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Can't stay away Navratilova will play doubles in U.S. Open
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- When Martina Navratilova ended her six-year retirement to play doubles, she asked former partner Pam Shriver to play. "If we could play as well as we played 10 years ago, it would be a blast," the 43-year-old Navratilova said Monday. "Wishful thinking," replied the 38-year-old Shriver. Navratilova e-mailed her pitch to Shriver earlier this year. "She had just played a couple sets that day and said I better keep looking," said Navratilova, who is playing the Pilot Pen this week with 19-year-old Katarina Srebotnik. The New Haven tournament is a tuneup for her first U.S. Open in five years, where she'll be paired with Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario in doubles and Rick Leach in mixed doubles. Navratilova won 165 singles and 167 doubles titles and earned more than $20 million in prize money by the time she retired in 1994. Shriver retired in 1997 and was ranked as high as No. 3 in her 19-year career. She won 22 Grand Slams doubles titles -- 20 of them with Navratilova. They once ran off 109 straight wins. "Our natural games, even in singles was to play like doubles players. Come in on short serves, attack the net," Shriver said. "We got along well mentally and emotionally. That's like 95 percent of it." A powerful service game didn't hurt either. Both brought that to the court every day, said Navratilova. "Our biggest strength was a good second serve that was not attackable," Navratilova said. "And we both had a great first volley. People had to play their best tennis to beat us. We just had to play normal to win." A couple surgeries on Shriver's right shoulder prevented her from returning to the game, but a successful broadcasting career kept her courtside. That's where she was in July when Navratilova returned to Wimbledon with partner Mariaan de Swardt. Shriver was working for the BBC and got to call some of Navratilova's matches. "It was fantastic. I thought she played really great," Shriver said. Upon further review? "There were a couple little things," Shriver said. "Obviously after six years and at 43 years of age, there's some things that she's not going to do quite as well. But I wasn't the only one who was impressed. It was fun. You don't get an opportunity to call a match for someone you've played doubles with for 10 years." It was on that same Centre Court 19 years ago that Shriver and Navratilova won their first Grand Slam title. They had more than that to celebrate. It also was Shriver's 19th birthday. Navratilova and de Swaart battled into the quarterfinals, where they lost to Serena and Venus Williams in three sets. "Painful," is how Navratilova described going up against the strong, athletic siblings. "The worst pain I had was trying to get out of the way of a ball. I tweaked my shoulder," she said. "I really know I'm getting old when I'm getting hurt getting out of the way of a ball. The pain lasted five seconds. My ego was hurt." Don't expect Navratilova to go it alone anytime soon. She really is retired when it comes to singles. "I'll never play singles. Let me make that clear. I'm too slow for that," she said. "I can handle half the court." And for a decade, Shriver commanded the other half. "We had a lot of fun. A lot of laughs," Shriver said. "We did work well together."
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