Howard Fendrich, a national sports writer for The Associated Press whose persistent reporting and detail-rich prose brought readers inside dozens of taut Grand Slam tennis finals, record-breaking Olympic moments and harrowing trips down Alpine ski slopes, has died. He was 55.
Fendrich died Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his wife Rosanna Maietta said. He was diagnosed with cancer in February shortly after returning from Milan, where he covered his 11th Olympics.
Tennis great 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.”
Billie Jean King posted on social media: “Howard Fendrich was one of the great sports storytellers. He will be missed.”
Fendrich is survived by his wife Rosanna; 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.
“It breaks my heart to share that my soulmate and father to Stefano and Jordan, Howard Fendrich, died Thursday,” Rosanna wrote. “We had an amazing life and he had an incredible career. We were so proud of him and all his accomplishments.”
Respected journalist Christopher Clarey said: “I met Howard courtside in Rome early in his career and shared many, many a press room with him in the years that followed, usually into the wee hours. I admired his tenacity, commitment and eloquence on deadline. Tennis has lost too many excellent journalists far too young of late, and my heart goes out to Howard’s family and community.”
Prominent commentator Patrick McEnroe offered his condolences and said “Howard was a class, class man.”
The MLB and Washington Nationals, as well as the NHL’s Washington Capitals, also paid tribute.
“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 U.S., 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. 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.
At his last big assignment in Milan, he followed speedskater Jutta Leerdam’s famous fiance, 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.’”
