TENNIS / EVERT CUP : Austin Still Has the Fever With a Victory at 30

It wasn’t 1979, it wasn’t the U.S. Open and it wasn’t the No. 1-ranked player in the world who walked out on the court Tuesday to play a tennis match. It was only 30-year-old Tracy Austin in a baseball cap, knocking forehands into the corners of the court and walking away a winner.

As comebacks go, Austin’s went about as well as she could have hoped, especially since she was playing her first tournament match in nearly three years.

She scraped out a 7-5, 6-4 decision in the Matrix Essentials/Evert Cup over Renee Stubbs, who was 8 years old when Austin won her first U.S. Open title in 1979.

Austin’s goal was not very complicated.

“I wanted to take my temperature and see where I was,” she said.

So what was her temperature?

“Well, 98.6,” she said.

In front of a sparse crowd, dominated by her family members and curious players from the women’s tour, Austin survived a 12-deuce game, came back from a break down in the second set and began a comeback that is surely taking her someplace, although she’s not at all certain where.

“I’m in no hurry,” Austin said. “I have no time frame. I don’t have another job to go to.

“I have a long way to go.”

She has come a long way already. A series of injuries forced Austin to quit the tour in 1984. In the midst of a comeback five years later, Austin broke her leg in a car accident and had to put away her racket again.

But it’s not as if Austin hasn’t been busy. She wrote a book, became a tennis television analyst and was voted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

But Tuesday at Hyatt Grand Champions, Austin was merely an unranked 30-year-old playing a first-round match against a 21-year-old Australian ranked No. 114. As it turned out, the rankings didn’t mean much.

Stubbs didn’t help herself much by playing wildly erratic shots, but Austin might have had something to do with the result, too.

“I knew before the match that my knees would be wobbly, and they were,” Austin said. “I was nervous, but I was also eager and excited.

“It felt good to be out there. There are so many unknowns. Usually you can fall back on the other 10 tournaments you’ve played (for your ranking), but I didn’t have anything to fall back on. You think so much, you just want to stop your mind.”

It was Austin’s first tournament victory in nine years, since she defeated Terry Holladay in the first round in Livingston, N.J., in February of 1984.

Stubbs said Austin had played all right, but mostly blamed herself for losing.

“I really should have won that match,” she said. “I mean, she hasn’t played a match in four years. I think this is sort of a new little adventure for her, which is kind of a fun thing to have at her age. I think she can do well, but I don’t think she’ll be comeback player of the year.”

In Austin’s immediate future is second-seeded Katerina Maleeva in a second-round match today.

After that, well, she isn’t sure. Austin is eligible to enter the main draw of six tournaments as a wild-card entry and must play three events before she can be ranked.

She hasn’t been since 1983.

“Heck, I have no pressure,” she said.

Austin’s father, George, shook his head with relief. “It was nervous time all over again,” he said.

If she allowed herself a moment of reflection, Austin might remember how she directed her gaze skyward at the moment Stubbs put a forehand into the net at match point.

Then she ran over to the stands to hug Scott Holt, her fiance, and her brother John. In the interview room, Austin was asked if she thought she had retired too soon.

“Maybe about 10 years too soon,” she said. “But I don’t think the competition in me was ever gone.”

Tennis Notes

Top-seeded Mary Joe Fernandez couldn’t beat the rain or her first-round opponent, 20-year-old qualifier Rachel Jensen. Delayed 90 minutes because rain in the first set, the match was suspended just before 7:30 p.m. in the first game of the third set because of more rain. Fernandez won the first set, 6-2, and Jensen won the second, 7-6 (7-4). . . . For what it’s worth, it took Bjorn Borg 18 months to win one set in his return to competitive tennis after retirement. Tracy Austin won her match on her first day back.