14 June,2010 08:30 AM IST | | AFP
Lleyton Hewitt stunned longtime nemesis Roger Federer of Switzerland to lift the ATP grass-court Halle title on his first appearance here yesterday.
The eighth seeded Australian rallied from a set down to beat the five-time Halle champion and top seed Federer 3-6, 7-6 (7/4), 6-4.
Hewitt, the 2002 Wimbledon champion, ended a 15-match winless streak to the world number two stretching back to a Davis Cup match in September 2003 and moved closer to 100 grass-court match wins as he improved to a 98-23 lifetime mark on the surface.
The 28-year-old Federer had not lost a match here since a semi-final defeat to Nicolas Kiefer in 2002 and had won 76 of his past 77 grass-court matches, with the only blemish being a five-set defeat to Rafael Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon final. Hewitt (29) said: "I had a bit more luck today. Any time you play Roger on a grass court, you know you're in for a hell of a battle and I was lucky to get out of today's. I'm getting to the end of my career with a couple of surgeries, to know I can still compete at this level, it's fantastic," said Hewitt, who lifted his first title since Houston last year.
