The phenom who made it through

THERE was ice cream. Of course there was ice cream. Things really were a little simpler then, even for teen celebrities. What do you do when a 14-year-old girl wins a tennis match? You take her to Baskin-Robbins for something cold and sweet. And so Tracy Austin's parents did, so long ago during that magical run at her first U.S. Open in 1977. After every win, she'd eat a pint. A whole pint, yeah. She could do that, then. She was a skinny teenager and she'd just won another match.

She remembers those trips for cold treats. She remembers all the cars, crowded bumper-to-bumper, up and down the drive. This was the last time the Open was played at Forest Hills, just a tennis center in a neighborhood, and everyone parked on the street. Everyone, yes, even the players. Tracy's mom would drop her off and then circle the streets looking for an empty spot.

She remembers her brothers playing doubles, and the president. Being called out of the bathroom, disbelieving, to take Jimmy Carter's call after having beaten 1976 French Open champ Sue Barker, who was No. 4 in the world. She may have stumbled out four words, she thinks: "Thank you, Mr. President."

That was the only time she was nervous, during that run. Never on the court, not even against Barker. She'd played so many tournaments that whirlwind year by then, had gone against Chris Evert at Wimbledon at center court, more worried about how to curtsy than if she would win.

"I mean, you're 14," she says, "you've got royalty there."

She'd been an intimidated kid for the last time at a tournament that year in Minnesota. All the players had poured into a transportation van and there in the back, on the very same van, was the great Margaret Court.

Margaret Court! So regal, so tall, long arms, long legs. A legend in the flesh. "I think," says Austin, here for the USTA meetings in Honolulu this past week, "it was about the last tournament she ever played."

By the time Austin got to the U.S. Open she was just playing. Staying with family friends on Long Island. Eating ice cream, hitting the ball. Competing.

"Tracy's mental strength was scary," Evert would tell the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

She was in a zone and tennis was in a frenzy. She was a genuine teen phenomenon, the very first. She had Morgan Pressel's pedigree (22 age-group titles) and Michelle Wie's fame (she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated back when that really, really, really meant something). She was in the U.S. Open quarterfinals at 14, breaking the record, and the president called.

"What's cool about it," she says, "was that I didn't really know what to expect."

IT WAS HER family who made this teen dream business seem normal somehow, even as everything should have been exploding around her. She was the youngest of five kids, the youngest by a lot, and they all played tennis, most of them pros, and she was the best, by a lot. And she just knew, innately, instinctively, that she had to handle all of this in the right way.

"You know, it was never told to me," she says, but she just felt she had to stay humble, keep her head. For her brothers and sister. She owed it to them. It was the right thing to do.

"That's kind of why I had my legs firmly on the ground. ... Even today," she says, "you don't want to overshadow them."

And so, in a strange way, it was all ... normal. She'd win the U.S. Open (at 16, in 1979) on Sunday, would be back in regular, public high school by Tuesday. She would win a tournament, be awarded a Porsche, just give it to her mom.

"It sounds like a hot mama thing," says John Korff, the ex-tennis-tournament maverick, who has known the Austins all these years. "But Tracy's mom was like the 'ultimate mom,' five kids -- and she's driving around in a Porsche."

It was a free car. Her mom kept it forever, Tracy says. Drove it until she'd driven it into the ground.

Her father was a nuclear physicist, the anti-tennis dad, his duties limited to driving her somewhere when mom was driving another kid somewhere else. His coaching consisted of occasionally coming up with some wild scientific theory on how the kids could tweak their strokes, always met with an "Oh, Dad" eye roll.

She was so shy, though, and you could feel the tension in the air, sometimes, that a kid dared barge in and beat them at their own game the way she did. You couldn't have that situation without tension. It's only natural. Natural. Not easy at all.

Her sister had played on tour, and some players took "Pam's little sister" under their wing. On the van with Margaret Court, the seating had been so tight that she had to sit on Olga Morozova's lap, she, awe-struck and 89 pounds, and Olga so outgoing, so bubbly, so Russian. They both reveled in the moment.

"But that was few and far between," she says.

When she won her first U.S. Open her brother had flown in from law school for the final, had to turn around and leave that very night. When she left the interview room they piled in a car and drove him to the airport, straight from winning the U.S. Open. They dropped him off, were starving by this point, and stopped at the first McDonald's they could find. Tracy wore a sweater over her tennis dress.

The cashier was stunned: "I just saw you on TV!"

"We probably could have let (her brother) take a taxi or gotten him a car," Austin says. "It never entered our mind. That's the way we were."

YES, MICHELLE, TEEN phenoms do grow up. She's 43 now, married, has three boys, 10, 8 and 5. "That takes up all of my time," she says, "and gladly." They don't talk about the old days at home, about tennis, and U.S. Opens and pigtails and ice cream. That's the way she wants it. She's Tracy Holt now. This is real life. Most of the time she's just Mom.

"I'm a great driver," she says. Now it is she who takes everyone everywhere, without a Porsche.

Her husband and in-laws had the list of activities while she was here in Hawaii, being Tracy Austin for a few days for the USTA.

"I couldn't be 'Tracy Holt' for the tennis world or they'd never hire me for commentating," she says.

And she does love it, these little breaks now and then. The 12-hour days for two weeks broadcasting at the U.S. Open for the past 15 years. The occasional tennis appearance, seeing people from her old life again, the "tennis family" reunions, old friends. Fans -- everyone she meets has a story, she says.

Injuries chased her out of the game early, after two U.S. Open titles and that first magical run. A bad back and then a car crash and then, after a late, Martina Hingis-like comeback, she was done for good. She was brilliant early, she was Michelle Wie (with wins -- though Wie is the same age Austin was when she won her first major; there's time). But then she faded away.

It was hard at first ("She was obsessive about winning," Evert once said), and then easy. She could no longer physically do it, and she met the man who would be her husband, and she fell in love with the rest of her life. "I couldn't be any happier than I am now," she says.

But still she dabbles. Tennis keeps calling her back.

Korff told her she was making a speech, at a USTA reception here the other night. Austin insisted she couldn't, was still shy sometimes, had already done so many speeches that week, was ready to go back to being named Holt. Korff insisted, Tracy insisted right back.

That night Korff called on her, and she stood up, and smiled, talked about winning the U.S. Open, lit up the room. The light shone on her.

She was Tracy Austin again.

Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com