Cruz Hewitt beat Marcos Giron 6-3, 6-4 in the first round of the Mubadala DC Open for his first ATP Tour win, and the 17-year-old marked it the same way his father, Lleyton Hewitt, always did: bending his hand back with his fingers pointing toward his eyes and forehead, the trademark “vicht.”

“It’s called the Vicht..I think..I don’t know, I need to check on that to be honest…He never named it, he just always did it..And then when I was little I have seen it, I’ve never asked about it so I might have to do that”, said Hewitt in his post-match interview on Tennis Channel. “But no its cool to be able to do that because obviously my dad’s been a huge part of where I am today so I am grateful to have him”.

It was Hewitt’s first ATP main draw appearance, and he didn’t look it. He never faced a break point the entire match, won 83 percent of his first-serve points, and broke Giron once in each set to close it out in 73 minutes. That made him the youngest player to win a match in Washington since Kei Nishikori did it in 2007, and in a fitting bit of symmetry, Nishikori himself, now 36, won his own first-round match at this same tournament just days earlier.

The win comes just weeks after Hewitt lost his first junior Grand Slam final at Wimbledon to American Jordan Lee, blowing a third-set lead in the process. Lee is also in Washington this week, playing in qualifying.

Hewitt entered the tournament ranked No. 612 after coming through qualifying, and the result projects him up 255 spots to No. 357 in the live rankings, with a shot at cracking the Top 300 if he wins again. He’s also just the second son of an ATP “No. 1 Club” member to win a tour-level match, joining Leo Borg, son of Bjorn Borg. His own father won his first tour-level match at 16 in Adelaide in 1998, a tournament he went on to win, and Lleyton later claimed the DC Open title itself in 2004.

“It’s pretty surreal to win here,” Hewitt said, as per ATP Tour. “Obviously I saw my dad play here. I came to his last tournament I remember. There are so many memories of that.”

That family history adds extra weight to who’s waiting for him next.

Cruz Hewiit Might Face the Defending Champion in the Next Round in Washington

Hewitt’s second-round opponent will be either top seed and countryman Alex de Minaur, the tournament’s defending champion, or former World No. 3 Stefanos Tsitsipas. De Minaur has been more than just a fellow Australian to Hewitt over the years, regularly hitting with him and offering advice. “He’s like my older brother,” Hewitt said. “I’ve known him basically my whole life.”

Speaking at Wimbledon earlier this year, Hewitt described what he takes from those sessions. “When I hit with him, he gives me great advice,” he said. “So I take that on board as much as possible.”

Standing in the way of a potential all-Australian matchup is Tsitsipas, who holds a lopsided 12-1 head-to-head lead over de Minaur, including a win in Miami this year, and arrives fresh off his first title in more than a year at Gstaad last month.

Rain pushed that de Minaur-Tsitsipas match from Tuesday night to Wednesday, July 29. Hewitt will find out his second-round opponent, and the biggest test of his young career so far, once that match wraps up.