Children of Tennis Legends Continue Family Sporting Legacies

The appearance of familiar names like Hewitt and Borg on tennis tournament entry lists occasionally brings to mind different eras in the sport. Lleyton Hewitt’s son, Cruz, is the latest athlete whose parent has passed on the sport to their offspring. Sixteen-year-old Cruz Hewitt has been granted a wildcard for the qualifying event of the upcoming Australian Open. His father, two-time Grand Slam champion Lleyton, was a runner-up at this tournament in 2005. Former world number one Hewitt became the youngest male player to qualify for the Australian Open in 1997, achieving this one month before his 16th birthday. BBC Sport highlights other parent-child tennis pairings. Casper Ruud has accumulated 12 ATP Tour tournament victories. Three-time Grand Slam runner-up Casper Ruud is the son of former Norwegian number one Christian Ruud. In 2020, Casper became the first Norwegian to win an ATP Tour title at the Argentina Open, thereby surpassing his father as Norway’s highest-ranked player. After reaching the finals of the French Open and US Open two years later, Casper achieved a career-high ranking of world number two. The 25-year-old Casper reached the men’s singles quarter-finals of the 2024 Paris Olympics, becoming the first Norwegian player to advance to that stage. American Sebastian Korda is the son of Czech tennis great Petr Korda. In 2023, Sebastian Korda reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open, a tournament his father, former world number two Petr Korda, won 25 years earlier. Sebastian, 24, has secured two ATP singles titles and a doubles title at the 2024 Madrid Open, and is currently ranked 23rd in the world. Following Sebastian’s victory at the Washington Open in August, he and Petr became the first father-son duo to be ranked in the top 20. Sebastian’s sisters, Nelly and Jessica, are both professional golfers, with Nelly holding the world number one ranking. Leo Borg’s father, the legendary Bjorn Borg, retired from tennis at 25, making a brief comeback 10 years later. Leo Borg’s father, Bjorn, is considered one of tennis’s all-time greats, having won 11 Grand Slam singles titles and spent 109 weeks at the top of the world rankings. Ranked 546th in the world, Leo has made only three appearances on the ATP Tour, debuting in Stockholm, his birthplace, in 2021. He achieved his first win at that level two years later, defeating compatriot Elias Ymer in straight sets in Bastad. The 21-year-old Leo also competed against Rafael Nadal in Stockholm this year, with the 22-time Grand Slam champion describing it as a “huge honour to play against the son of one of the biggest legends in the history of our sport”. Brandon Holt is ranked 198th in the world. American Holt caused a significant upset at the 2022 US Open, eliminating the in-form 10th seed Taylor Fritz in the first round. Holt, 26, had advanced through qualifying to reach the main draw of his home major, and this victory marked his first at the top level. His mother, Tracy Austin, is a two-time US Open winner, famously defeating four-time defending champion Chris Evert in 1979 to become champion at just 16 years old. Holt reached the second round of the Australian Open in 2023 and has re-entered the world’s top 200 after competing on the Challenger tour. Elizabeth Mandlik is American, while her mother, Hana Mandlikova, was born in Czechoslovakia before obtaining Australian citizenship. Hana Mandlikova is a four-time major singles champion and is one of only 13 women in the Open era to have reached the finals of all four Slams. Mandlikova became the first US Open women’s singles winner in the Open era to have her daughter play at the same tournament when Elizabeth made her New York debut in 2022. Mandlik, 23, won her first-round match before losing to eventual runner-up Ons Jabeur in the second. She has claimed seven singles titles on the women’s ITF circuit and holds a career-high ranking of 97. It is possible that more young athletes with tennis-star parents will emerge. Stefan, the 10-year-old son of Serbian former world number one Novak Djokovic, has been playing for some time. He won a club tournament a couple of years ago and has been observed practicing with his father on Wimbledon’s courts. According to her mother, American 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena Williams, her eldest daughter Olympia possesses natural talent for the sport, though she prefers playing golf. Conversely, tennis legends Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf made a deliberate decision not to pressure their children into pursuing the sport. Graf, a 22-time major singles champion, stated that the couple had “never really introduced tennis so much in their lives”. In his autobiography Open, Agassi detailed his own father’s strictness and remarked in 2024, external: “The idea that a parent would attach a child’s right to be loved in this world based on their performance is a tragedy.” Agassi further questioned, “What somebody needs to do to be pro at 16 years old is crazy, right?”