Christopher Clarey has covered global sports for The New York Times for more than 25 years from bases in France, Spain and the United States. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on tennis and has reported from more than 100 Grand Slam tournaments, chronicling the major figures and issues of the Open era and interviewing everyone from Bjorn Borg to Serena Williams. His book “The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer,” a New York Times bestseller translated into 17 languages, was published in 2021.
His other areas of expertise include the Olympics, soccer and sailing. He has covered seven Summer Olympics, seven Winter Olympics, six World Cups, five America’s Cups and nine world track and field championships. But he also has reported on nearly every major international sport, including 10 Ryder Cups and the Super Bowl, and has written about everything from bullfighting to sepak takraw to the Inuit sport known as the knuckle hop.
In 2018, Mr. Clarey received the Eugene L. Scott Award from the International Tennis Hall of Fame, a career prize awarded for “communicating honestly and critically about the game” and “making a significant impact on the tennis world.” Previous winners include Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. Mr. Clarey is a past winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the breaking news category and was the first recipient of the Alan Trengove Award for Excellence in Tennis Journalism in 2017. His Twitter account has been named one of 50 must-follows for the Olympics and tennis by Sports Illustrated and Eurosport.
In 1998, Mr. Clarey was named chief sports correspondent at the International Herald Tribune, which later became the International New York Times. He wrote a column, “In the Arena”, for 16 years and continues to write columns on global sports. A former television commentator for Eurosport, Mr. Clarey has made regular appearances on major international television and radio outlets, including the BBC, CNN, NPR, PBS and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He also has appeared in sports documentaries including Ava DuVernay’s “Venus VS” for ESPN on Venus Williams and the fight for equal prize money at Wimbledon.
Born in Newport, R.I., Mr, Clarey, the son of Roberta “Bonnie” Clarey and Rear Adm. Stephen Clarey, grew up primarily in Washington, Hawaii and Coronado, Calif. Fluent in French and Spanish, he has traveled in and reported from more than 70 countries on six continents. He is a graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where he majored in English and history and played tennis, volleyball and soccer. He remains an active racket-sports player, skier, hiker, runner, swimmer and soccer coach.