Cindy Shmerler is an award-winning sports journalist and broadcaster who has covered tennis, among other sports, for 45 years. She has worked in every medium, as a newspaper and magazine writer and as a commentator on television, radio, and social media. Shmerler is currently a freelance sports correspondent for the New York Times. She writes articles on every major tennis championship for the New York Times international edition, which run worldwide digitally, as well as in print. In August 2023, her body of work earned her induction into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame.
For the Times, Shmerler has interviewed every top player on the ATP and WTA Tours, including recent featured stories on Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Iga Swiatek, Jasmine Paolini, Jessica Pegula, and Emma Navarro. One of her tennis articles was featured on page A1 of the New York Times during the 2019 U.S. Open. She has also written recent New York Times articles on the Professional Women’s Hockey League and on Unrivaled, the new 3×3 professional women’s basketball league set to debut in January 2025.
Shmerler is also an obituary writer for the New York Times. She has authored several obits on everyone from former athletes to the first Black woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Her obituary on Angela Ruiz Robles, the inventor of the e-reader, was featured in the Overlooked book in 2023.
Shmerler is a former contributing editor and frequent correspondent at Tennis magazine/Tennis.com. She has written about everyone from Rod Laver and Billie Jean King to Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and a memorial tribute to her dear friend and longtime colleague, Bud Collins. She is also a commentator for both Tennis Channel and ESPN and serves as the daytime voice of American Express Radio at the U.S. Open.
Shmerler began her career at World Tennis magazine, where she rose from summer intern to managing editor until the magazine folded in 1991. While a junior in college, she won the coveted Time Inc. internship and worked as a reporter at Sports Illustrated. She returned to Time Inc. several years later as a writer for People magazine. Her work has also appeared in the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, S.I.com, Elle magazine, among many others, and in countless programs and book chapters worldwide. She has interviewed such former legends as Don Budge, Helen Hull Jacobs, Rod Laver, Billie Jean King, Margaret Court, Arthur Ashe, John McEnroe, and Bjorn Borg, among many others.
A tennis commentator for more than 35 years, Shmerler has worked as an analyst, sideline reporter, and interviewer for USA Network at the U.S. Open and as an analyst for men’s and women’s tennis at ESPN. For more than 15 years, she was the voice of men’s ATP tennis for ESPN International, where it is believed she became the first woman to do play-by-play of men’s professional tennis. She covered every major tournament, as well as the Davis Cup and the year-end championships, for ESPN International. She has also done play-by-play and color commentary for ESPN/Direct TV and the World Feed at the U.S. Open, as well as live-streaming events for the USTA Pro Circuit. She is continually featured on Tennis Channel.
Shmerler graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English and a minor in Spanish. At Penn, she was a member of the women’s varsity tennis and squash teams and a founding member of Bloomer’s, the university’s all-female musical comedy troupe. For four years, she covered all sports for the award-winning Daily Pennsylvanian, including varsity football and the 1979 Final Four Penn men’s basketball team.
Shmerler serves on several philanthropic boards, including the Hudson Valley, N.Y. Alzheimer’s Association, the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women, Surprise Lake Camp, and the Main Idea, a Maine summer camp for economically disadvantaged girls. She is a 2018 recipient of the University of Pennsylvania Alumni Award of Merit, the highest honor bestowed on a university graduate.
Shmerler grew up in Scarsdale, New York, and currently lives in Westchester County, N.Y., with her husband, Ford Levy. The couple has two adult children.