Howard Fendrich, the Associated Press’ national sports writer whose tenacious reporting and detailed prose brought readers inside dozens of tense Grand Slam tennis finals, record-breaking Olympic moments and harrowing journeys on the Alpine ski slopes, has died. He was 55 years old.
Fendrich died Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his wife Rosanna Maietta announced. He was diagnosed with cancer in February, shortly after returning from Milan, where he covered his 11th Olympics.
Tennis great Roger Federer estimates he has interacted with Fendrich more than 100 times over several decades, calling the journalist “one of the most enduring and supportive figures in tennis.”
“He started covering tennis in 2002, right around the time I was starting to break out in the sport, and over time he truly became part of the fabric of tennis,” Federer said. “Tennis has lost a great journalist and a great person.”
Fendrich is survived by his wife. his mother Renee; his younger brother, Alex; and two sons, Stefano and Jordan, each pursuing a career in sports journalism just like their father.
“Howard is a talented journalist who brings great skill, expertise and enthusiasm to his work,” said AP Editor-in-Chief and Senior Vice President Julie Pace. “His stories were a joy to read, combining vivid writing and insightful reporting. He was also a generous and beloved colleague whose warmth and passion touched many people across the Associated Press.”
A 30-year veteran at AP A graduate of Haverford College near Philadelphia, Fendrich worked at AP for 33 years, starting as an unpaid intern in Rome.
There, he learned to speak the language of his favorite city fluently, mostly by watching karaoke videos in Italian, which opened the door to the news agency’s European sports coverage, with a focus on soccer. That caught the attention of then-AP Sports Editor Terry R. Taylor, who helped him return to the United States.
In the United States, Fendrich began working as an editor at the AP Sports Desk in its New York headquarters, where he also wrote a sports media column. He moved to the Washington area in 2005 and became a steady presence in the sports world in the area where he grew up.
However, his real passion was tennis. He chronicled the careers of Venus, Serena Williams, Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and others. He covered about 70 Grand Slam tournaments on the beat for almost a quarter of a century. It was at events like these that his talent shined the brightest.
Fendrich’s writing career includes two Grimsley Awards for best overall work among Associated Press sportswriters and several citations for writing on deadlines. One was a piece from Andre Agassi’s last match at the 2006 US Open.
“Crouching alone in the silence of the locker room, red-eyed Andre Agassi, no longer a professional tennis player, twisted his torso as he tried to overcome the seemingly mundane task of pulling a white shirt over his head. Never in that moment did Agassi look so vulnerable, so much older than his 36 years.”
This passage highlights Fendrich in his element: He watched it over and over, took notes, and painstakingly scrutinized the details of an event witnessed by millions beyond the courtroom, trying to convey something that the man sitting next to him might not have noticed.
Fendrich captured a cordial meeting between Federer and Bjorn Borg in the hallway after their historic victory at Wimbledon. He detailed the harsh reality of playing on the red dirt at Roland Garros and having to wash his shorts and socks after the game.
On his last big mission in Milan, he followed speed skater Jutta Lierdam’s famous fiancée, fighter Jake Paul, down a hallway leading to a parking lot. Everything was just to clarify the details and get a quote. When he got them, Paul declared: “Okay, it’s done.” A bodyguard came over and, as Fendrich later said at a dinner party, “I decided, ‘Yeah, sure.'”
An unerring instinct on how to get news He had a talent for knowing where to go, who to ask, and just as importantly, what to ask and how to ask.
For days in the humid Washington summer of 2011, he sat in a folding chair on the sidewalk, writing with his laptop in his lap, waiting for school principals to emerge from tense negotiations during the NFL’s protracted worker lockout. Although he wasn’t what we would know today as an “NFL insider,” Fendrich helped the AP stay competitive like no one else by working in rooms, on the phone, and on the sidewalk, advancing developments and detailing the eventual end of conflicts.
“There was that stubbornness,” said Mary Byrne, the Associated Press’ deputy sports editor at the time of the lockout. “He was frustrated about it and frustrated that he was sitting outside waiting for people to come out and not say anything. But he wasn’t going to let that push him over the edge and he wasn’t going to let this story break him down.”
When Washington quarterback Alex Smith broke his leg in the most tragic way in 2018, Fendrich immediately called the only person who understood: retired star quarterback Joe Theisman.
But every once in a while, Fendrich’s phone would ring, even during a World Series game. If he started speaking Italian, it was definitely his wife Rosanna. Other times, kids would call me and ask me questions about school or talk about that day’s soccer game. For them he spent endless patience and time.
He then went right back to work and didn’t miss anything.
“Nothing could top him,” said Stephen Wilson, former European sports editor for the Associated Press, who worked with Fendrich for more than 20 years. “Every story had to be ironclad, even if it was a three-paragraph short story.”
Fendrich was not only a master of the written word. He was quick-witted and had a razor-sharp sense of humor. When he raised an eyebrow, motioned his head toward the door, and asked them to come with him to his “office” (usually a quiet courtyard or hallway outside the press room) to plan the day’s coverage and compare notes on people and things seen around the courtroom, his colleagues couldn’t refuse him.
Associated Press editor Chris Rehorites, who has led tennis coverage in Europe for decades and spent long days with Mr. Fendrich agonizing over punctuation, syntax and word choice, called Mr. Fendrich “a perfectionist when it comes to his work.”
“Howard was also a friend, and his dry humor and bag of BlowPop lollipops made long days go by in no time,” Rehorites said.
