Tracy is always a terrific and tough subject, and this is NOT to malign the girl i so fondly call 'Braces' (hug) but to highlight some of the resistance some people probably put up when confronted with placing tracy at a certain tier of accomplishment. while she was handed a tough set of cards in the end, what she got was 'legend' because her whole existence is such a wild collection of what ifs and unknowns. many assume the legend would have been toward the greater, but that's not necessarily so when you look at all the teen phenoms who come and go after a few strong years.
first, the issue of her rivalry with chris -- they played 6 years but everyone tends to focus on & make many judgments by the 4 1/2 month stretch during which chris was handily beaten by tracy, with evert winning just 25 games in 5 matches total.
on the other side of that coin is that FIVE of tracy's 9-to-8 career head to head wins all happened in this very short span of time, when chris was dealing with the meaning of her marriage commitments at the same moment tracy was on an ascendency of fearlessness and desire (which happens for every great player when they first hit)... it is hard to find stable ground for meaning and measurements in such a tiny window of time with those heavily-weighing factors on both player's plates.
especially in regard to a player who never won -or reached a final- of any other slam on any other surface than the us open's hard court.
one could suggest that she may have developed into a fine grass court player but her overwhelming tendency to take the ball on the rise -- which serves her terrifically on a hard court -- doesn't pan so well on grass with so many bad and uneven bounces. a player like chris can adjust because she waits for the ball to go waist high... tracy was tripped up at the shoe laces many times on grass because of her timing of the ball, which is born out of learning to play with consistent hard court bounces.
clay she was very good but also not overwhelming. her 'claim to fame' on clay is still the beating of evert 7-6 in the 3rd in rome, within a month of evert's marriage to lloyd. chrissie barely escaped fromholtz -- 8-6 in the 3rd -- the week prior in spain. so again, nice accomplishment to be able to claim, but there were once again a great deal of 'circumstances' attached to her victory from the outside. for me, its another inconclusive assumption about her prowess on the dirt. though she certainly didn't suck!
still, its one thing to make a big horrah at the party when you're the new kid, and the older players are trying to fend you off... but that pressure gets to everyone when --as tracy commented this year-- when you're "no longer the hunter but the hunted, its a whole different dynamic and not everyone can make that shift" and to my mind, she did not have time to prove herself in that. her extremely weak serve and rigid movement make me doubtful she would adapt to the demands of the graphite racquet that came knockin' on the door in 83... but she was very tough, determined, and strong willed competitor so no one can count her out. It just seems that she had an edge of power that would have been a tad neutralized by the bigger gunned racquets everyone would be using just around the corner, when she had to pull out of the sport with her injuries.
mandlikova could also beat both chris & martina, and proved she could do it in succession. she could also beat graf. she also won more slams and on more surfaces (twice as many slams on all 3 surfaces, to be exact). i have no problem placing her above austin. a player like hana suffers in comparison because she DID have to prove herself long term and didnt get to skip away on 'legend'; and after winning a few slams early and getting to some slam finals with very big wins, people started to learn her game and the pressure also mounted. theres no way to assume austin would have done it, any more than that sabatini would lose from 6-1 5-1 up at the french and never be the same again.
:lol:I cant believe that Austin really thought that before the Aussie Open final. I remember thinking that it would be closer than it was but I was pretty sure Serena would win. That, you have to concede. is an unusually bad call from Tracy. As you indicate her analysis is usually excellent.
