Legendary sports writer and well-known tennis reporter Howard Fendrich has died at the age of 55.
Fendrich was a national sports writer for the Associated Press, who covered dozens of Grand Slam tennis finals and record-breaking Olympic moments.
He died on Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his wife Rosanna Maietta said. He was diagnosed with cancer in February, shortly after covering his 11th Olympic Games in Milan.
Tennis icon Roger Federer, who estimated he’d had more than 100 interactions with Fendrich over the decades, called the journalist ‘one of those constant and reassuring presences in the tennis world for many years.’
‘He started covering tennis in 2002, right around the time I was starting to have my breakthrough in the sport, and over time he truly became part of the fabric of tennis,’ Federer said. ‘Tennis lost a wonderful journalist and a great person.’
Fendrich is survived by his wife; his mother, Renée; his brother, Alex; and two sons, Stefano and Jordan, each of whom are pursuing careers in sports journalism – just like their dad.
Howard Fendrich (left) interviews former French tennis player Guy Forget back in 2019
Fendrich shakes hands with Roger Federer, who called him ‘part of the fabric of tennis’
‘Howard was a gifted journalist who brought such skill, expertise and enthusiasm to his work,’ said AP Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Julie Pace.
‘His stories were a joy to read, combining lively writing with insightful reporting. He was also a generous and beloved colleague whose warmth and passion touched so many across the AP.’
A graduate of Haverford College near Philadelphia, Fendrich worked at AP for 33 years, starting as an unpaid intern in Rome.
There, he became fluent in his beloved city’s language, mostly by watching Italian karaoke videos, and that helped him get a foot in the door to the news agency’s European sports coverage, focusing on soccer.
That, in turn, landed him on the radar of the AP sports editor at the time, Terry R. Taylor, who helped him get back to the United States.
In the United States, Fendrich started as an editor on the AP sports desk at the New York headquarters, where he also wrote a sports media column. He moved to the Washington area in 2005 and became a steady presence on sports beats in the region where he had grown up.
Fendrich poses for a selfie with his son Stefano and wife Rosanna in Los Angeles last May
But his true passion was tennis. He chronicled the careers of Venus and Serena Williams, Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and others. He covered some 70 Grand Slam tournaments over nearly a quarter century on the beat. It was at those events where his brilliance shone brightest.
Fendrich’s writing honors included two Grimsley Awards for best overall body of work among AP sports writers and a handful of deadline-writing citations. One was for a piece from Andre Agassi’s last match, which came at the 2006 U.S. Open:
‘Crouched alone in the silence of the locker room, a pro tennis player no more, a red-eyed Andre Agassi twisted his torso in an attempt to conquer the seemingly mundane task of pulling a white shirt over his head. Never more than at that moment did Agassi seem so vulnerable, looking far older than his 36 years.’
The passage highlighted Fendrich at his best – watching, rewatching, taking notes, going beyond the courts and painstakingly sifting through details of events that millions of people witnessed to tell them something the guy sitting right next to him might not have noticed.
Fendrich captured Federer’s heartfelt meeting with Bjorn Borg in the hallway after a history-making win at Wimbledon. He detailed the gritty realities of playing on red clay at Roland Garros, then having to wash it out of shorts and socks when the match was over.
In February 2018, Fendrich covered the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea
At his last big assignment in Milan, he followed speedskater Jutta Leerdam’s famous fiancé, fighter Jake Paul, down the hallway leading to the parking lot – all just to unearth a detail, just to get a quote.
He got them, then Paul proclaimed: ‘OK, we’re done.’ Bodyguards moved in and, as Fendrich said at a dinner later: ‘I decided, “Yes, I guess we are.”‘
Chris Lehourites, an editor at AP who guided tennis coverage in Europe for decades, spent many a long day fretting over punctuation, syntax and word choice with Fendrich, whom he called a ‘perfectionist when it came to his job.’
‘Howard was also a friend,’ Lehourites said, ‘whose dry humor, along with his bags of Blow Pop lollipops, made long days go by quick.’
