The Chapman-Enskog method is used to obtain an approximate velocity distribution function for tracer diffusion in dilute hard-sphere mixtures. Different ratios of the mass of the tracer to that of the excess component (including the well-known limiting cases of the Lorentz and the Rayleigh models) are considered and the corresponding diffusion coefficients are also evaluated. A comparison with the recent results of Tompson and Loyalka for both the diffusion coefficients and the distribution functions provides a perspective on the usefulness and nature of the approximate method.