Australia's Lleyton Hewitt said his recovery from a slip late in the fourth set was the turning point in his Davis Cup final singles match against Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero on Friday.

Hewitt slipped over while leading 1-0 in the tiebreak but regained his feet and won the point before running out to a 7-0 victory, squaring the match at two sets all.

"That was a huge point," Hewitt told a news conference after his 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6, 6-2 win on a specially laid grass court at the Rod Laver Arena that gave Australia a 1-0 lead in the tie.

"I was just a couple of metres back from the baseline [and] I just had to hang in there and scrap a few balls. I just had to get it back deep and then I think that he was disappointed that the point was still going [and] he hardly moved.

"I thought he could have got that ball up the line and I ended up hitting a forehand winner and hit a great return on the next point to go 3-0 up in the tiebreak."

Hewitt said the memory of his last competitive match, a 5-7, 2-6, 7-6, 7-5, 6-1 comeback victory over Swiss Roger Federer in the Davis Cup semi-final in September, had helped him rally mentally during the fourth set.

"It wasn't that as big a deficit as the last time, but knowing the situation of the Davis Cup and how big a match it was, in a lot of ways I guess those memories were obviously good memories for me that helped a lot," he said.

The 22-year-old former world number one said he had been pleased with his game after the two-month break, particularly with the number of winners he had hit.

"I was going for it a lot, probably more than I normally do and I just tried to take it to him," he said. "I may have had a lot more unforced errors but I had a lot more winners than I normally had, so that's pretty pleasing as a whole."