Albert Gillis Laney (January 11, 1896 – January 31, 1988) was an American sportswriter who specialized in tennis and golf but also covered baseball, boxing and American football.

Biography

Laney was born on January 11, 1896 in

Pensacola, Florida Pensacola () is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, and the county seat and only incorporated city of Escambia County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 54,312. Pensacola is the principal ...

, the son of an attorney and one of six children. He served as a lieutenant in World War I and saw action at The Battle of the Argonne Forest. After World War I, Laney became a correspondent at the New York Evening Mail. In 1924 he went to Europe and joined the Paris Herald, as the European edition of the

New York Herald The ''New York Herald'' was a large-distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between 1835 and 1924. At that point it was acquired by its smaller rival the ''New-York Tribune'' to form the '' New York Herald Tribune''. His ...

was known. During his period in Europe he also started working for the ''

New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

''. In the summer months he would travel between Paris and England to cover the Wimbledon tennis tournament, the

Davis Cup The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested annually between teams from competing countries in a knock-out format. It is described by the organis ...

and the British golf tournaments. In the mid-1930s he returned to the United States to join the ''Tribune's'' sports staff. He retired when the ''Tribune'' ceased publication in 1966. In 1947, Laney published an account of the ''Paris Herald'' newspaper titled ''Paris Herald: The Incredible Newspaper'' and in 1968 he published ''Covering the Court; a 50-Year Love Affair With the Game of Tennis'', a memoir on his experience as a tennis correspondent from World War I through to the start of the Open era. Laney was regarded as one of the leading American tennis journalists of the first half of the 20th century together with Allison Danzig of '' The New York Times''. In 1979, Laney was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, for his contributions to tennis. He received the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award in 1984 and is a member of the media section of the

Hockey Hall of Fame , logo = Hockey Hall of Fame Logo.svg , logo_upright = 0.5 , image = Hockey Hall of Fame, Toronto.jpg , caption = The Hall's present location on Yonge Street since 1992 , map_type = , former_name = , established = 1943 , location = 30 Y ...

References

External links

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Bill Shannon Biographical Dictionary of New York Sports biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Laney, Al 1896 births 1988 deaths Elmer Ferguson Award winners International Tennis Hall of Fame inductees New York Herald Tribune people People from Pensacola, Florida American sports journalists Tennis writers