Pam Shriver had ‘traumatic’ relationship with 50-year-old coach when she was 17

The 22-time grand slam doubles champion Pam Shriver says she had an “inappropriate and damaging relationship” with her coach which started when she was a teenager, and has warned that similar scenarios are commonplace in tennis.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph published on Wednesday, Shriver, who is now 59 and a respected broadcaster, says she started to work with Don Candy when she was nine. The Australian was her coach as she began her rise to the top of the game, and she eventually reached the final of the US Open as a 16-year-old amateur. When she was 17 she told the 50-year-old Candy she was falling in love with him and they went on to have an affair.

“I still have conflicted feelings about Don,” Shriver writes. “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. In a different world, he would have found a way to keep things professional. Only after therapy did I start to feel a little less responsible. Now, at last, I’ve come to realise that what happened is on him.”

Shriver says Candy, who died in 2020, did not sexually abuse her but the relationship “stunted my ability to form normal relationships and set certain patterns which would recur: my ongoing attraction to older men and my difficulties in understanding how to maintain healthy boundaries.”

Shriver believes her story is far from unique. “I believe abusive coaching relationships are alarmingly common in sport as a whole,” she says. “My particular expertise, though, is in tennis, where I have witnessed dozens of instances in my four-and-a-bit decades