Former Colony owner and tennis journalist Bud Collins dies

Bud Collins, 86, of Brookline, Mass. and former owner of a unit at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort, died March 4. He was known nationally for his work as a tennis journalist.

Growing up next to tennis courts, in Berea, Ohio, Collins fell in love with tennis at a young age when his father took him to play. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea and worked toward a journalism graduate degree at Boston University.

Collins began his tennis reporting career in Boston while working at a local newspaper, which assigned him to cover tennis.

In 1963, Collins began working for the Boston Globe and WGBH, Boston’s Public Broadcasting Service channel. From 1968 to 1972, he covered the U.S. Open for CBS Sports, and from 1972 to 2007, he worked for NBC Sports.

He became renown for his tennis commentary, and the Associated Press Sports Editors awarded him the Red Smith Award, the country’s most revered sports writing honor, in 1999. He was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 2002. In September, the U.S. Tennis Association named the U.S. Open’s media center in Collins’ honor.

Both on and off screen, Collins was frequently seen in bright, colorful pants, and everywhere he and his wife, Anita Ruthling Klaussen, traveled, they picked out a fabric to be made into his trademark pants.