He's an Australian tennis player, barely out of his teens, but rising fast and already famous, and certain of his own central importance. He's on his way to victory again, but there's a hitch, because there almost always is. This day, it's a linesperson's call and an umpire's recalcitrance in not overruling it, and he wonders why he even bothers with these podgy hirelings. Sometimes, though not now, he uses schoolboy epithets, because, heh, who's going to stop him now? It won't be tennis people; he already knows that.

This might be Nick Kyrgios and Wimbledon and now, but it might also be Lleyton Hewitt in dozens of places and on dozen of occassions when he was Kyrgios's age.

It seems to be written on the DNA of Australia's most precocious tennis stars that they must also be brats.

Hewitt called one linesperson a spastic, damned another in an allusion with racial overtones, bawled out umpires and infuriated opponents; a rival's coach warned one day that he was heading for a punch on the nose in the locker room. He divided opinion, and sometimes very nearly united it, against him.

So where was this one-time enfant terrible while Kyrgios was pouting and posturing and threatening to take his racquet and their balls and go home at Wimbledon on Monday?

He was a couple of courts away, playing what turned out to be his last ever match at the courts he loves as dearly as life itself, scrapping to the fifth-set finish – without even a backward glance at a linesperson or a sidelong one at the umpire – and when he was done receiving a standing ovation from the crowd and felicitations from Roger Federer among hundreds of others, and Australia's united acclaim; a first-round loser, yes, but far beyond that a statesman of the game.

While Kyrgios was threatening to stop playing for now, Hewitt was left with no choice, for good.

Like Hewitt then, Kyrgios is a lovely tennis player. Like Hewitt then, Kyrgios is self-absorbed; what teenager isn't? Like Hewitt then, Kyrgios thinks of himself as a rebel; what teenager doesn't? Their hairstyles are peculiar to their generations, their attitude eternal. Like Hewitt then, Kyrgios already divides Australian fans, but intuits that it takes only one big win to bring them together; Nadal at Wimbedon last year showed it. Not yet has Kyrgios given anywhere near as much and grave offence as Hewitt once did, but then again, he affects not really even to like the game. Hewitt was (and remains) infatuated with it. Kyrgios doesn't even bother to hide behind the fig leaf about that excuses infantile behaviour on the grounds that he is giving his all for his country; he is too cool for that school.

Much as we might wish for Kyrgios to transform from Hewitt then to Hewitt now in a single leap, he won't, because he can't, because few ever did, in any walk. Growing up, by definition, is a gradual business, a journey, made even longer for young sportsmen because they start in a coccoon.

Kyrgios is not a bad kid; he just has a long way to go. He will play and improve at tennis, with any luck win a major or two, be dwelled upon, and fawned over, and lectured to, and cut slack sometimes, but not others, and his horizons will slowly broaden, and he will see that not every setback is a personal insult, and not every figure of authority is out to get him, and for someone bursting with his natural talent, tennis isn't such a bad game, really.

After all, cricket was only Shane Warne's second choice.

In the meantime, Kyrgios has something that Hewitt does not, but would treasure still: another match at Wimbledon.