{"id":980,"date":"2008-12-18T23:15:52","date_gmt":"2008-12-19T07:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=980"},"modified":"2008-12-18T23:15:52","modified_gmt":"2008-12-19T07:15:52","slug":"tracy-austin-and-why-ex-players-arent-always-good-explainers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/tracy-austin-and-why-ex-players-arent-always-good-explainers\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracy Austin and Why Ex-Players Aren\u2019t Always Good Explainers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why tennis players don\u2019t always make the best tennis commentators.<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/object> <\/p>\n

Tracy Austin<\/b> was a roving reporter at the WTA year-end championships this year. I often watch sports on television while I\u2019m doing paperwork and answering my email, so much of the time I listened to Tracy rather than watching her. I would have been listening even if I hadn\u2019t been multitasking because most of her commentary flew over the onscreen tennis action, and maybe it\u2019s not fair to critique someone without paying full attention, but I have always found her commentary very vanilla relative to the fierceness that must reside somewhere in her body and mind given her remarkable playing career.<\/p>\n

Which, by the way, looked like this:
\n
Age 4: Appeared on the cover of World Tennis Magazine
\n
Age 10: Won the national girls 12 and under
\n
Age 14: Entered her first professional tournament as a qualifier and won the title
\n
Age 16: Won the US Open
\n
Age 17: Reached the number one ranking in the world\n<\/p>\n

She won her second US Open in 1981 at the age of 18 but it was all downhill from there as injury after injury of the \u201coveruse\u201d variety \u2013 back injuries and sciatica in particular \u2013 left her sidelined for long periods of time. She won her last even in 1982.\n<\/p>\n

I was thinking about Austin because I\u2019m reading Consider the Lobster<\/a> by David Foster Wallace<\/b>, known in these parts for the quasi-devotional piece in the unfortunately now defunct Play Magazine<\/a> about Roger Federer<\/b>. In the book, DWF completely slams Austin\u2019s 1992 \u201cwritten with\u201d sports autobiography in a piece titled How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart.<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Austin, DWF laments the perennial disappointment that comes with reading any sports memoir. We desperately want to get into the head of a champion and see what made them exceptional because we all want to be exceptional. My favorite reading in the world is a New Yorker profile because I\u2019m looking for a \u201cmanual for life.\u201d What makes Michael Moschen<\/a> the most original juggler in the world? How could Lionel Trilling<\/a> hate himself so much yet be so successful? And, consequently, can a self-critical being like me ever succeed?\n<\/p>\n

But players seldom deliver the goods. Being a good tennis player doesn\u2019t make you a good journalist or psychologist, it just makes you a good tennis player. And it\u2019s celebrity that sells books. Readers want inspirational tales something like a longhand version of a People Magazine<\/a> story, not an analysis of greatness.\n<\/p>\n

DWF is not entirely correct, there are good sports memoirs out there and we saw one just this year. Pete Sampras<\/b>\u2019s memoir, A Champion\u2019s Mind<\/a>, does in fact give you good insight into the clear divide between the champion\u2019s mind and the runnerup\u2019s mind. Sampras suffered a competitive crisis after winning his first slam \u2013 which he won under no pressure at all because no one expected him to do it. It took him another three years before he figured out what it took to win a slam and whether or not he was up to it.\n<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t look like Austin had any such crisis. Whatever she put her mind to, she could do. Her game was grinding, outlasting her opponent, keeping the ball in play, and driving herself to perfection on the practice court. It wore Austin\u2019s body down to the point that her career never got past her teenage years and you might think that the disappointment would have led to some reflection on her part. \u201cDid I drive myself too hard?\u201d \u201cDid my family push me too hard?\u201d But it didn\u2019t. As DWF points out, the same mentality that drove her to greatness is the same mentality she used to deal with a near-fatal car accident that smashed her leg and derailed a comeback in the late 1980\u2019s. She told herself that there was nothing she could do about it but accept it and that\u2019s exactly what she did. The endless inner mental warfare ran along at a lower volume in her head.\n<\/p>\n

Lack of self-reflection doesn\u2019t make for good sports commentary. Some people have way too much self-reflection, you could even call them tortured, and they are the better candidates. Of course, I\u2019m talking about John McEnroe<\/b> and the volume in his head leans toward overload. And you have to be a bit nasty. Not nasty, exactly, but Austin\u2019s sweetness keeps her from challenging players as much as she could.\n<\/p>\n

In the video clip above, Austin is willing to give Agnieszka Radwansks<\/b> a pass after Radwanska did her best to annoy Maria Sharapova<\/b>\u2019s serve at the US Open last year by creeping up to the service line. As far as Austin is concerned, it\u2019s within the rules and that\u2019s enough for her. I don\u2019t want to turn her into Jim Courier<\/b>, who postures unpleasantly here and dismisses Austin\u2019s take, I just want her to be willing to have someone mad at her now and then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why tennis players don\u2019t always make the best tennis commentators. Tracy Austin was a roving reporter at the WTA year-end championships this year. I often watch sports on television while I\u2019m doing paperwork and answering my email, so much of the time I listened to Tracy rather than watching her. I would have been listening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}