Fellow Press Pariah—actually, tennis icon is more like it—Bud Collins is back where he most loves to be following an unexpected pacemaker implant in late February: On the long and dusty tennis trail. The news of Bud’s surgery took lots of people (including me) by surprise. Here’s what happened: Bud and his wife, Anita Ruthling Klaussen, were in New York to see the Gates exhibition. While walking around under those storied, flapping orange sheets, Bud began to experience serious disorientation having nothing to do with wondering whether Christo and Jeanne-Claude actually have proper surnames.
And that’s where it got scary.
In her signature, can-do way, Anita summoned New York’s Finest, and within 15 minutes, they had Bud at Mount Sinai Hospital. Naturally, everyone from the beat cops to the ER personnel at the hospital recognized the American face of tennis. In fact, Anita stood by, gape-jawed, as one nurse burst through the swinging doors and exclaimed, “Oh my God! I can’t believe it, Bud Collins is in my room. Bud Collins! I love tennis! I love the U.S. Open!” Knowing Bud, he probably gave her a nickname (Ratchet?) and two tickets to the Open.
They tested Bud at Mount Sinai and determined that his pulse was too low—he would need a pacemaker. Bud returned to his Boston home to set up the surgery, telling his cardiologist, Fred Basilico, “I’ve got the Davis Cup coming up, and tournaments in Indian Wells and at Key Biscayne. Let’s get this pacemaker thing done in April.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Basilico replied. “I won’t let you fly.”
They scheduled surgery almost immediately, and the first thing Bud wanted to know was whether or not his room was wired for ESPN2, so he could watch the U.S. vs. Croatia Davis Cup tie. Right. Just what a cardiac case needed at that moment—watching some guy whose name sounded like “Jiffy Lube” sending Agassi and Roddick and mom and apple pie down in flames.
The surgery to implant the pacemaker took only 50 minutes, although the docs kept Bud for three days of observation. He kept a low profile in Boston for a few weeks, and this tournament (the NASDAQ-100 on Key Biscayne) is his first event back. When I saw him this afternoon, I asked if he would show me his scar, à la the famous Lyndon B. Johnson photo-op. Bud obliged (it was pretty puny, as far as scars go), and added this message for his fans: “In life as in tennis, sometimes you get to play a let.”
While all this was going on, Anita morphed into a total Gates freak, and she took a zillion photos of that particularly unnatural “installation” (okay, okay, so I hated The Gates). I don’t mind plugging The Gates here, though, because it made my town (New York) a lot of tourist dough, and they’re a gift that just keeps giving. Anita, for example, has put together a compilation of her best Gates photos, with nice music from that superstar of all backing tracks, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and she’s offering the DVD (you can play it on your TV!) for sale at the family website (with a free preview) for $25. You might want to jump all over this if you’re a Gates—or [link=http://www.budcollinstennis.com/ target=_blank'>Bud Collins[link'>—freak.