Australian tennis needs to improve its development pathways to get more elite talent in the world's top 10 and take the sport forward, says former No.1 Lleyton Hewitt.
Alex de Minaur, currently ranked No.9, has been the torchbearer since Ash Barty's 2022 retirement, with no other Australian men or women in the world's top 10.
"We've got to work through the pathway," Hewitt said in Melbourne on Friday.
"Obviously we've got to try and become a real high-performance group and try to transition the best kids through and try and find out a way to have more players not just in the top 100 in the world - we want them pushing towards top 50, top 10.
"We don't want the pressure just on Alex every single time we go into grand slams to be pushing deep into the second week.
"And the goal has to be not just winning one round at a grand slam, we want to try and get a lot more players into the second week of majors. That's also going to help tennis in the country as well."
Hewitt recalled riding the wave of local support to the Australian Open final in 2005.
"It was incredible, and that really helped the sport in general," he said.
"If we can have more people with the chance to push deep in the bigger tournaments, that's going to help our pathway as well."
New Tennis Australia chief executive Andrew Abdo has been speaking to Hewitt and others about making that happen.
"A big part of my job is tapping into that and then figuring out how we can take what we've got now and take it to the next level and invest more," Abdo said.
"It's really complicated because ... Australia is a pretty competitive landscape.
"There are lots of sports to choose from, and structurally we're a long way from the rest of the world.
"So we have to be really innovative around how we create high-performance opportunities for kids from a young age, and then obviously as they develop, and how we support parents and how we support coaches."
Hewitt and Abdo hope the addition of an extra Australian Open kids' tennis day, on Sunday, January 10, at the start of opening week, gets more children into tennis.
"We want to try and get as many kids into the sport as possible, and we're lucky in so many ways in Australia, but it's really tough as well because we're up against so many other great sports," Hewitt said at a Tennis Australia and Emirates media event.
"But we want to try and identify the talented kids from a young age, and get a tennis racquet in their hand and give them the chance to dream big and be part of the Australian Open one day.
"Certainly, the more we can get out there and host kids' days, put on a good spectacle that people want to be involved with and come out to, it helps the sport in Australia."
