Pam Shriver

“You realize as an athlete that there is a bit of a clock, and you don't want to look back on a career and say, 'I wish I had done this a bit differently.'”

“I have horrible handwriting, horrible spelling and horrible grammar.”

“I hate sitting still.”

“Living in Baltimore at age 11, I was still not single-focused on tennis. I still played other sports. It was becoming a bigger part of my life, but it was still mainly my summer hobby.”

“I got to one Grand Slam final, and that's what you shoot for as a player.”

“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.”

“I think my best tennis is good enough to win.”

“Eventually I ran for the board of the WTA, lost my first attempt, got on the board my second attempt, and stayed there through most of my career.”

“I became president of the players' association and was willing to have conversations with influential people about equal prize money or how the tour could be promoted and structured in a way to make women's tennis better.”

“I feel like the NBA, WNBA, tennis and basketball have really been at the forefront of social justice and pushing for change from the athlete platform.”

“I took more anti-inflammatories probably than anybody in my 20 years of playing and I know what that terrible stomach pain can be. I also know what terrible menstruation cramps can be, as most women tennis players have, to the point where you feel nauseous, but you just play on.”

“I was given advice early in the quarantine: Don't focus on what you don't have. Focus on what you do have and will have again, and I've said that to myself over and over again.”

“When I was 13, tennis became more of my life. It's when I gave up skiing, I gave up winter sports. I still played varsity basketball my freshman year of high school - basketball was the last sport I gave up for my tennis.”

“In regular tournaments, players throw in the towel occasionally for one reason or another.”

“The pace of play is very important whether I'm watching baseball, tennis or golf.”

“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.”

“If I had to write a novel, I'd start crying after three lines.”

“You have to make sure the players know to be accessible, and that's part of their job. That's why you earn a lot of money. There's a public relations, fan-friendly part of it.”

“When you're in the second set and you start thinking I have to win this and get it over, the pressure to finish quickly can get to you.”

“Living in Los Angeles and having three little kids, it's hard following the Orioles.”