Allison Danzig

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)

Allison Danzig (27 February 1898-1987) was an American sportswriter who specialized in writing about tennis but also covered U.S. college football, squash, many Olympic Games, and rowing.

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. Danzig was later inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI 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 130-pound tailback. He joined The New York Times in 1923, after a stint at the Brooklyn Eagle, and remained there until his retirement in 1967. Before becoming a sportswriter, Danzig wrote obituaries and was originally planning for a career as a foreign correspondent.

Danzig wrote The Racquet Game (1930), about squash, as well as histories of tennis, "The Fireside Book of Tennis", American football, and "Oh, How They Played The Game" about the early days of football.

He lived most of his adult life in Roslyn, N.Y. with his wife, two daughters, and one son.

He retired to New Jersey, where he died in 1987.