Howard Fendrich, a national sports writer for The Associated Press whose persistent reporting and detail-rich prose brought readers inside dozens of taut Grand Slam tennis finals, record-breaking Olympic moments and harrowing trips down Alpine ski slopes, has died. He was 55. Fendrich died Thursday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his wife Rosanna Maietta said. He was diagnosed with cancer in February shortly after returning from Milan, where he covered his 11th Olympics. Tennis great