Tracy Austin: Through and Through,
a SoCal Tennis Legend

Nearly half a century later, she can still vividly describe, savor, and appreciate the many Southern California-based moments that helped pave her path to greatness. The twinkling red lights on the way home from Glendora. The kindly family that housed her in San Diego. The metal nets at the high school in Whittier. Vintage photos of Southern California tennis greats that lined the front room of the Los Angeles Tennis Club in Hancock Park. The living legend Dodo Cheney, who she played at the Santa Monica Open. Hour after hour at Cal State campuses in Fullerton, Long Beach, Carson, and Northridge. The orange juice in Ojai. The Disneyland tickets that dangled in front of whoever won Anaheim.  

This was the Southern California tennis world Tracy Austin came from. This was the Southern California where she was born, raised, and still lives today. Competing at all those Southern California tournament venues – and so many more – carried her to the pinnacle of the sport. At the age of 14, Austin reached the quarterfinals of the 1977 US Open. In 1979, at just 16-years-old, she became the youngest person to ever win the US Open singles title in tournament history, along the way defeating the world’s top two players, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. Two years later in 1981, she conquered New York yet again, beating Navratilova in a dramatic 1-6, 7-6, 7-6 final. 

Between and beyond those triumphs came 30 WTA singles titles, 21 weeks ranked number one in the world, a Wimbledon mixed doubles championship alongside her brother John, 22 wins in 51 matches versus the legendary Evert (9-8) and Navratilova (13-21). In 1992, at the age of 29, Austin became the youngest person inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. “I recall being in awe of her,” said Long Beach-raised Vania King, a winner of two Grand Slam doubles titles who spent time on-court with Austin during her youth. “She was an incredible trailblazer, a one of a kind for our sport.”

“Gratitude is what I feel most,” said Austin. “Gratitude that I grew up in this section where I was able to go after my dreams… We had plenty of tournaments within an hour’s drive from my family’s house. We had great competition, great coaches, great weather.” 

For most tennis players, the pathway through the sport is sequential: family first, facility second. In Austin’s case, though, the journey was exquisitely linked, an overlapped confluence of places and people.  Months after her birth in December 1962, one of the region’s preeminent tennis clubs opened its doors. Located in Rolling Hills on the Palos Verdes Peninsula near the Austin family home, the facility named the Jack Kramer Club had been started by two future Hall of Famers, former world number one and promoter extraordinaire Jack Kramer and an eager young instructor named Vic Braden. While Austin’s father, George, worked as a nuclear physicist at TRW Inc., her mother, Jeanne, ran the club’s pro shop six days a week. Added to the mix were older siblings Pam, Jeff, Doug, and John, three of whom became touring pros. “It’s amazing how my mom did all of that,” said Tracy.        

At first, though, she merely tagged along with her elders as they made their way to various tournaments. Armed with a green racket and a tremendous ability to focus, Austin devoted herself to the game she loved with heart and soul and by seven had trekked to Long Beach to play her first tournament. Rapidly, she became one of the best juniors in the nation. In early 1976, a Sports Illustrated article on the Austin family featured 13-year-old Tracy on the cover with the headline, “A Star Is Born.”

But if the battles Austin subsequently fought at the US Open were won on the playing fields of Whittier, Fullerton, and Long Beach, then those victories throughout Southern California were a natural outgrowth of all the practice sets Austin had played at the Kramer Club. Match after match came not just versus peers such as accomplished juniors Trey Lewis, a quartet of skilled Fernandez sisters (Anna Maria, Anna Lucia, Cecilia, Elisa)  and an occasional guest, Stacy Margolin, but also against a wide spectrum of adults, from the table tennis player with the great drop shot, to a crafty lefty, to a great volleyer. “Everyone I played helped me learn how to play people like Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, and Chrissie Evert,” said Austin. “All the time, there was problem-solving.”  

Soon after Braden left the Kramer Club to start a tennis college, Austin began working with Robert Lansdorp, a genius at teaching groundstrokes who over the next four decades would coach dozens of pros, including four players who became number one in the world (Austin, Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport, Maria Sharapova). A disciplinarian of the highest order, Lansdorp’s stern approach clicked perfectly with Austin’s unsurpassed work ethic and desire to excel.         

According to Trey Lewis, now Trey Lewis Mason, as early as age four, it was clear Austin had a special spark.  Said Jeff Austin, “It’s a combination of nature and nurture. [Tracy] was born with a competitive nature, but obviously, we’re also molded by our surroundings.”  

All this time, Austin was maintaining a fun, lively, and natural balance between competition and camaraderie. “We’d play all day at the Kramer Club and then it would be slumber party mode at night,” said Margolin, who eventually became a top 20 WTA pro. 

And quite distinctly, the Kramer Club environment offered rare and powerful glimpses into possibilities. Thanks to Kramer and Braden, such greats as Rod Laver and another Southern California-raised champion, Billie Jean King, dropped by the club from time to time. As King once said, “to be it, it helps to see it.” For Kramer Club players, big-time tennis was front and center.   

“It’s eye-opening,” said Austin. “There are these people who have had a full life of success in tennis, and you hear these stories and begin to see a bigger landscape than just the Kramer Club… it felt like every week there was something exciting.”

Austin spoke to me as she planned for several days of work at Santa Monica-based Tennis Channel. For more than 30 years, she has been a television commentator, not just for Tennis Channel, but also for the likes of USA Network, NBC, the BBC, and Canada’s premier sports network, TSN.

According to Lewis Mason, media work is a perfect fit for Austin. Asked what Austin would be if she wasn’t an athlete, Lewis Mason replied, “She’d be a journalist,” praising Austin’s ceaseless interest in people – a three-sided mix of curiosity, kindness, and empathy. Be it digging into the background of a rising young player or getting to know the guests at one of the many sponsor events she attends and hosts year-round, Austin’s ability to genuinely connect with people is a powerful part of her makeup.    

Certainly it proved invaluable when Austin and her husband, Scott Holt, raised their three sons – Dylan, Brandon, Sean. Much as engaging the boys with tennis was a front-and-center possibility, Tracy and Scott were more concerned with breadth and letting each boy find his own passions. “I wanted really well-rounded children,” said Austin. “We’d go off to T-ball to soccer to basketball to tennis for all of them, and then it was going to be up to them to tell me when they wanted to stop the others, or if they wanted to stop the others. And eventually they all came down to tennis.” Each ended up on the USC team. Sean and Dylan have built careers in finance (Dylan has also been a longstanding member of the USTA SoCal board of directors). Brandon has been a touring pro for several years, reaching a career-high ranking of 99 in the world last June. “I feel incredibly fortunate for all of it,” said Austin.

Austin’s devotion to her children was recently publicly acknowledged. On March 7, one day prior to International Women’s Day, Austin was honored by The Love & Love Tennis Foundation, a non-profit run by WTA “Original Nine” member Rosie Casals, with the WTA Georgina Clark Mother Award. Moments prior to accepting the award, Austin was introduced by Navratilova and her three boys. “She’s been an amazing mom,” said Navratilova.  According to Brandon, Austin “led by example.” Capping it all off, Austin called being a mother, “the best thing I ever did.”   

To think that even before Tracy Austin was born, the ground had been cleared at the venue where she’d first play tennis – and do so in an environment surrounded by family and friends. Since that start, she’s brought that same spirit to the world, all the while remaining an engaging and enduring member of the Southern California tennis family.