At the age of seventeen, Tracy Austin become the youngest female tennis player to win a Grand Slam, beating Chris Evert in the 1979 US Open final. She went on to add two more Slams to her impressive 30 career titles, winning the US Open again in 1981 with a victory over Martina Navratilova and the Wimbledon Mixed Doubles with her brother John a year earlier. In that year she also won the WTA World Tour Finals, becoming  World No.1  and the youngest ever inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1992. Tracy was known  as a solid baseliner with a strong forehand and a reliable double-fisted backhand using substantial pace and pinpoint accuracy.

Since retiring in 1994, Tracy has been a tennis commentator with a number of TV networks, including the BBC at this year’s Wimbledon Championships, where I met her outside the media centre and she signed this drawing for me.