The Big-Name Wimbledon Boys' Final
Jordan Lee beat Cruz Hewitt in a battle with great expectations.
WIMBLEDON, England — Sixth-ranked Ben Shelton hasn’t had great results at the big tournaments this year, but he remains the top American man in the ATP rankings.
When I asked him about being atop the ladder, the 23-year-old Shelton said he had “more of a team view when I think of U.S. tennis.”
“Obviously I live in Orlando: the National Center is there,” Shelton said. “So I’m seeing these young kids all the time who are very good players coming up: 16, 17. I’m practicing with them sometimes. For me, that’s the coolest part: to be around them and give them some exposure to playing with a top-10 guy.
“To see some of their trajectories and get to know some of those kids has been really fun. I think I’ve enjoyed that piece of it more, because I know when I was a kid and I got to hit every once in a while with one of the pros at the USTA, it was, like, crazy for me. I was starstruck—and it honestly helped a lot.”
When I asked Shelton if any of the youngsters stood out to him, he didn’t hesitate to answer.
“Jordan Lee,” Shelton said quickly. “Yeah.”
So when I saw 16-year-old Jordan Lee begin to march through the boys’ singles draw at Wimbledon, I wasn’t shocked, even though he’d had to come through qualifying. Lee thrashed fifth-seeded Yannick Theodor Alexandrescou 6-0, 6-2 in the first round to kick off what became a draw full of upsets, with none of the top eight seeds even reaching the quarterfinals.
Lee rolled on, making it to the final, where he faced an opponent who was also unseeded but had one of the most recognized names ever in a junior final: Cruz Hewitt, the 17-year-old son of 2002 Wimbledon men’s champion Lleyton Hewitt.
I had the delight of sitting next to junior tennis beat legend Colette Lewis during the final; as she saw the media section on No. 1 Court filling up more than it had for any junior match she could remember, she turned to me and said: “It’s been a great final, but who are all these people?”
Though both players had mature serves that reached over 120 miles per hour, it was a roller coaster match—as junior matches often are. Hewitt led 5-1 in the first set before staving off a Lee comeback to take it 6-4. After Lee took a 5-2 lead in the second set, it was his turn to fend off a Hewitt surge before taking it 6-4. And then when Hewitt took a 4-2 lead in the third set, it was Lee who fought back, leveled, and ultimately broke Hewitt at love in the final game, snapping a backhand winner down the line to take the 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 victory.
Lee, who is the first American boy to win a junior title at Wimbledon since Samir Banerjee in 2021, is one of the youngest winners of a major boys’ singles title: he only turned 16 two months ago.
I could only find a handful of younger Open Era Wimbledon boys’ champs in my research, including a kid named Bjorn Borg in 1972.
Though not quite as steady as Hewitt, who is nearly a year-and-a-half older, Lee was quicker and more explosive on Saturday, with a combination of speed, power and drop shots that has drawn some excited—if premature—comparisons to Carlos Alcaraz.
“Obviously I’m really happy that I won this title,” Lee said in his post-win press conference. “It’s a big title and I’m really happy to be here. For me, I think the mentality going forward is: I know I can do it. Hopefully, my career is just getting started. I know it’s a long journey, so I don’t think winning this title means that I’m going to be destined for greatness or that I’m going to win pros next year. I know there’s a long journey ahead of me, and I’m ready for it.”
Lee has a parent with a tennis pedigree of her own, albeit not at the level of Lleyton Hewitt’s laurels.
Tina Lee, Jordan’s mother, was a tennis player herself, starting in her native Bratislava at the same club where Marian Vajda coached before he went on to success as the longtime coach of Novak Djokovic. Tina came to Florida to play collegiate tennis for Bethune-Cookman University, and stayed in the area to coach; she’s now a coach at the USTA center in Orlando.
But while Lleyton Hewitt was courtside, Tina Lee gets too nervous to watch her son live. She only came down courtside to greet him a few minutes after he’d won the match.
“Yeah, she does get a bit tight while I’m playing,” Lee said in an interview with Bounces. “But yeah, I really, really appreciate everything that she does for me. She’s my biggest supporter. So yeah, seeing her coming down after I won was pretty emotional, but very nice.”
In his earlier press conference, Lee had described how he started to play tennis while his mother was coaching in a local park.
“They had racquets you could rent for free: I just grabbed the racquet and started hitting on a fence or a wall,” Lee said. “From there on, I fell in love with it.”
Lee said in his interview with Bounces that his mother’s primary goals for him, as he saw them, were not tennis-based.
“Her goal was always for me to be the best human being that I can, whether that’s on the court or off the court. I think that was her main goal, and, (laughs) hopefully she did a good job of that. When it comes to tennis, we started off when I was pretty young, but it wasn’t like we were taking it too seriously. Also letting me enjoy my kid days.”
“Do you feel like your ‘kid days’ are over?” I asked. “You’re still young, so I hope not.”
“No, no,” Lee replied, reassuringly. “Hopefully, they’re not.”
Lee’s entry as a qualifier may have made him look like an outsider at Wimbledon—and he had never before competed at any junior Grand Slam event—but he’s been highly touted for years. Four years ago, when he was just 12, Lee won the IMG Future Stars event in Greece. Two years ago, he made it to the final of the 14-and-under event at Wimbledon. Last year, he won the Eddie Herr tournament in Florida.1
And then, of course, there was Shelton’s emphatic endorsement.
“Ben’s a great person,” Lee said when I asked him about Shelton’s praise. “I really enjoy being with him. On the court hitting with him, it’s pretty scary when he’s across the net. But yeah, in the locker room, outside the locker room, I think he’s like one of my idols, someone that I look up to. Not just because of, like, American tennis, but also his professionalism, and all the stuff he does on the court and off the court. That’s really something I’m trying to get to.”
Lee missed seven months last year, he said, with a right wrist injury, though he couldn’t explain more specifically what the exact issue had been. “I have no clue,” Lee said.
Next up for Lee will be the 18-and-under boys’ national championships in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the winner gets a main draw wild card into the U.S. Open men’s singles draw.
“For me, I’m not thinking really about the U.S. Open wild card,” Lee told Bounces. “I just want to take it one match at a time. I haven’t been to Kalamazoo ever, so it’s going to be pretty, pretty new and fun for me.”
Cruz Hewitt’s journey has been considerably more spotlit.
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