The tennis community has just been hit with two major losses. The Independent’s former tennis correspondent for two decades, John Roberts, passed away at the age of 84 a week ago, and Argentine journalist Guillermo Salatino passed away just yesterday. And now, tennis fans have come together to mourn.

Salatino, who had also been a columnist for CLAY since 2023, died on the afternoon of January 17, 2026, in Buenos Aires, at the age of 80, after suffering a cardiac arrest while preparing for scheduled hip surgery. A university professor of journalism with a remarkable career across Argentina and much of Latin America, Salatino was widely honored for his work, and was known to love tennis and journalism madly, second only to his family.

And that’s exactly why he continues to be held in such high regard everywhere. “A very nice moment on Margaret Court Arena, as the victorious current Argentine #1 Francisco Cerundolo signs the camera “Gracias Salata” in honor of the passing of leading Argentine tennis reporter Guillermo Salatino,” wrote the host of the NCR Tennis podcast on X just a few hours ago.

For those who didn’t know, Salatino studied journalism at the Circle of Sports Journalists, graduating in 1978. From there, he went on to work across several major media outlets in Argentina, including Radio Continental, Mitre, and La Red.

That’s how “Salata” became a familiar voice, and a respected one, admired by millions of sports and news fans. And his work didn’t go unnoticed.

In 2007, the Konex Foundation honoured him in the Audiovisual Sports category, and he later served as a jury member for those same awards in 2010 and 2020. In 2017, he even won the Ron Bookman Media Excellence Award at the ATP World Tour Awards, becoming the first Latin American journalist ever to receive it.

Even earlier, in 1997, the Women’s Tennis Association named him “Journalist of the Year” as part of the US Open’s 20th anniversary celebrations. Over the years, he also took part in radio programs that earned Martín Fierro awards, along with many other honors recognizing his journalistic and literary work.

Beyond the trophies and titles, Guillermo Salatino was loved for his personality. He had a great sense of humor and a rare gift for using the perfect metaphor to explain complicated moments in a tennis match simply.

That style made him approachable and widely known – “not famous,” as he liked to insist, and helped him reach far beyond just hardcore tennis fans. What’s more, he wasn’t just reporting scores; he was also a sharp and detailed commentator who truly cared.

After covering 147 Grand Slam tournaments over 48 years (something few, if any, journalists can match), Salatino understood Tennis like someone who had lived it and loved it. According to CLAY, he also admired former tennis star Gabriela Sabatini with a luminous transparency and sincerity. It was that deep love for the game that always came through in his work.

British journalism loses a pillar as tributes honor John Roberts

“As one of the original team at The Independent, alongside colleagues like Ken Jones, Martin Johnson, and Paddy Barclay, John was one of the journalists who put the newspaper at the forefront of sports journalism,” said Paul Newman, who later succeeded Roberts as The Independent’s tennis correspondent.

“It was a delight to read John’s work. He was a terrific writer. He was wonderfully helpful to colleagues of his own newspaper and others, with advice and contacts. He was a fantastic colleague,” he added.

Born in Stockport in 1941, John Roberts started his career at the Stockport Express and later wrote for several national newspapers, including the Daily Express, The Guardian, and the Daily Mail. He then joined The Independent when it launched in 1986 and stayed on as its tennis correspondent until his retirement in 2006.

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Over the years, he also spent a short spell as a football correspondent in 1990, building a reputation across two of Britain’s biggest sports.

Roberts built a formidable reputation in the industry, and Matthew Engel once captured his impact perfectly in the British Journalism Review: “I suspect posh-paper sports writing changed forever the day John Roberts left the Daily Express to join The Guardian in the late 1970s, was handed a routine piece of agency copy, and picked up the phone to start asking questions,” he wrote.

After his demise, former colleague Nick Harris, who viewed Roberts as a mentor, paid a heartfelt tribute: “John was a brilliant, meticulous writer, refusing to file a piece containing an imperfect sentence. Which is why we called him ‘the late John Roberts’ decades ago. He was a fine journalist, but, more than that, he was a lovely, funny, kind and gentle man,” he wrote.

“Sorry to hear the long time tennis writer at The Independent newspaper in the UK, John Roberts has passed away. Lovely genial person” wrote veteran journalist Craig Gabriel on X.

The tennis world is poorer without them, but infinitely richer for what they gave to the sport, the stories they told, and the lives they touched.