TENNIS EVERT CUP : One Loss Is No Setback for Austin

It was time to fix new coordinates on the Tracy Austin time line Thursday after she lost a tennis match, thus marking the end of the beginning.

Of course, this is better than the alternative and clearly more in keeping with this week’s comeback theme, on which Austin hopes to continue to scribble away as she rides off into the East, as far as she can go, maybe even to Paris, as in the French Open.

Is this possible?

Why not? Tennis reality was suspended this week after Austin won consecutive matches in the Matrix Essentials/Evert Cup as a 30-year-old hitting the dusty comeback trail after not having played a tournament match in four years.

Even after a 6-1, 6-0 defeat in 62 minutes by Dutch teen-ager Stephanie Rottier, Austin apparently didn’t feel the sting.

“My goal was to win one match, (so) for where I am, I’m ecstatic. Heck, I hate losing. That’s normal, but it’s not like it’s going to end here.”

Actually, there’s no telling where it will end. Nobody expected Austin to last very long here, but she wound up spending enough time in the desert to be a cactus.

And to show how important her three-day run was to this tournament, it was the Stomach Pull Open until Austin took over.

All in all, she treated it as a learning experience.

“The big thing I learned is that I’m right in there,” Austin said. “I had no expectations. Now, I know the mental toughness is still there.”

Rottier, 19, who was six days shy of her third birthday when Austin won her first tournament in 1977, proved absolutely Tracy-like as she pounded a series of clean winners from the baseline.

Austin couldn’t have reached those balls on rollerblades. She blamed tired legs after playing a singles match and a doubles match Wednesday.

Rottier was sympathetic.

“Well, she is already 30,” she said.

In any event, Austin is planning the rest of her comeback, which might resume at the Lipton International Players Championship next week if she is given a wild-card entry into the main draw. After that, the French Open is a distinct possibility, she said.

Austin’s coach, Robert Lansdorp, is hazy about the timetable.

“The French Open, I think it’s a little early,” he said. “I mean, she could play Lipton, then she’s getting married. She might be dead after that.”

She is surviving quite nicely at the moment, which Chris Evert finds only slightly surprising. The way Evert sees it, Austin’s matches against the current group of players are going to be tests of wills and some things beyond.

“It’s their minds against Tracy’s and I know who is going to win that,” Evert said.

Tennis Notes

Which way is up and how high is it? Robert Lansdorp, Tracy Austin’s coach, said he told her not to get her expectations too high. “She’s not going to be top 10,” he said. “I told her top 20, maybe, (but) don’t expect it tomorrow. Maybe in six or eight months.” . . . Top-seeded Mary Joe Fernandez, who defeated Kimberly Po, 6-3, 6-3, and faces 16-year-old Lindsay Davenport in today’s quarterfinals, is working on improving her serve and trying to pry herself from the baseline. “It’s still hard,” Fernandez said. “It takes a long time.”