Bud Collins’ widow posted the other day that it was the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death. People who follow tennis remember Bud as the man with the colorful pants, yet he was sweet and unassuming; he let his knowledge of the game (he wrote the Tennis Encyclopedia) and his loud trousers do all the talking. When I was at the Sun-Sentinel he’d send me travel stories he would write while driving to tournaments (that spring-summer migration from Rome to Paris to London) and then, every March, he’d get me a one-day press pass for the Miami Open (in those days it had a corporate name) and I’d join him and his wife Anita in the media center. Watching matches with Bud – a man who had watched thousands of matches – I always wondered what he was seeing that I wasn’t. Yet more impressive than his vast knowledge of the sport was the fact that he called everyone in the cafeteria by their name.
