BALTIMORE — Howard Fendrich, a national sports writer for The Associated Press, died Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore at age 55, his wife Rosanna Maietta said. He had been diagnosed with cancer in February.

Fendrich worked at the AP for 33 years, beginning as an unpaid intern in Rome, where he became fluent in Italian largely by watching Italian karaoke videos. He covered European sports for the wire service with a focus on soccer before Terry R. Taylor helped him return to the United States, where he began as an editor on the sports desk at the New York headquarters and wrote a sports media column.

He moved to the Washington area in 2005 and became a steady presence on sports beats there. Fendrich covered about 70 Grand Slam tennis tournaments over nearly 25 years, reporting on the careers of Venus and Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. He had just covered his 11th Olympic Games in Milan.

AP Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Julie Pace said: "His stories were a joy to read, combining lively writing with insightful reporting. He was also a generous and beloved colleague whose warmth and passion touched so many across the AP."

Federer estimated he had had more than 100 interactions with Fendrich over the decades. "Tennis lost a wonderful journalist and a great person," Federer said. "He started covering tennis in 2002, right around the time I was starting to have my breakthrough in the sport, and over time he truly became part of the fabric of tennis."

Billie Jean King also paid tribute. "Howard Fendrich was one of the great sports storytellers. He will be missed," she said.

Fendrich won two Grimsley Awards for best overall body of work among AP sports writers and received deadline-writing citations, including one for a piece covering Andre Agassi's last match at the 2006 U.S. Open. He reported on Federer's meeting with Bjorn Borg in a hallway after a Wimbledon victory. During the 2011 NFL labor lockout in Washington, he sat on a sidewalk on a folding chair with a laptop while awaiting negotiators, working the room, phones, and sidewalk to deliver developments on the standoff. After Washington quarterback Alex Smith broke his leg in 2018, Fendrich phoned retired quarterback Joe Theismann.

A graduate of Haverford College near Philadelphia, Fendrich is survived by his wife; his mother, Renée; his brother, Alex; and his two sons, Stefano and Jordan, who are both pursuing careers in sports journalism.