WHIRLWIND : Pam Shriver Does Exactly What She Likes, Whether It’s Tennis or Politics

If Pam Shriver’s life is a whirlwind, it is one of her own making. If she has constructed a career that seems to pull her at the edges, it is the way she must have it.

First, it was people taking the talented tennis player aside and whispering to her: “You don’t need high school, kid, you’re going to be the next Virginia Wade.” Then it was: “You need to play more tournaments to keep your ranking. Ignore your aching shoulder.” Now it is: “This politics stuff, lose it. Takes your mind off the game.”

No one seems to have noticed that Shriver’s mind has always been exactly where she wanted it. And if that means scattered in nine different directions, fine with her.

Or as she said of her match Thursday at the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles: “I made it hard on myself. But then, I wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t make things difficult.”

What could have been simpler than beating Martina Navratilova in the semifinals of the U.S. Open in 1978, then losing, no sweat, to Chris Evert Lloyd. When you are 16, what could be difficult?

What is tough is listening to the whispers.

“My last two years at (high) school were crazy,” Shriver said. “I graduated in three years. I was unbelievably busy--playing in tournaments and carrying extra courses. I think that’s when it started.”

Shriver was in a hurry to make it to the pros. She was 6 feet tall and had a serve-and-volley game, very unlike the baseline game played by most young American women. All arms and legs, she was all over the net.

Shriver was going to make it because she was smart. She was not some pampered poodle coming out of the juniors with an entourage and a hairdresser.

No, Shriver was well brought up. You could see that. Born in Maryland, cousin of former vice presidential candidate Sargent Shriver, she was of Mayflower stock, of brick and Pilgrims.

Her coach, Don Candy, was her perfect match. His sense of humor meshed with hers, and in his tenacity and capacity to explode with anger, Candy was Shriver’s equal.

He needed the armor. For here was not a pattycake teen-ager, but a young kid working on a prize ulcer. There were fights, rackets thrown, curses hurled. In the old days.

“We had some wild struggles,” Shriver said. “I used him as a chopping block, as a teen-ager would a parent. But a sense of humor helps you get through. Don taught me that. If we jumped on each other at practice, we’d be cracking up at dinner. I haven’t always been as gracious a loser as I could have been.”

She won no etiquette awards when she played Tracy Austin at Toronto in 1981. Austin won a match in which Shriver believed the umpire favored Austin on line calls. When Austin came to the net to shake hands after she had won, Shriver called Austin a name. A nasty name. Austin cried.

Of course, that was small potatoes, coming from Shriver, who had said to Austin the first time they met as 12-year-olds: “Shut up or I’ll step on you.”

In 1978, the year she turned professional, Shriver rose to No. 13. The next year, she fell to No. 33.

It was then that the moving parts in her right arm began to disintegrate. Here is a note she wrote to herself in 1979: “I am so worried about my shoulder, which aches now as I write. The pain is frightening because of its intensity. I want so much to get rid of this pain. I must be strong. I must be strong.”

It was a plaintive cry from a teen-ager, and it was a debilitating injury that might have ended the career of a less sturdy player. There was more whispering, but this time it was, “Shriver’s arm is going to blow up. She’s finished.”

Shriver fought back. She backed off her playing schedule and took time off. She found a weight-training program that strengthened her shoulder and elbow. Mostly, Shriver iced. Even today, she walks into a postmatch interview with her right arm packed in ice.

Shriver was named comeback player of the year in 1980, and since then she has not fallen out of the top 10. She has slipped and she has struggled, but she has hung on.

Now, at 24, Shriver looks out on vistas not possible for younger players, or older ones with less mettle. She earned nearly a half-million dollars last year in prize money, and there was more for endorsements.

She has a new job as a spokeswoman for a brokerage house and she is one player who knows a bond from a stock. She does color commentary on television and will work next for CBS at the U.S. Open later this month.

“I’m very flattered that CBS asked me to do the Open,” she said. “(But) it puts me in an uncomfortable position. I think I’m a contender. I can only hope that in six or seven years it’ll be there when I’m ready to leave the tennis courts.”

Shriver recently converted her musings to a diary of life on the tour. The book, “Passing Shots: A Year on the Tour” is about to be published. It grew out of a two-part journal she wrote last year for Sports Illustrated.

“I started writing that journal because it was a good time for me (to write it)--I was going through a couple of tough things, personally. It got to be an obsession, I would write two hours a day. My spelling was so bad, it took two people to edit it.”

That was what some of the whisperers would call a distraction. The current one is her flirtation with politics. In 1984, Shriver was the honorary chairwoman for the Reagan-Bush presidential campaign in Maryland. There have been dinners at the White House and tennis games with Vice President Bush. There has been the talk.

“I really admire the President,” Shriver said. “But politics is something that would require so much of me. I’m a public figure now, but as a politician. . . . It’s more likely that I’ll become a sportscaster than a politician.

“People all the time try to take my outside interests and make them a negative. My life has always been like that and it always will be like that. I don’t think it necessarily means that while I’m concentrating on tennis I can’t put 100% into it. If I didn’t have 100 different interests, I probably wouldn’t be as good a player.”

Shriver, No. 6 in the world, doesn’t have to listen to what other people think of her career. She can continue along in her merry fashion, a duck-footed, quick-witted anomaly. She likes it that way.

Shriver advanced to the quarterfinals in the $250,000 tournament at Manhattan Country Club Thursday, beating Lisa Bonder, 6-3, 6-3.

In the evening singles match, Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina defeated Patty Fendick, 6-3, 6-1.

Sabatini, seeded No. 7, played to Fendick’s erratic backhand.

“She was in a rush all the time,” Sabatini said. “She hit the balls, and all the balls go out.”

Sabatini plays fourth-seeded Pam Shriver today. Sessions are at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Tournament Notes Second-seeded Chris Evert Lloyd defeated Bettina Bunge, 7-6, 6-4. In other afternoon matches, Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia beat Lori McNeil, 6-4, 1-6, 6-1; Claudia Kohde-Kilsch of West Germany downed Alycia Moulton, 7-5, 6-3; Manuela Maleeva of Bulgaria eliminated Melissa Gurney, 6-0, 6-4, and Zina Garrison turned back Natalie Tauziat of France, 6-7, 6-1, 6-2.