It’s a little surprising that tennis isn’t more dominated by the offspring of former top pros, who presumably pass along the genetics, know-how, and wealth needed to construct a good tennis player. On the ATP side, the most prominent examples right now would be Sebastian Korda and Casper Ruud, sons of a world No. 2 and a world No. 39, respectively. If those pedigrees weren’t good enough, we now officially have the son of a world No. 1 tearing up the hard court: Cruz Hewitt, son of Lleyton, the Aussie who dominated the early aughts with his point-to-point intensity, backwards hat, and jumping backhands. I’m officially old enough that the guys that we used to imitate at tennis camp now have sons racking up ATP points. Horrifying to consider.

Anyway, the 17-year-old Cruz is a real talent, though different in style from his predecessor. Perhaps all they have in common is the orientation of their hats and their determined dispositions on court. Lleyton was the counterpuncher to rule all counterpunchers, undersized but overzealous with his court coverage. During his prime in the early aughts, the sport was about to be overtaken by powerful baseliners, but Lleyton, at 5-foot-10, still managed to climb to the top of the tour with his mild forehand, scrappy returning, and flawless point construction. This guy had a 7–2 winning record over Roger Federer until 2003! At which point that man, and the new power he ushered in, simply washed over everyone else. (Federer went on to win 16 of their remaining 18 matches.) I’m not sure we’ll ever see a player of that low-power counterpunching archetype win Wimbledon on the men’s side ever again. Just to hammer home the point, after Lleyton won his title there in 2002, Roger took five in a row.

Hopefully Cruz won’t have to fight quite as viciously for every point, compared with his dad. His strokes are bigger and loopier, and he can average 120 mph on first serve over the course of a match. During his run to the boys’ Wimbledon final earlier this month, the younger Hewitt was asked to estimate his current height; he guessed “6-foot-2-ish,” and perhaps he’s not yet done. Under the paint job he’s believed to be using one of the power racquets du jour, the EZONE 98. Cruz joins a very different pro tour than his dad’s, technologically and tactically, but appears to be reasonably well-equipped for the fight. It’s too early to tell for sure. He spent much of this season grinding Futures and Challengers, raising his ranking from No. 735 at the start of the year to No. 612 at the start of this week.

It turned out to be a momentous week. Offered a wild card into the qualifying rounds in Washington, Cruz benefited from two consecutive retirements (Dusan Lajovic was down 5–2, though Zachary Svajda was up 2–0 in the third set). Strange circumstances, but that sent the teenager to his first ATP main-draw match, at a tournament his dad won in 2004. In Tuesday’s first-round match, Hewitt played world No. 80 Marcus Giron. Hewitt won 6–3, 6–4, claiming 83 percent of his first-serve points and not facing a break point. After winning, Cruz did his dad’s signature celebration: four fingers pointed right at the eyes. What’s the deal with it? Cruz hilariously wasn’t even sure, as he admitted in a Tennis Channel interview. “It’s called the ‘vicht,’ I think. I think! I need to check on that, to be honest…. When I was little, I’ve just seen it, I never really asked about it.” It is indeed called the “vicht,” and it originated with Swedish players Mats Wilander and Niclas Kroon, who took Kroon’s celebratory gesture while playing Yahtzee and translated it to the tennis court in the 1980s. The elder Hewitt must have borrowed it from the players he grew up watching. And his son did the same.

For his next act, Cruz had to take on a friend and mentor he’s known for a decade: Alex de Minaur, the top Aussie on tour, and perhaps the present era’s analogue to Lleyton himself. De Minaur has spent so much time with the Hewitts that Cruz said he was “like an older brother.” They hit together regularly. Thursday’s second-round match was straightforward work for the tournament’s top seed, 6–2, 6–3, who admitted in his on-court interview that it was “definitely weird” to be playing Cruz already: “I knew I was going to play him on the tour someday, but I didn’t actually expect it to be this week.” At the net, de Minaur told him they’d be playing for the next 10 years of their lives and wished him good luck. With his first-round win, Cruz Hewitt has leaped up to No. 368 in the live rankings. Among players under 18, only the breakout Frenchman Moise Kouamé is currently ranked higher. If he hopes to keep clashing with his big brother on tour, he still has a long climb ahead of him.