RIP Bud Collins

I don't know of another tennis announcer who made coverage of the sport more fun or exciting. RIP.

 

As a young AP guy in Hartford, I very, very seldom covered tennis, but in late July 1987 there was this matter of the Davis Cup match between Boris Becker and John McEnroe.

I wandered across the street from the AP office on Asylum St. to the Civic Center the afternoon before the match, hoping to speak to both of them for an advance story. I think (it was a long time ago) there had been a press conference the previous day, but I had an angle I wanted to pursue and had already used stuff from the presser. I wanted something fresh.

The locker rooms were both closed and I was preparing to stalk them ... until Bud Collins came along. He didn't know me at all, but we struck up a conversation and I told him about my situation. He offered to walk me into the locker rooms and, of course, nobody in tennis was going to stop Bud Collins from going in.

He introduced me to both players. I got my damn quotes and wrote a decent advance for what turned out to be something of a historic match. It lasted 6 1/2 hours and Becker eventually won 4-6, 15-13, 8-10, 6-2, 6-2.

RIP Bud Collins.

 

Wimbledon just hasn't been the same since it departed NBC (where Carson, Dick Enberg and McEnroe made a great team).

 

Bud wasn't just tennis, but an outstanding all-around columnist as well and a delightful man. We're losing too many good people this week.

 

Probably the most important non-player in American tennis history.

RIP.

 

Stories like this are why I come back here.

 

Collins or Mark McCormack. But Collins had better pants.

 

Just a nice man and consummate pro who was always helpful and never big-timed anyone, like the new guy covering the tours. He all but invented announcing tennis on television, knew everything and everyone, and ran the media tournament at the Open with naughty humor. His companion Anita was a delight to be around. As reported Bud endured multiple tragedies, including the cancer deaths of his wife and girlfriend. Less known is that his sister, a social worker, was murdered by one of her clients.

Bud always had an anecdote. He coached Abby Hoffman at Brandeis. When I asked him about Hoffman's game, he said Abby the player was the opposite of his radical persona, "content to rally from the baseline instead of attacking the net."

On 9/11 Bud was wrapping up what is always a long stay in New York for the Open. After the attacks thousands streamed uptown and there was Bud, a journalist, seeing the big story and interviewing people for the paper.

I hope, like Borg, he gets his own elasticized halo now.

 

The other thing that stands out from that Hartford match in July '87 was that because it lasted 6 1/2 hours, the Civic Center ran out of food at the concession stands and closed them about four hours in.

All of us in the media section were starved. Because the AP office was across the street, I was a regular and knew the bartender (Jim) at a restaurant called Chuck's Cellar that was connected to the Civic Center. So I called Chuck's (on the black dial phone I carried around to use with my TRS80's acoustic couplers) and Jim hooked me up with burgers and fries for about 10 of us.

He delivered them personally to the media entrance and I was the hero of all my Hartford press colleagues for that one day.

 

My condolences to Uncle Studley.

 

Between Collins and Dan Magill (who was college's Bud Collins and then some, while also winning championships coaching Georgia), we've lost in the past two years the two most important American tennis historians the sport has ever known. Never got the chance to meet Bud, but I admired him — his work, his enthusiasm and passion for the game and life — for decades.