points, bouncing on his toes in an effort to shake the potentially debilitating physical issue.
But just as Hewitt was attempting to get Alex de Minaur’s attention, so he could alert his charge to the situation, he had an agonising realisation: de Minaur was at the wrong end.
Tennis has recently abolished its traditional ban on courtside coaching, with the player box now allowed to give tactical instruction to players – but there’s a catch.
Coaching is only allowed when the player is at the same end of the court as the coach. So almost immediately after he attempted to catch de Minaur’s eye, a visibly frustrated Hewitt caught himself on the Rod Laver Arena big screen and stopped.
According to Todd Woodbridge that twist of fate may have been the difference between victory and defeat for de Minaur, with a simple tactical adjustment required to get Rublev moving side-to-side.
“He was down the other end at the time and he’s wanting to say ‘Did you see it, did you see it?’,” Woodbridge told Nine’s Morning Serve.
“And he couldn’t sort of get the message across because he only needed to get the ball going corner to corner and kind of get Rublev moving, but that was what was amazing with Rublev. He’d go bang on the serve, crank a winner, or get the point where he could just stand in the centre and that’s hard to do and he just kept his composure.
“Unbelievable when he was this close (gestures with his fingers) to being not able to finish the match.”
De Minaur was serving at 0-4 when Rublev’s physical issue became obvious but he was unable to hold his serve and at 0-5 the task became too big.
“If de Minaur had got 4-1, de Minaur probably wins that set but [Rublev] managed to go through, so extraordinary sort of tension right at the end even though that set was 6-0.”