Cover to Cover: Tracy Austin, Tennis Magazine's 2022 Academy Issue ambassador, remains endlessly fascinated with her sport

As a player, Tracy Austin spent her life mastering a sport where timing and movement are paramount. But even today, 28 years after Austin ended one of the finest careers in tennis history, she embodies those principles virtually every minute, her days and nights a merry-go-round of roles that demonstrate a relentless passion for the game.

• At 4:00 a.m. on a California winter morning, she’s an analyst, pen in hand to take notes and prepare to analyze matches for Tennis Channel.
• At 9:00 a.m. on the courts she’s played on since birth, she’s a player, in the thick of a zealous workout that combines competition and camaraderie.
• At noon on a sultry Hawaii afternoon, she’s a coach, in motion with racquet and words as she helps a group of corporate executives become better tennis players.
• At 3:00 p.m. on a weekend back home, she’s a mother, engrossed in the ups and downs of a match featuring one of her sons.
• At 7:00 p.m. on a London summer evening, she’s a legend, keen to compete at Wimbledon against longstanding rivals who are also dear friends.
• At 10:00 p.m. on a New York night, she’s a host, primed to meet fans inside a sponsor suite at the US Open, and interview tennis icons such as Andy Roddick, Monica Seles, Jimmy Connors, Billie Jean King and John McEnroe.

The youngest US Open champion in history (at 16) and the youngest person to be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame (at 29), Austin will turn 60 this December. But there are absolutely zero signs of slowdown.

What is it about tennis that continues to engage her?

“Let me count the ways,” Austin says from her home, with a US Open trophy peeking from the background. “Tennis is like chess. Every match is different, every day is different. I feel fortunate that tennis has allowed me to be productive my entire life.

“So much of an athlete’s life is discipline and compartmentalizing and setting goals. All of those character traits help you when you get into another job. We’re not afraid to work hard too, to get up really early and put in the time.”

While many professional tennis players share Austin’s work ethic, she also possesses an attribute 180 degrees removed from a world-class athlete’s single-minded focus: a genuine interest in other people. Austin’s kindness and curiosity instantly creates a spirit of engagement and inclusion. Everywhere she goes, the woman who frequently describes herself as “a people person” builds a family-like atmosphere.

Jeremy Steindecker, president of marketing firm Net Results, has worked with Austin at more than 500 events over the last 15 years.

“Nobody is better than Tracy,” he says. “She is the most professional, humble, gracious, prepared. It’s the champion’s mentality.”

Then again, for Austin, the link between family and tennis is perfectly logical. As she notes, “Tennis was the glue that held our family together.”

Legend is the tale of how, in the early 1960s, Austin’s mother Jeanne worked inside the pro shop of Southern California’s newly opened and instantly iconic Jack Kramer Club, alongside the club’s founder and head pro, future Hall of Famer Vic Braden. The Austin-Braden duo won a mixed doubles tournament while Tracy was in the womb. All four of Tracy’s older siblings played, three of them becoming pros.

“At a young age,” she says, “I was just trying to do what my brothers and sisters did. Vic always made it fun.”

While working with Braden, her first coach, Austin began to master the swing shapes that would take her to the top. At age 4, in 1967, Austin was on the cover of World Tennis (at left). Four years later, Braden having left the Kramer Club, Austin commenced work with Robert Lansdorp, the tennis taskmaster and groundstroke savant who further refined Austin’s arsenal.

“It’s a combination of nature and nurture,” says Tracy’s older brother Jeff. “She was born with a competitive nature, but obviously, we’re also molded by our surroundings.”

Through hour after hour at the Kramer Club and Southern California’s unsurpassed competitive milieu, Austin sharpened her airtight baseline game and built friendships that have endured for decades.

Tracy obviously had something, especially mentally, almost better than just about anyone else. She didn’t break down under pressure. Pam Shriver

“We’d play all day at the Kramer Club and then it would be slumber-party mode at night,” says Stacy Margolin Potter, a friend and rival who eventually became a Top 20 WTA pro, and remains in close contact with Austin.

As Austin’s father George once said, “The cutest thing was when she was nine, and she would beat the best women in the club. Then she would go play in the sandbox.”

By this time, Austin was also regularly playing exhibitions at large public gatherings and winning titles in higher age groups. At 13, in early 1976, Austin graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, the headline reading “A Star is Born.” By 1979, she was part of the WTA’s ruling triumvirate, earning 22 wins against Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova between 1978 and 1981. Never was her place among the tennis elite more vividly demonstrated than at the 1979 US Open, when, at just 16, she beat Navratilova in the semifinals and Evert in the final.

“She’s younger, she’s faster, she moves better than I do,” Evert once said. “She hits the ball harder. She does everything better than I do.” By the spring of 1980, Austin was ranked No. 1 in the world.

And yet, through all of this, Austin remained grounded in ways that foreshadowed her post-tour life—and, when compared to contemporary pro tennis, are mind-boggling. Moments after her 1979 US Open victory, Tracy, Jeff, George and Jeanne dashed to JFK Airport to quickly get the Austin men on a flight home so that Jeff could be back in law school and George start his work week. That mission accomplished, Jeanne and Tracy—still wearing the Ted Tinling-designed dress she’d worn for the match—headed to a nearby McDonald’s for a bite.

Over the next two years, Tracy remained enrolled in high school, skipping Roland Garros and the Australian Open.

“It was all kind of like an out-of-body experience,” she says. “To play Chris one day, Martina the next, then be in school the next, and then a photo shoot, another trip. Every day was like a sprint. I was trying to stay balanced.”

Austin’s family helped make that happen. With three siblings having had pro careers, Tracy’s tennis was never the singular focus. Added perspective came from George, a physicist who worked at aerospace firm TRW on top-secret government projects. Austin herself was also aware of her place in the family hierarchy, at the age of 13 noting that, “I’m fifth-ranked in this family. Used to be seventh, but I’m movin’ up.”

One high-profile Austin family moment came when she and her older brother John partnered to win the 1980 Wimbledon mixed doubles title. As Tracy entered Centre Court to play the final, she passed under the famous words inscribed above the doorway: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/and treat those two imposters just the same.” Little did she know how prophetic those words would prove.

A back injury took Austin off the tour for the first five months of 1981. She recovered magnificently. In what is arguably the finest effort of her career, Austin rallied to beat Navratilova in the final of the US Open. Anyone wishing to study composure under pressure should watch Austin’s wire-to-wire focus and body language. In a match flavored by exceptionally windy conditions and Navratilova’s trademark attacking game, Austin won by the remarkable score of 1–6, 7–6 (4), 7–6 (1).

“Tracy obviously had something, especially mentally, almost better than just about anyone else,” says her peer and lifelong friend, Pam Shriver. “She didn’t break down under pressure.”

By the end of the year, aided by back-to-back wins over Evert and Navratilova in the season-ending championships, Austin returned to No. 1.

Austin’s health woes resumed in the years to come. The back injury and other ailments plagued her, and by early 1984, the injuries had become so painful that Austin was forced to leave the circuit.

She persevered, spending the better part of the decade rehabbing. By the summer of 1989, Austin was competing in World Team Tennis, keen to soon rejoin the WTA tour. But then, on August 3, Austin’s car was hit by a speeding vehicle that ran a red light—an accident so severe that she broke her right leg and crushed her knee.

After recovering well enough to compete in the Australian Open and Roland Garros in 1994, she retired from professional tennis that summer.

“The rug was pulled out from under me,” says Austin. “That was a really difficult time, a time of hard knocks. I was used to having something to go after. It makes me swallow hard to think about it. I had to redefine myself.”

Six weeks after the car accident, still on crutches, Austin met Scott Holt. The two were married in 1993. Their three boys, Dylan, Brandon and Sean, all became excellent tennis players. Dylan served as the team manager at USC, while Sean is currently on the Trojan squad and Brandon, who graduated USC two years ago, is now competing at ITF events around the world.

One thing Austin learned from her three boys is that everyone throws themselves into tennis at their own speed, a pace that can be different from the zealous dedication she showed at an extremely young age.

Austin’s TV career also kicked into high gear in the 1990s, first for USA Network’s coverage of the US Open, and soon enough to other networks, including the BBC, Canada’s TSN, Australia’s Channel 7 and Tennis Channel.

“When you first start in TV, you’re thrown into it,” says Austin. “There is no school for commentary. Just because you’re a good player doesn’t mean you can explain it well for the fans.

“I love being in the trenches in the booth and calling a match. It’s the most like being a player. You know what they’ve done to get there, and I just love paying attention to the tactics, the adjustments, the ebb and flow of a match.”

It’s just one example of the perpetual and infectious enthusiasm about tennis Austin has maintained.

Tennis is like chess. Every match is different, every day is different. I feel fortunate that tennis has allowed me to be productive my entire life. Tracy Austin

Back at that late, New York night. The Honey Deuces are flowing, and Austin is moving. She enters one corporate suite after another, chatting with a group of business executives, their clients, friends and family members about a wide range of tennis topics. Call this a high-impact experience in research and room reading.

In comes Seles to be interviewed. And there in the middle of it all is Austin, thoroughly prepared, but also flexible enough to adjust to the style of the guest—ranging from shy to loquacious—while also taking in questions from the tennis aficionados in the room.

It’s one thing to be the guest and the singular object of inquiry. But it’s a rare player who can transition from guest to host the way Austin has.

“When she was two years old, she had this sawed-off, 18-inch racquet,” says Tracy’s brother Jeff. “She’d go hit against the backboard, hit and chase ball after ball and I’d think, ‘She is a determined little sucker.’”

From hitting tennis balls to speaking in the broadcast booth, from teaching at the clinic to talking at the suite, through triumph and disaster, Austin has simultaneously grown and remained who she’s always been.

“I’m pretty committed,” she says. “I guess you could say I’m driven.”