Bud Collins, tennis’ premier historian and writer, dies at 86

Bud Collins, the tennis writer and commentator whose spirited work rendered him the sport’s premier historian, conscience and connoisseur of fun, died Friday at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 86.

Since taking a fall in his New York hotel during the 2011 U.S. Open, which resulted in a ruptured quadriceps tendon that required 10 surgical procedures, Collins was forced to curtail his travel to tennis events worldwide. But he was able to make a final appearance at Flushing Meadows last September, when he was honored by having his name affixed to the Open’s media center and greeted by waves of reporters, cameramen, former players and tennis officials.

His down-to-earth touch and sense of humor contributed mightily to negating tennis’ stuffy image and fueling its 1970s boom in popularity. It was Collins, who spent 48 years on the Boston Globe staff, who pushed the Breakfast at Wimbledon vision, convincing NBC executives in 1979 to begin airing that hallowed tournament’s championship final live in the United States — at 9 a.m. on the East Coast and 6 a.m. Pacific time.

Ubiquitous in tennis circles for more than a half century — and always highly visible in shockingly flamboyant pants — Collins was a walking museum of facts and tidbits, a counsellor to fellow journalists and unabashed patriot of the game.

He sprinkled delightfully colorful descriptions and nicknames through his reportage, labeling the dastardly Women’s Tennis Association ranking computer “Medusa” and coining the term “bagel” for a love score. He called German Hall of Famer Steffi Graf “Fraulein Forehand,” steely American champ Chris Evert “The Ice Maiden” and the powerful Williams’ siblings “Sisters Sledgehammer.” He once prefaced his description of an instant replay point by Israel’s Shlomo Glickstein with, “Here’s Shlomo in slo-mo.”

Generations of new faces on the tennis circuit found Collins ready to guide them to the most convenient hotels and restaurants when abroad, or offer rides to the stranded. He was so recognizable at tennis events that he once was described as “the human credential,” needing no proof of identification to go about his work.

Arthur Worth Collins was born June 17, 1929 in Lima, Ohio and raised near Cleveland in Berea, where he graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College. After a stint in the army, he enrolled at Boston University’s graduate school and took a job at the Boston Herald, first as a copy boy and then a sportswriter.

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He covered every major sport, from Muhammad Ali title fights to the Boston Red Sox to the Boston Marathon for the Herald and the Globe. But his passion was tennis, which he played well enough to win the national indoor mixed doubles championship in 1961.

He also coached tennis at Brandeis University, where his players included Bert Strug, father of 1996 Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Kerri, and Abbie Hoffman, the political activist among those tried for inciting riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hoffman, Collins wryly recalled, was “very conservative. He’d never leave the baseline.”

In the 1970s, while covering a tournament in Palm Springs, Collins volunteered for a practice doubles match against an aspiring young player, Sally Ride, the future astronaut. “I had no idea,” he wrote years later, that “would soon launch Sally into space.”

Collins authored books and tennis encyclopedias, once hosted the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and briefly campaigned for mayor of Boston in 1967. He was elected to both the International Tennis Hall of Fame and National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame.

U.S. Tennis Association president Katrina Adams called Collins “a special person, a friend and mentor to many in the industry, and one who has spread his passion for the sport in so many ways. The span of his career is breathtaking.”

He is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, which ended in divorce; by Rob Lacy, the son of companion Judy Lacy, who died of a brain tumor; and by his third wife, photographer Anita Ruthling Klaussen, and her two children. Collins’ second wife, Mary Lou Barnum, also died of brain cancer.

Veteran sportswriter and author John Feinstein once submitted that Collins could find something nice to say about anyone, even someone as villainous as the Fascist dictator Mussolini. “Well,” Collins told Feinstein, “the guy did play tennis.”