Tennis Used Up Andrea Jaeger and Buried the Reason

On July 2, 1983, Martina Navratilova beat Andrea Jaeger in the Wimbledon final 6-0, 6-3, in fifty-four minutes. The record books filed it as a blowout: champion too good, opponent too young. They left out that the opponent had already decided she wasn't going to win. This is the story the record books leave out. Andrea Jaeger had been a professional since she was fourteen. She was ranked No. 2 in the world at sixteen, reached the French Open final at seventeen, and beat Billie Jean King 6-1, 6-1 in the 1983 semifinal — the last Wimbledon singles match King ever played — to reach that Saturday. She had a 260-85 career record against grown professionals. And the sport was finished with her at nineteen. Here is the mechanism, or rather the absence of one. In the early 1980s women's tennis had no age-eligibility rule — no cap on how many tournaments a fourteen-year-old could enter, no developmental gate of any kind. The tour ran a child through an adult schedule, took the entry fees, and treated the shoulder that broke at nineteen as her bad luck, not its design. Tracy Austin and, a few years on, Jennifer Capriati were run through the same machine in the same years. Then, in 1994, the WTA finally wrote the Age Eligibility Rule it had never had — and when officials explained why it was suddenly necessary, they named the cases that proved it: Jennifer Capriati, Tracy Austin, and Andrea Jaeger. The rule that might have saved her career is, in effect, named after the players it failed to save. It is the institution's own confession, signed and dated, more than a decade too late. The 6-0, 6-3 was never a measurement of how good Andrea Jaeger was. It was a measurement of what was left of her by the time she got there. Chapters 0:00 Navratilova Wins. Jaeger Doesn't Try. 1:30 World No. 2 at Sixteen 3:45 The Rule That Didn't Exist 6:00 The Shoulder Breaks at Nineteen 7:30 Tracy Austin, Jennifer Capriati, the Same Machine 9:15 The Age Rule, Named for Its Victims Now you know what the record books left out. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_... http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/20... https://www.tennis365.com/wta-tour/fo... https://www.sportskeeda.com/tennis/ne... https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/andr... Forensic investigations into the bans, the broken systems, and the decisions the Open Era made when the cameras weren't watching. New documentary every week. #AndreaJaeger #TennisHistory #Wimbledon