Former South African player Bob Hewitt, who was recently kicked out of the International Tennis Hall of Fame due to sexual abuse allegations, releases a statement in an attempt to refute some of them. Hewitt specifically responds to allegations made by Suellen Sheehan, saying that the only relationship they ever had was a professional one.
“She accuses me of starting to molest her from the age of nine years through 12 years. Well the fact is, my family and I were not even living in South Africa, but in Winter Park, Colorado, USA, until the end of 1979,” wrote Hewitt. “According Sheehan’s ID, she was born in June 1969, that would make her nine years old when I was playing full-time on the professional men’s tennis circuit and in the July of 1978, I won Wimbledon doubles with Few McMillan. The following year, when she was 10-years-old, Greer Stevens and I won the mixed doubles at Wimbledon. While playing from 1978 through to the end of 1980, I was coaching and playing some doubles tournaments with Heinz Guenthardt also full-time on the circuit. I retired from the circuit at the end of 1980. She was a girl that was brought into my tennis squad in 1981, which would’ve made her 12-years-old, by my assistant coach at the time. In an article in the Bedfordview Edenvale News dated January 16, 2012, she claims that I ‘spotted her at a tennis tournament at the age of nine years and offered to coach her.’ Impossible.”