Joel Drucker, writer for TENNIS.com and other outlets for decades, inducted into USTA NorCal Hall of Fame

Last week, at the Round Hill Country Club in Alamo, Calif., USTA Northern California (NorCal) inducted its latest Hall of Fame class. The honorees were:

• Cathie Anderson, college player at the University of California, Berkeley, and tournament competitor to this day
• Joel Drucker, tennis writer who has traveled the world for his craft
• Jim McLennan (posthumous), a lifelong player, coach and scientist
• Carl Mendoza, renowned coach and instructor
• Linda Seigel, winner of the 1978 US Open girls' championship—defeating Hana Mandlikova along the way—among other tennis accolades

You can read about each of these individuals in greater detail by clicking on their names above. But a little more about Joel in this space.

Part of Joel's esteemed career has been spent with Tennis Channel and TENNIS.com. A student of the game and inquisitive writer, Joel seeks out stories that show that tennis is much more than a game. It is a lifestyle—and, truly, a life—to some. That includes Coco Vandeweghe, whom Joel recently profiled.

On the former player and commentator, Joel reminded readers that Vandeweghe's championship point in World TeamTennis—not during a late-round match at a major, of which she'd played many—was one of her career highlights. “I’ve never been under that kind of pressure, ever,” Vandeweghe said. He also discovered the American's reading list and zest for bookstores on the road. (Recent CoCo reads: I Love Capitalism!, the autobiography of Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone; A Court of Thorns and Roses, a multi-volume fantasy romance series.)

And he summed up Vandeweghe's transition from playing to commentating with this lovely transitional paragraph:

Unprecedented as it was for a tennis player to offer mid-match commentary, the joke among Vandeweghe’s family and friends is that she can talk to a wall. It’s no wonder that last fall, within weeks of her final match after 15 years in the pros, Vandeweghe seamlessly transitioned to her new profession.

I would also say tennis is life for Joel Drucker. It keeps him going, and us entertained. Congratulations, Joel, for your well-deserved achievement. To many more of your profiles on the tennis lifestyle—and anything else you uncover along the way.—Ed McGrogan

More on Joel Drucker, from USTA NorCal:

Joel Drucker has been one of the worldʼs leading tennis writers for over 35 years. His work has been featured in such print and broadcast outlets as HBO, CBS, Tennis Channel, Tennis.com, the New York Times and Racquet. Two of his stories have been cited in the annual anthology, The Best American Sports Writing. Joel is also the historian-at-large for the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Tennis aficionados and new fans alike have long turned to Joelʼs work for his distinct perspective on the sport.

Boosted by a longtime passion for tennis gained from having played as a child in Southern California, in his 20s and early 30s Joel freelanced for several Bay Area media outlets (Inside Tennis, City Sports, San Francisco Chronicle) while spending a decade working full-time in the public relations agency business. In 1993, Joel made the leap to become a full-time freelancer, attending tennis events everywhere from Los Angeles to London and beyond.

In 1998, Joel began writing for HBO at Wimbledon, which sparked a longstanding career in television. From 2001 to 2008, Joel was an on-air analyst for the U.S. Open world feed broadcast. Joel has been an integral part of Tennis Channel since its inception in 2003, including work on several of the networkʼs documentaries, as well as its coverage at more than 40 Grand Slam events.

A hallmark of Joelʼs work is his deep engagement with the culture of tennis—the human interest and textured layers of the sport that comprise its rich history. Joel considers “Fingerprints,ˮ a twin profile he wrote for Racquet about Hall of Fame player Pauline Betz and her daughter, Bay Area poet Kim Addonizio, one of his best works.

Joel is the author of two books. The first, Jimmy Connors Saved My Life, was published in 2004. Donʼt Bet on It, a loving ode to his 28-year partnership with his late wife, Joan Edwards, who he met while both were working for Inside Tennis, was published in 2017.

A high honors graduate of UC Berkeley, Joel lived in Berkeley and Oakland from 1978 until 2022. For more than 30 years, he was a member of the historic Berkeley Tennis Club. He has since moved to Los Angeles and now plays at the Malibu Racquet Club, sometimes with the same friends he once faced on the court as a child