Austin Uses Doubles to Test Waters : Former U.S. Open Winner Begins Comeback at San Diego

Every year, since she played her last match on the women’s pro tennis tour in 1984, the word went out.

This was the year Tracy Austin would make her comeback. For sure.

Four years later, she’s back. Sort of.

Call it a semi-comeback, doubles-style. Austin, 25, is testing the waters, starting with tonight’s first-round doubles match in the $100,000 Virginia Slims of San Diego at the San Diego Tennis and Racquet Club.

Austin and Robin White are scheduled to play the top-seeded team of Betsy Nagelsen and Dinky van Rensburg. However, the top seeding is slightly misleading because Nagelsen’s regular doubles partner, Lori McNeil, withdrew from the tournament because of an injury.

Next week, Austin is entered in the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles at Manhattan Beach. She is scheduled to play doubles there with 16-year-old Mary Joe Fernandez. However, Fernandez’s availability is in question because she defaulted a singles match Tuesday night in Kings Island, Ohio, after reaggravating an injury.

In 1979, when Austin was 16, she became the youngest player to win the U.S. Open. Less than a year later, she reached the million-dollar mark in career prize money--while playing in a tournament at San Diego--before everything started to unravel because of a number of injuries.

The injuries forced Austin to play a limited schedule before making her last appearance at a sanctioned tournament in February, 1984, when she lost a second-round match to Pam Casale.

So, four years later, just how serious is this venture?

Austin, who worked as a journalist at Wimbledon, isn’t saying anything for the record until after her doubles match tonight, preferring to keep it a low-key matter.

But her brother and agent, Jeff Austin, acknowledges that this approach is next to impossible, considering his sister is a former No. 1 player and two-time U.S. Open champion.

“Obviously people are going to be interested,” he said. “But she’s going to try to keep it as low-key as she can. But you’re not going to be able to sneak down to San Diego and play a match without people finding out.”

Jeff Austin said that the catalyst for his sister’s renewed interest in professional tennis was her participation in a charity doubles match at the White House in June. The other participants were Dennis Ralston, Jimmy Arias and Vince Van Patten, and a casual event turned into a hard-fought match.

“She had a great time,” said Jeff Austin, who is looking into the possibility of getting a wild-card entry for his sister and Ken Flach in the mixed doubles draw at the U.S. Open.

“She had a lot of fun there, and I think she started thinking about trying some women’s doubles,” he added.

Which is what should be remembered about this comeback.

For now, it’s women’s doubles. Nothing more, nothing less.