Pam Shriver tried to peer through the fog of some 40-plus years since she had played tennis with, or even communicated with, Kay McDaniel on the pro circuit.
Shriver was just learning Sunday of McDaniel’s death last Friday at age 67 after a long illness. The current tennis broadcaster, pundit and coach and winner of 21 Grand Slam doubles titles (20 with Martina Navratilova) was returning a call while in Kona, Hawaii, where she was enjoying some vacation time with her three grown children.
“Kay McDaniel,” she said, searching the memory files of her brain to place the Shreveport native who who achieved extraordinary accomplishments in in tennis at both Captain Shreve High School and at LSU before her professional tennis career. There, she competed at tennis’ grand slams for six years against legends like Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Steffi Graf. Not to mention Shriver.
“Blonde? Lefty? Deep southern accent?” Shriver asked. “Yes, sure. She was good, she was fun, she was a good competitor. She had a great smile, too. I can still remember her smile.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, on learning of her death, “and I’m sorry for her family.”
She asked a series of rapid-fire questions about Kay’s passing and seemed genuinely saddened. I sought out Shriver for a comment because at some point over the years Kay told me that of the elite players in that early ’80s era of professional women’s tennis, she probably felt closest to Shriver.
Shriver, McDaniel and Kathy Jordan competed together in the Maureen Connolly Brinkers Championships for the USA team that beat Great Britain in 1982.
A great admirer of Kay for many years, I got to know her through her periodic trips every year or two to Alexandria to visit her oldest brother John and his wife, Sid, with whom Janet and I have been close friends for many years.
One of Shriver’s questions about Kay was “Does she have any kids?”
I answered “No,” since Kay never married, adding, “but in another way, she had many, many kids.”
I was referring to the thousands of youngsters she had mentored at her free annual youth clinics for 31 years at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn. Many of her instructors were initially participants in the clinics and she enjoyed working with many of them for an average of 10 years. A Christian and motivational speaker, McDaniel taught more than tennis to the youngsters. She wanted them to “learn that God’s eternal love lasts longer than a lifetime.”
Kay had a drive to succeed as a tennis player, a coach or even as a columnist for the Chattanooga Free Press. She pursued and captured nature’s beauty as a talented photographer, and with that “great smile” she often sought to help others.
Here’s a side note to her tennis career: she won her first professional tournament in Atlanta as a rookie in 1979 against Dr. Renee Richards, the man who, in the 1970s, had a sex change to compete as a woman. She won the match in a 7-5 tiebreaker in the third set.
Despite her many physical setbacks through the years, especially battling lupus and Addison’s disease, she showed how God’s love helped her overcome adversity. In the past year she talked of how her body was “breaking down” with such things as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and major spine surgery.
Her brother, John, said she wrote in a recent journal how God gradually took away all her physical abilities which she was so blessed with during her lifetime.
“And,” he said, “look who’s hand she reached for at the end … before He took her up to Him.”