A NEEDED BREAK : Shriver Takes Time Out From Outside Commitments to Focus on Her Game

Once, Pam Shriver decided to go to a movie. This is something she often does when she is on the road. The feature hadn’t started yet in the tiny theater on Bourke Street in Melbourne, Australia, so Shriver went into the restroom.

Two elderly women were standing just inside the restroom door as Shriver neared them on her way out. She was startled as they gasped in shock.

“My word, this is the Gents’,” one of the women said.

Shriver did a quick personal audit. As usual, she measured a shade over six feet from the soles of her sneakers to the top of her brown, curly semi-short hair. Wearing blue jeans and a light jacket, Shriver realized that she had been mistaken for a man.

Shriver quickly reassured the women that she was indeed no gender bender and they were in the right rest room.

“I don’t think they believed me,” Shriver said.

The women viewed Shriver suspiciously as she walked past.

But this was the latest case of mistaken identity involving Pam Shriver. Why, it was nearly 11 years ago that she was being mistaken for Britain’s Margaret Court.

Shriver was 16 years old and more Maryland than crabcakes. According to a New York Times description, Shriver had more curls than Little Orphan Annie when she became the youngest finalist in the history of the U.S. Open. The Lutherville, Md., schoolgirl won every set she played and defeated then-Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova in the semifinals before losing to Chris Evert in the final.

Even at such a young age, Shriver was impressive. To many, she was the reincarnation of Court, but leaner and hungrier. A serve-and-volley player, Shriver stood out in the women’s game, where the party line was the baseline.

Looking back, all of it must have seemed pretty simple to Shriver. The world was her oyster, or at the very least, a steamed clam.

“I’m not sure how high my expectations were, but I thought things would be easy,” she said. “I thought that the progression would be finals one year, maybe I’ll struggle (in the) semifinals, quarterfinals a year or so, but I’d win it within the next few years. ‘Who is this Chris and Martina anyway?’ But pretty soon, I was definitely back down to earth.”

Years passed. Shriver grew up, all the while playing tennis. She became a well-rounded person, a champion of causes, a salmon fisher in Canada. And she developed a fondness for politics. Born on the Fourth of July, she bleeds red, white and blue. Shriver was a collector of Australian art when it was fashionable and a Baltimore Orioles fan when it was not. She knew something about a lot of things. Her interest rate was 100%.

Now, Pam Shriver is 26 and winning the U.S. Open, or any other Grand Slam singles event, hasn’t happened. It is the only chunk missing out of what has been an otherwise complete life of tennis and Shriver wonders if this is something that is actually meant to be.

Yet even without a Grand Slam title, since 1983 Shriver has been able to hang onto a place near the top of the rankings, right there a few rungs below Steffi Graf, and also Navratilova and Evert, who are her contemporaries in terms of tour of duty, if not success. Although that missing element gnaws slightly at Shriver’s insides, she is at the same time proud of her station.

“To be the only one that hasn’t had the glory of Grand Slams and still be able to keep the drive is something that I’d say in my career I’m most proud of,” Shriver said. “OK, she hasn’t held up the Wimbledon trophy or the U.S. Open trophy or even the Australian, but doggone it, she’s been a contender that long and she hasn’t lost her mind.”

Maybe not, but for a while there recently, Shriver thought she might have misplaced it.

At this very moment, Shriver has not played singles in a tournament since shortly after seeing that movie in Melbourne. She lost to Catarina Lindqvist in the third round of the Australian Open, 0-6, 6-4, 8-6, then pulled out of singles in events at Washington and San Antonio.

She said that her singles game had sunk so low, she couldn’t find it on radar. Because of all her obligations and commitments, Shriver felt her tennis was being shortchanged. She was spread too thin.

“It hit me when I was in Australia that I had eight zillion things to do,” she said. “I realized I had no time for myself. I just needed to take a breather.”

This was no case of burnout, Shriver said. Something wasn’t quite right in her life and the symptoms showed in her tennis.

She began adding up the major commitments of her time and energy. She soon realized that she:

--Is on the board of directors of the McDonough School, a private school near Baltimore.

--Runs the Orchard Indoor Tennis Club at Towson, Md.

--Is a vice president of the Womens International Tennis Assn.

--Serves on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness.

--Produces a Cystic Fibrosis celebrity tennis tournament.

--Is involved in various public-service projects.

In addition, Shriver has discussed with the Bush Administration the possibility of getting involved in a youth-service agency in which she would work with kids to persuade them to get involved in helping others.

Evert sent Shriver a message of sympathy.

“It said: ‘Dear Pam, I had a mini-emotional breakdown when I was 24 or 25,’ ” Evert said. “John Lloyd and I were on the cover of People magazine and it was like “Chris Retires.” I took a sabbatical, four or five months off, because I was very emotional.

“Every time I stepped out on the court, I was crying,” Evert said. “I was thinking, ‘This isn’t me. Something’s not right.’ I had just gotten married and I was confused how career, marriage and family fit in.

“Pam takes on a lot more than I ever did,” Evert said. “I was pretty single-minded when I was younger, but Pam is involved in other aspects, so it caught up with her. She’s an extremely well-rounded person.”

Now, though, she’s slightly less so. Last week, Shriver leased some office space in Lutherville and is hiring someone to take off some pressure in her business.

“You can’t let outside things gnaw away at your singles game to a point where you can’t play,” Shriver said.

She also parted with Bud Schultz, one of her coaches, after the Australian Open. Shriver said that Schultz wanted to alter her philosophy of preparing for matches, which she considered a solid fundamental and one she did not want to give up.

“It’s a very, very fragile thing,” Shriver said. “I wouldn’t expect anyone who hadn’t known me for years and years and years to know it. You can’t replace that familiarity. It was like a change of who I was about. At 26, I couldn’t do that, and it would hurt my tennis.”

Hank Harris, who has been Shriver’s hitting coach for years, is being counted on more than before, as is Don Candy, the former Australian Davis Cup player, who was Shriver’s guru.

“Don is going to be a resource for as long as I play,” Shriver said. “He doesn’t come to all the tournaments, but all the major ones. Day in and day out, (since) he’s going to be 60 this month, obviously his working-out days are finished.”

So it is a new and presumably revitalized Shriver descending on Indian Wells this week for the $250,000 Virginia Slims tournament at Hyatt Grand Champions. After laying off tournament singles for about six weeks, Shriver is confident her tennis will show improvement, now that she has begun to sort out her business and personal affairs.

“I think I’ll play my best tennis,” she said. “In a year and a half, I’ll either be playing the best tennis of my life and loving it, or I won’t be playing singles anymore.

“Now, I play my tennis, I give it 100%, as much as this body-type can, but at the same time, I really get excited about the things I’ve been exposed to and the people I’ve met. The people I get to know now will be able to help me make that transition into whatever I’m going to do later.”

Shriver said she has been intrigued by meeting some top executives at Philip Morris, the parent company of Virginia Slims, which has sponsored the women’s professional tennis tour since 1970.

“The odds of going to work with Philip Morris would, I guess, be slim . . . ha, ha,” Shriver said.

Entering the political arena may be appealing to Shriver, who campaigned for both Ronald Reagan and George Bush. But Shriver said the boundaries of her support may be slightly broader than is widely assumed. She also has contributed to the campaigns of Rep. Tom McMillen and Gov. William Schaefer, both Maryland Democrats.

“Actually, I’m a little bipartisan,” she said. “I don’t advertise it too much.”

One of three daughters of Sam and Margot Shriver, Pam was 3 when she started going to the tennis courts with her parents. She used a sawed-off squash racket. When she was 9, Shriver began taking lessons at the Orchard Indoor club from Candy, who was the pro.

A student of famed Australian tennis master Harry Hopman, Candy found Shriver a talented pupil. By late 1977, when Shriver was 15 and ready to play on the Avon Futures circuit, she asked Candy to travel with her full-time.

In early 1978, Shriver won the Avon Futures in Columbus, Ohio, getting through pre-qualifying, qualifying and the main draw. A buoyed Shriver entered the Virginia Slims of Dallas and scored surprising victories over Dianne Fromholtz and Kerry Reid before losing to Evonne Goolagong Cawley in the semifinals.

That summer, Shriver found herself on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Shriver held three match points on Sue Barker, but wound up losing. She returned to playing in junior events and lost to Tracy Austin in the final of the national 16 and 18 championships. Next came her stunning debut at the U.S. Open.

Shriver defeated Navratilova in two tiebreakers in a semifinal that was twice delayed by rain. Then in the final against Evert before a packed stadium, Shriver lost, 7-5, 6-4, after leading, 5-4, in the first set and, 4-3, in the second.

At 16, she was the youngest woman ever to reach the Open final.

She hasn’t been back since.

In any event, Shriver remembers what she went through after her narrow loss the very first moment she burst upon the scene at the U.S. Open.

“It was great to get to the finals, but all the baggage that came with it was a shame,” she said. “But you can’t have one without the other. Just like Becker won two Wimbledons before he was 20, so he’s supposed to win eight out of 10.

“So it could have been worse--I could have won it,” she said. “Well, I guess that would have been better.”

It didn’t take long to find out that this Open business wasn’t a snap.

After going back to McDonough school and not playing for three months, Shriver joined the 1978 Wightman Cup team and played No. 3 singles, losing to Michelle Tyler, a little-known English player at the Royal Albert Hall. That was the last time the United States lost the Wightman Cup.

“It was a horrible experience,” Shriver said. “I knew then that things were not going to be easy.”

In fact, they got worse. Shriver turned pro in early 1979, but did not win a match from June to November. She played five tournaments and lost in the first round of each.

And during the summer in Chichester, England, she injured her shoulder while hitting an overhead in warmups. She still wears mounds of ice packs on her right shoulder after matches, looking like a Quasimodo whose hump has shifted a little to the right.

Shriver returned to the U.S. Open, the scene of her greatest triumph. She lost in straight sets to Julie Harrington in the first round.

“To have all that happen within one year of when you’ve gotten through to the finals is really extreme,” Shriver said. “But within one year of getting my low in the rankings (36), I was in the top 10. It’s like 1980 was my big recovery year.”

And Shriver had just turned 18.

Along the way, Shriver has managed to delight audiences and entertain the media with her tennis and her comments about tennis, in that order.

She has also shown an ability to occasionally infuriate opponents with biting on-court remarks. In Toronto in 1981, for instance, Shriver said something vulgar to Austin, who Shriver felt was taking things a little bit too seriously. Shriver later sent an apology.

Shriver has also been one of the top deflected-cursers in the sport. When she gets really angry, she speaks naughty words to the back of her hand. Of course, such peccadilloes are part of Shriver’s charm, now that she has been around long enough to be appreciated as one of the continuing standard-bearers of the women’s game.

Grand Slam titles?

Shriver actually has 21 of them. They are all doubles titles, though, 20 of them with Navratilova as a partner.

She vows to play well at Wimbledon this year because she can be more focused, now that her schedule is settled somewhat.

“This is my time,” she said.

Of course, time is always the issue, especially not having enough of it to go around. Shriver, who takes her responsibilities seriously, may soon get an even bigger one when Evert retires as both player and WITA president. Shriver would almost surely move up.

Since the days of Billie Jean King, it is traditional that the No. 1 player sit at the head of the players’ group, but Evert senses an absence of interest in that role now, especially among No. 1 Steffi Graf and her youthful challenger, Gabriela Sabatini.

“I would say right now that the state of women’s tennis is very, very healthy,” Evert said.

“But the problem might be in the leadership aspect, off the court,” she said. “Martina and I were taken under Billie Jean’s wing, we were open to learning, to the WITA and responsibilities. Pam, too. I don’t see the other players opening up and saying to the top players, ‘We’d like to continue to carry the torch.’ I’m sort of throwing it off to their youth.

“They’re young, they’re single-minded, and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t want a bunch of 18- and 19-year-old girls to run the game. But what they could do is attend more board meetings, more general meetings, just show up two or three times a year, read the material we send them.”

Shriver always shows up when and where she is supposed to. On her return flight from Australia, Shriver landed at Los Angeles International airport, did one interview, then hopped a plane to Palm Springs for another round of interviews. She did all this on one hour’s sleep.

She spent the rest of the time between Sydney and LAX doing her bookkeeping and writing in her journal. Last spring, Shriver touched on the No. 3 ranking for a while after she began the year by winning tournaments in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia. She went on to win the Pan Pacific and the European Indoors.

Shriver, as usual, did not play in the French Open, lost in the semifinals at Wimbledon and the second round of the U.S. Open.

“A disastrous summer,” she said.

“The thing I realized is that no matter how bad my results are or how good my results are, you are never quite sure what’s around the corner. So what you do is you just keep preparing and being as enthusiastic as you can about your game and your life style.”

The year ended happily for Shriver at the Virginia Slims championships. She beat Evert and Graf on the way to the final, where she lost to Sabatini. Even so, it all looked pretty good to Shriver.

“Once upon a time, if I beat Chrissie and Graf back-to-back, that would have been good enough to have won a pretty big title,” she said.

A Slam, possibly?

“A lot of it is timing and luck,” she said. “I just think if you’re there knocking long enough, at some point it’s going to happen. But if it doesn’t, onward.”

This week, at Indian Wells, the draw is small, only 28, and just about anyone could win. The usual suspects: Evert, Helena Sukova, Shriver, Lori McNeil.

Shriver will have some help in her corner--her two grandmothers are coming to see her play.

Marion (Moppie) Ketcham, 80, is Margot Shriver’s mother and lives in San Diego. Eleanor (Ga Ga) Shriver, 78, Sam Shriver’s mother, will come from Pennsylvania to watch granddaughter Pam play.

Marion Ketcham is a four-times-a-week player on the courts at Hotel del Coronado on Coronado Island. Shriver sent her a Valentine’s Day card.

“She wrote on it, ‘Palm Springs, here we come,’ ” Ketcham said. “She has too much energy. She’s a great girl and she doesn’t have just tennis. But she’s done so many other things, it’s too bad one thing she hasn’t done is won a big singles title. I know it’s within her to want a Grand Slam singles title.”

Ketcham said, however, that Shriver is more of a doubles player than a singles player, which seems fair considering Shriver’s Grand Slam doubles record.

“The little girls can move faster,” she said. “But with her long legs and long arms, she can use those on just about anybody and get to the finals. Whether she can win it, I don’t know.”

This assessment seems fair. It is something Pam Shriver probably can live with. She is waiting for her moment to come around again. There have already been so many, not the least of which was winning the gold medal with doubles partner Zina Garrison at the Seoul Olympics. Barcelona and 1992, which aren’t that far off, are the end of the line for her, Shriver said.

But until then? And what if there are no more great moments?

“Hey, I’ve had a great run,” she said.

And when yet another moment comes, when she decides to stop playing, Shriver already has a retirement speech prepared--what will be said about her.

This is what she hopes people will say: “Isn’t it great that she finally won a Wimbledon.

“But if it doesn’t happen, I just hope they say, ‘There’s someone who was fun to watch. She hung in there.’ ”