Pam Shriver slams relationships between young female players and their coaches citing her personal experience

Shriver strongly opposes coaches sleeping with players and says it can't happen


Pam Shriver slams relationships between young female players and their coaches citing her personal experience

Pam Shriver

The 21-time doubles champion, Pam Shriver, doesn’t want any young players to go through what she faced as a player. Last year, Shriver revealed that she had an intimate relationship with her coach, Don Candy when she was a teenager. Hence she urges the tennis governing bodies to be active in preventing any such incidents again for any player.

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In an interview with The Age on Sunday, she cited the importance of preventing these things from happening along with the actions that are being taken to control match-fixing and drug usage. Shriver had an amazing partnership with Martina Navratilova in the 1980s that included a Grand Slam in 1984. She is currently the coach of Donna Vekic.

Speaking in the interview she said “Having seen so many generations of women players struggle with the same thing, I really want women players to have more agency over the separation of their personal life from their professional life. There has been such an acceptance that this happens. That has to switch to ‘no, it can’t happen.’”

Shriver also urged the organizers of the four Grand Slam tournaments to step up and provide extra support in this sensitive issue, going forward. Going with the history of the sport, it is not new for the tennis world to see a coach having a relationship with the player. However, Shriver believed that such relationships are never meant for the right purpose and would affect the players and their careers.

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Shriver talks about her ‘inappropriate affair’ with her coach

A little look into the history will give tennis fans and people across the globe such incidents. One of the famous incidents was last year, Petra Kvitova got engaged to her coach, Jiri Vanek, and Veronika Kudermetova is married to coach Sergei Demekhine. Shriver opened up about this when Fiona Ferro, a French player accused her former coach of sexual assault.

Talking about her personal experience she said “I still have conflicted feelings about Don. Yes, he and I became involved in a long and inappropriate affair. Yes, he was cheating on his wife. But there was a lot about him that was honest and authentic. And I loved him. Even so, he was the grown-up here. He should have been the trustworthy adult.”

Unfortunately, Don died in 2020. Nevertheless, players like Victoria Azarenka also spoke about safeguarding women players from the possibility of being exploited by the coaches. Fans want a healthy sport overall, free from any such incidents to happen that will bring disgrace to the sport.

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