Wertheim, Lupica and more look back on Bud Collins' career

It's already been four years since the 2016 passing of Bud Collins, the man who for decades was the voice of the tennis, both in print and on TV. To keep his memory alive and well, veteran tennis reporters appeared on *Tennis Channel Live* to talk about what made Collins a legend of the game.

"Bud not only entertained you, he educated a whole generation of people and made them love tennis," said longtime New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica.

While on the surface the standout elements of Collins' presence were his loudly colored pants and whimsical turns of phrase, TENNIS Magazine contributor Cindy Shmerler pointed out that he also possessed a special vision for finding the unseen storylines.

"When everybody was looking ... to the forehand, Bud was sprinting to the backhand," she said. "He never looked for the same story that anybody else was looking for ... He would say, 'I'm going out to see Paradorn Srichaphan, from Thailand. You take the rest of the field.'"

And Jon Wertheim, of Tennis Channel and Sports Illustrated, credited Collins with pioneering the idea of covering sports simultaneously on the page and on the screen.

"He was really the first of these sportswriters to cross over into this visual medium that you and I dabble in as well," he said to Lupica.

So while Collins has passed on the honor of being tennis' "host" to people like Wertheim, his fingerprints remain all over the consumer product he helped turn the game into.