I happened to be going through my library of tennis tapes recently and I came across an installment from the ABC-produced, Nike-sponsored series entitled "A Passion To Play". This particular installment, focusing on women's tennis, featured approximately twelve minute segments on Billie Jean King, Chanda Rubin, and Steffi Graf, all of whom were duly credited at the beginning of the program.

And, oh yeah, umm, there was this one other little ten minute segment stuck in there. No name in fancy letters at the beginning of the program for this player. No voice-over announcement saying "Stay tuned for A Passion to Play featuring ...." Nope, if you hadn't seen the program you'd have never even known you were going to see a segment on Shaun Stafford - and you'd have been the poorer for it.

To me, Shaun's segment was the most interesting of the entire hour. In it she lays out the tale of a player NOT ranked in the upper echelon, and the picture is not always that pretty. The segment begins with what may be the highest point of Shaun's professional career: Her capture of the first set against Martina Navratilova at the 1992
US Open, by the score of six games to four.

In Shaun's own words:

"I never had 20,000 people cheering for me...it's a great feeling. It was very special [and] a match that I'll never forget."

The segment next cuts to Shaun sitting alone in what looks to be like a pretty unattractive, efficient-but-only-just hotel room, talking on the phone:

"Um, yeah, I'd like to make an airline reservation. My name is Shaun Stafford. S-H-A-U-N. S-T-A-F-F-O-R-D." She drones on rather listlessly. One gets the feeling this is not the first time she has made this call.

The voice of the narrator/interviewer (who was ESPN's own wonderful Robin Roberts, by the way) returns. "Fame is a one-way trip. And Stafford has learned to savor the freedom that solitude provides. . . But [there is a] flip side to freedom . . . On the road, Stafford must play her own manager, agent, trainer, porter and tour guide, as well as some decent tennis.

And miscalculations can be costly. Everything has to be done on time ... "otherwise you have to pay fines," Shaun informs us. "So that's another thing you have to keep track of. And you have to keep a file of what you are doing so you don't get stuck with a fine. 'Cause for me, 500 or 1000 dollars is a lot of money. For a Top 10 player, it's not."

The differences between being a Top 10 player and the existence that Shaun leads begin to be enumerated by her. Top 10 players have coaches to watch them play, point out their flaws, encourage them when they are down. These days that is probably true of even the Top 50 players. Shaun, whose ranking was hovering at about the 90 mark at this latter stage of her career, can afford no coach and travels totally alone.

She begins to point out other ways her life is different, when the phone rings in the WTA Office. Shaun leans over to answer it. "Top 10 players don't have to answer the office phone," Robin adds jokingly.

Phone called answered, Shaun returns to her list, hammering hard at her two biggest gripes: demands on her time for off-court events and practice court time limitations. "We are often asked to do clinics, pro-am events, promotions," Shaun tells us and, to her credit, Shaun has done many, many of these in a very gracious manner. But sometimes these events are scheduled just before matches and that gets Shaun's dander up. "No Top 10 player would ever be asked to do that!" she is quick to point out.

Not getting enough time on the practice court is another of Shaun's pet peeves. Lower echelon players might get an hour on the court "with four other people." Top 10 players get three hours all to themselves. "At least they could hit with one of us; why does it have to be her coach?" Shaun questions.

And although Shaun is stoic about it, another major difference that is graphically pointed out in her segment is the number of spectators that attend a lower echelon player's matches. "Sometimes it effects you..." Shaun admits, as the camera pans around to show less than ten people sitting in the stands to watch her opening match in Oklahoma against Johnnette Kruger.

But it is the final shot of the segment that was the one that literally brought tears to my eyes. The camera has found Shaun standing alone at a pay phone booth, still in her sweats, having just lost her match. "I'll be going to Delray next, and then Miami," she tells the uncaring airline reservationist at the end of the telephone line. And then, very softly, "Economy."

Shaun playing in Canada, 1994