LONDON — Former skilled tennis participant Pam Shriver, now a tv commentator for ESPN and the BBC, says that she “had an inappropriate and damaging relationship with my a lot older coach” that started when she was 17 and he was 50.
In a first-person account revealed Wednesday by British newspaper the Telegraph, Shriver describes a “painful and emotional journey” that included what she writes was a relationship with coach Don Sweet that lasted slightly greater than 5 years.
Sweet died in 2020.
“I nonetheless have conflicted emotions about Don. Sure, he and I turned concerned in an extended and inappropriate affair. Sure, he was dishonest on his spouse. However there was rather a lot about him that was sincere and genuine. And I beloved him,” she says. “Even so, he was the grown-up right here. He ought to have been the reliable grownup.”
Shriver, who's now 59, turned professional in 1979, a 12 months after she made it to the US Open singles remaining at age 16. She beat Martina Navratilova within the semifinals earlier than shedding the title match to Chris Evert.
Shriver, who's from Maryland, would later crew with Navratilova to win 21 Grand Slam trophies in ladies’s doubles.
In Wednesday’s piece, Shriver writes her “most important motivation is to let folks know this nonetheless goes on — rather a lot. I imagine abusive teaching relationships are alarmingly frequent in sport as an entire. My specific experience, although, is in tennis, the place I've witnessed dozens of situations in my four-and-a-bit a long time as a participant and commentator.”
“Each time I hear a few participant who's relationship their coach, or I see a male physio engaged on a feminine physique within the fitness center, it units my alarm bells ringing,” she says.
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