Former professional tennis player Pam Shriver, now a television commentator for ESPN and the BBC, says she “has an inappropriate and harmful relationship with my much older coach”, which began when she was 17 and he was 50.
In a first-person account published Wednesday by The Telegraph, Shriver described a “painful and emotional journey” that she said included a relationship with coach Don Candy that lasted just over five years.
Candy died in 2020.
“I still have conflicting feelings about Don. Yes, he and I got involved in a long and inappropriate affair. Yes, he was cheating on his wife. But there were many honest and authentic things in it. I loved him too, “she says.” He was the one who grew up here, after all. He had to be an adult who could be trusted. “
Shriver, now 59, became a pro in 1979, a year after reaching the US Open final in singles at 16. She defeated Martina Navratilova in the semifinals before losing the title match to Chris Evert.
Shriver, who is from Maryland, will later work with Navratilova to win 21 women’s Grand Slam trophies.
In Wednesday’s article, Shriver wrote that her main motivation was to inform people that this was still going on – a lot. I believe that violent coaching relationships are alarmingly common in sports in general. However, my specific experience is in tennis, where I have witnessed dozens of cases in my four and a few decades as a player and commentator. “
“Every time I hear about a player meeting their coach, or seeing a male physiotherapist working on a woman’s body in the gym, it sets my alarm to ring,” she says.
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