THE SEOUL GAMES : DOUBLES DELIGHT : Garrison-Shriver Slips Past Czechs to Win First U.S. Tennis Gold Medal in 64 Years

The first gold medal in Olympic tennis in 64 years for the United States was not won easily here Friday. In fact, there were moments when it appeared that Pam Shriver and Zina Garrison might need another 64 years to win the women’s doubles.

One of those moments occurred in the final game, with Garrison serving for the match against Jana Novotna and Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia. The score was 9-8 in the third set--there are no tiebreakers at the Olympics in a final set.

The game went to 30-all, and then the fun began. Well, at least it was fun for the spectators.

“Every point was a trauma,” Shriver said.

Six times, Garrison served on match point. Five of the times she had gotten to that point because Sukova, playing in the forehand court, could not return effectively--four times she didn’t even get the ball in play and the fifth she returned weakly to Shriver, who belted it away. Three times, Novotna, icy cool, came up with match-saving shots.

And twice, on match point, Garrison double-faulted.

Finally, on her the sixth try, Garrison served to Novotna, who eventually hit long by a couple of feet, and Garrison and Shriver, who had never played together until the Canadian Open a few weeks ago, had their Olympic gold medal by the gut-wrenching scores of 4-6, 6-2, 10-8.

Shriver, though, quickly put the gold-medal victory up on an even higher pedestal than the other things, such as the Wimbledon doubles title, she has achieved.

“If I never do anything else in my life, this will be the highlight,” she said.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten a charge like this from anything. This is just so different. Zina and I didn’t even know each other that well before we came here. And then we got here, were roommates, did everything together--including having her beat my brains out in singles the other day--and then we win this. It’s going to be hard to top for a while.”

Garrison said: “It was really strange to be on the victory stand and hear your national anthem. It’s just got to be the special moment in your life.”

There were no service breaks in the last set--although there were lots of opportunities along the way for both teams, adding to the theater value of the match--until Novotna lost her serve at 8-8 by volleying a shot into the net. At 7-7, Sukova had served a game that totaled 22 points and 4 break points for the Americans before holding on.

And then came Garrison’s service game at 9-8.

“I just figured that if Zina was going to serve for the match four, five times like that, that we could just hang in there, that the moon would come up before we lost it,” Shriver said.