Allison Danzig

Who was Allison Danzig?

Allison "Al" Danzig was an American sportswriter who specialized in writing about tennis, but also covered college football, squash, many Olympic Games, and rowing. Danzig was the only American sportwriter to extensively cover real tennis, the precursor to modern lawn tennis.

Danzig covered every tournament in the Grand Slam - the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the French Open - as well as many others. In 1968, Danzig was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island - becoming the first journalist in the Hall. In an interview shortly before his death, he named Bill Tilden as the greatest player he had covered.

Danzig was born in 1898 in Waco, Texas, but grew up in Albany, New York. Talent ran in the family. His sister, Evelyn Danzig, wrote the music for the hit song "Scarlet Ribbons" in 1949.

He graduated in 1921 from Cornell University, where he was co-editor of The Daily Sun with E.B. White. Danzig also briefly played football at Cornell as 125-pound tailback. He joined The New York Times in 1923, after a stint at the Brooklyn Eagle, and remained there until his retirement in 1968.