Legendary Tennis Journalist Bud Collins Dies at 86

The world of tennis has lost one of its pillars, as legendary writer and broadcaster Arthur Worth “Bud” Collins passed away on Friday at his Massachusetts home.

He was 86.

Collins began as a tennis writer for the Boston Globe and several other Boston-area newspapers in the early 1960’s and quickly became one the sport’s most poignant voices. He was one of the first columnists to make the transition into television and became one of the sport’s most recognizable faces.

“No media figure in history in my mind has ever been as important to one sport as Bud Collins was to the sport of tennis,” Mike Lupica told The Boston Globe. “You can’t minimize it. He became the de facto ambassador to that sport as it was exploding in this country. He educated. He entertained.”

Last September at the U.S. Open, the USTA named the media center at the National Tennis Center after Collins.

"The USTA is deeply saddened by the passing of legdnary tennis journalist Bud Collins," the USTA said in a statement. "Bud was larger than life, and his countless contributions to the sport helped to make it the global success that it is today. Bud was a mentor to many, and a friend to many more. Our sport was most fortunate to be associated with a man of such charachter and class, and we were privileged to have had the chance to honor his lasting legacy to the sport by naming the US Open Media Center in his honor last year. He will be sorely missed by all of us who loved him–and by the sport he loved so dearly."

"Even as a TV star—and make no mistake, at the height of the tennis boom, he was a star—Bud never stopped writing,” Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim wrote. “He said it himself: he was never more comfortable than he was in the press room, staring at a blank sheet of paper and later a blank screen. Invariably he’d work his magic, and come up with a dispatch or a profile as well reported as it was well written, his prose as colorful as his trousers.”

Katrina Adams, chairman, CEO and president of USTA, said: “I am heartbroken at the news of the passing of Bud Collins, a great friend to me personally and an irreplaceable presence in the sport of tennis. Bud was truly one-of-a-kind, and his good humor and great grace, coupled with his unmatched knowledge of our sport and his love of it, helped to make tennis more popular and more fun for fans in the U.S, and throughout the world. He was a colorful character, a true gentleman and a passionate proponent of our sport, which was most fortunate to have counted Bud as a member of its family. There will never be another quite like Bud, and I know that our entire sport, its players, and its many fans deeply mourn his passing.”