In the early 1960s, after joining the Globe as a tennis writer, Bud Collins took a giant leap into the future of sports journalism when he stepped in front of a TV camera to offer commentary. As he expanded the reach of columnists, he called himself a “scribbler and a babbler,” and the words that emerged were as colorful and memorable as the custom-tailored pants he wore while covering more than a half-century of tennis championships.

In newspaper columns and as a TV commentator, Mr. Collins provided the sport with its most authoritative voice, and he also wrote a tennis encyclopedia and a history of the game. He was 86 when he died Friday in his Brookline home.

Although Mr. Collins traveled to New York in September for the US Open, when the media center was dedicated and named in his honor, his health had been failing the past couple of years.

“No media figure in history in my mind has ever been as important to one sport as Bud Collins was to the sport of tennis,” said Mike Lupica, the New York Daily News sports columnist and ESPN commentator. “You can’t minimize it. He became the de facto ambassador to that sport as it was exploding in this country. He educated. He entertained.”

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