Tennis

Arthur Ashe, who announced Wednesday that he has AIDS, writes in Sunday’s Washington Post that “going public with a disease such as AIDS is akin to telling the world in 1900 that you have leprosy.”

Ashe, 48, said he decided to announce his condition after a sportswriter for USA Today asked him to confirm his condition.

“I understand that the press has a watchdog role in the maintenance of our freedom and to expose corruption,” Ashe wrote. “I wasn’t then, and am not now, comfortable with being sacrificed for the sake of the ‘public’s right to know.’ ”