It will never cease to amaze me that a die hard Evonne and Hana supporter finds himself in the duty to enhance Chris Evert´s Shakesperian dimension that is the ultimate test to her greatness.Apparently, no Chris Evert loyal will take that torch ( too much baselining over the years lead to feeling well trading groundies).
But, her trascendental decisions, somewhere 1979 and 1980 made Chris Evert the champion that she ended up being in historical terms.Of course, had she retired when blattantly owned by Martina and Tracy she´d have gone down as the, maybe, leading 70´s female.But that challenge gave her 10 more years atop.
Of course, the key to this is that , while she really never minded too much being beaten by HER OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN, Martina, she hatred being beaten by the clean looking, blue eyed californian teen.
Why? easy to think, hard to swallow.
Whenever Chris had doubts and personal biterness, she always looked upon Martina and figured out that " hey¡ what are my personnal problems compared to hers?".That led to both being like two communicating glasses, feeding each other not so much on courts as off courts.
Of course, Tracy was a heavy burden to carry.Too many years as a kid lost on those Floridian dragging slow courts, hours of uncompromising sweat and commitment to reach that perfection,demanded firstly by dad ( Evert dixit) at those complementary levels of both image and play, and all of a sudden, this girl who excels at maths ( Chris herself never got to college while Austin skipped majors to prepare her exams¡¡¡) is beating me playing my game in a more open minded, wild way¡¡¡ This is like your own image being broken by the mirror; it is hard to cope with it.
Yes, Chris could look at Andrea as her young sister, the ocassionnal little jerk that breaks your party but really, you get mad at her but she is not a reflection of yourself, you love her too much (Chris said after besting Jaeger at the 1980 W QF " She is a wonderful teen ", can you ever imagine Chris thinking about Tracy in the same way?).
You know, after those years, maybe Tracy´s mission as an all time great was not to win all those USO and W titles that she probably wasn not prepared to win; it was to inhalate and propel new life into Evert´s career...and the more one thinks about it, the more one gets fond of Robert Lansdorp´s most genuine and charming creation.