Tracy Austin comments on the pressure put on young players
The most important factor in ensuring that a promising player develops in the right way is that the people around him or her are consistently supportive and that they don’t focus too much on victories and defeats.
At such a young age, there is no reason to put pressure on a junior which is primarily based around his or her match results. The focus should be on overall improvement in practice and in matches.
That’s where you can best measure how a junior is going to develop: whether he or she is bringing what has been learned in practice into matches and trying to execute it.
Nothing spectacular happens overnight, or in a week, a month or sometimes in a year.
Long-term success is built on putting the key building blocks of a player’s game properly together. If a player is constantly admonished for failing to win then they may end up resenting what they have been taught and, consequently, fail.
My parents never put pressure on me to win titles, even when I was considered the hottest thing in US tennis.
At the age of 13, I was put on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was touted as the next big thing. At the time, I didn’t even realise how significant that was and when I was asked to do the photo shoot for the cover, I went straight over from practice. I didn’t stop to put on make-up, and I couldn’t care less about how my hair looked or what was written about me.
All-time great Jack Kramer once told my mother to make sure to tell me not to read was written or said about me, positive or negative. If you read an article and the writer is fawning over you, you can develop a big head. If it’s negative, it can stay with you for a long time. Even after I beat Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert to become the youngest player to win the US Open title at 16 years and nine months in 1979, I didn’t read my press. I knew I was a great player and could prove that on court, but I didn’t need to hear that I was the best thing to happen to tennis since sliced bread.
My parents treated my brothers and sister and I the same: all of our victories were treated with applause and a slap on the back, whether it was my brother John winning a collegiate match for UCLA, or me winning the US Open.
Even though I was winning nearly every match in sight, my parents kept it normal. They kept me in school and expected me to behave like every other responsible and well brought up teenager. I wanted to stay in school so that I could at least have my balance. Because I was still in school, I didn’t compete in the Australian or French Opens until after I graduated high school.
This rarely happens today, as most good juniors are home-schooled and almost have to be to keep up with their peers. It’s a different era now. The Australian