Former tennis player Pam Shriver reveals she had a damaging relationship with her coach

London. Former professional tennis player Pam Shriver, now a television commentator for ESPN and the BBC, revealed that she “had an inappropriate and damaging relationship with my much older coach” that began when she was 17 and he was 50.

In a first-person account published Wednesday by the British newspaper The Telegraph, Shriver described a “painful and emotional journey” which included what she writes was a relationship with trainer Don Candy that lasted just over five years.

Candy died in 2020.

“I still have mixed feelings about Don. Yeah, he and I got into a long and inappropriate affair. Yes, he was cheating on his wife. But there was so much about him that was honest and authentic. And I loved him,” she noted. “Still, he was the adult here. He should have been the trusted adult.”

Shriver, now 59, turned pro in 1979, a year after reaching the US Open singles final at age 16. He beat Martina Navratilova in the semifinals before losing the title match to Chris Evert.

Shriver, a native of Maryland, would later team up with Navratilova to win 21 Grand Slam trophies in women’s doubles.

In the article published Wednesday, Shriver writes that his “main motivation is to let people know that this is still going on, a lot. I think abusive relationships with coaches are alarmingly common in sport in general. However, my particular experience is in tennis, where I have witnessed dozens of cases in my little more than four decades as a player and commentator.

The WTA issued a statement on Wednesday stating that “safeguarding requires vigilance and we continue to invest in education, training and resources to improve our efforts.”