She Deserves a Successful Campaign

Pam Shriver is the sort of person who deserves to have good things happen to her, but so far, this has not been her year.

For one thing, her beloved Baltimore Orioles have spent most of the spring and summer playing (cough) baseball the way the New York Mets did in the year Shriver was born, 1962.

For another thing, when Shriver made her yearly push to pull an Arthur Ashe or a Virginia Wade at Wimbledon, she contracted mononucleosis, and that pretty much took care of that. That and Steffi Graf.

Oh, well. Maybe September will be Shriver’s month, and she will spring a big surprise on everybody at the U.S. Open, where Graf will be bidding to win the Grand Slam. Ten years have passed since Shriver startled the tennis community at 16 by reaching the U.S. Open final in singles. Maybe some lightning in her racket will strike again.

There are other reasons Shriver has hope 1988 will turn out all right. She is an active campaigner for presidential candidate George Bush, with whom she socializes and plays tennis. Shriver, who attended a White House state dinner held in 1985 by President Reagan, is a staunch Republican, which makes her a tennis player who knows how to go to her right.

Just the other day, before leaving for Los Angeles and the Virginia Slims tournament at Manhattan Beach, which begins Monday, Shriver was off to a Bush campaign luncheon in Baltimore.

“I met him around four years ago, when I first played tennis with him,” she said. “We’ve played at least 10 or 12 times since then, and he’s come and watched me play.

“I won’t get into a big political discussion here, but just to know the man a little, and to see certain labels placed upon him, sometimes I feel like screaming.”

Labels like . . . wimpy?

“Hey, his record is incredible,” Shriver said. “His Naval record, his public service record, his athletic background. It’s all pretty--I don’t know--not wimpy. What’s the opposite of wimpy?”

With a name like Shriver, it is not surprising that someone might have political interests, although heaven knows Sargent Shriver’s might not be in sync with Pam’s. She gets asked a lot if she’s related to those Shrivers.

“Yeah, and I hope they get asked if they’re related to Pam,” Pam said.

If there has been anybody on the tennis tour over the years who has been a good will ambassador for the sport, it has been Shriver. To know her is to like her, even if you’re a Democrat. She’s funny, she’s unpretentious and she generally has a knack for cutting through the usual bull.

No wonder galleries root for her. Shriver is an unusual combination of success story and underdog. She’s the Denver Broncos of tennis, always one of the best but never indisputably the best.

For more than a decade, she has, arguably, been one of the five greatest women tennis players in the world. She can beat anybody, and has. She took more sets off Martina Navratilova in 1986 than any other player.

In 1987, she and Navratilova won the doubles titles at three of the four Grand Slam events, and she defeated Chris Evert for the first time in 19 matches. For the year, Shriver had a 65-13 record in singles. The woman is still a winner.

And yet, there are those missing pieces of the jigsaw that remain. “I’m still missing a Grand Slam singles title,” she said. “It’s no big deal, but what the heck. Maybe one of these years, before I’m too old to lift a racket.”

Everything would have to fall in place at the U.S. Open for Shriver to win, but you never know. If Graf gets upset, the thing’s thrown wide open. Neither Navratilova nor Evert is in peak condition. Maybe this is the year for a Pam Slam.

If not that, there’s always that gold medal she’s going after. As soon as the Open is over, Shriver leaves for South Korea, where she will represent the United States in tennis. Shriver, Evert and Zina Garrison make up the official entry, now that the United States Tennis Assn. has resolved that nasty business wherein Elise Burgin had to be dropped at the last minute to make room for Evert.

“The USTA really botched the handling of that,” Shriver said. “It was handled very, very badly, and it’s a shame that when Elise was picked, nobody made it clear to her or to anybody else that her selection wasn’t permanent.

“I suppose that when you get into something for the first time, there are going to be mess-ups. This was one major mess-up.”

Shriver is looking forward to the Games. She is over her mono now and back playing tennis for the first time in several weeks, having used the recovery time to go salmon fishing in New Brunswick. “Caught nine, kept four,” she said, describing game, net and catch.

When Evert and Navratilova were approached by the USTA to play in the Olympics, they demurred. Evert eventually had a change of heart, Navratilova did not.

Shriver never hesitated. “I’ve been excited from the very first I heard about it,” she said. “I never wavered one inch. It’s a dream come true for me.

“No, I take that back. It’s not a dream, because it’s something I never even thought was possible. It’s something I couldn’t have even dreamed up.”

Shriver’s ready to stand up for America. Hard telling how much of her personality stems from the fact that she was born on the Fourth of July.

At 26, Shriver is not exactly coming to the end of the road in tennis. She can see another five years of the life, at least.

“By 37, though, I’d like to think I’d have settled down and started a family,” she said. “It would be nice not to have a serious agenda to keep. I don’t know what it’s like to keep a regular schedule.”

Such as the time Shriver was invited to a reception for the Prince and Princess of Wales, but had to decline because she was playing tennis that week in Brisbane, Australia. There are advantages and disadvantages to life on the run.

Possibly that is why Pam can empathize with a political candidate. When you’re running around all the time, it’s tough to stop and have some fun.

George Bush, for example, finds little time these days for tennis, or any of his other passions.

“He loves to play horseshoes,” Shriver said.

Horseshoes?

“Yeah,” she said, laughing. “I wouldn’t call that wimpy, but on the other hand, you don’t exactly get an aerobic workout.”