Tim, you observed and hoped "I'm sure there's a logical reason the best golf writer after Bernard Darwin and before Bob Verdi wasn't in the Hall before this, but I can't think of the reason."
Of course there was. This same committee, the Lifetime Achievement Committee, had to install Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Karsten Solheim & Richard Tufts, among others first.
That is why Herb Wind wasn't in and why A.W. Tillinghast, Wm. Flynn, Perry Maxwell, Harry Colt, George Crump, Seth Raynor, Charles Alison, George Thomas & Stanley Thomson among many others are NOT!
There is something VERY WRONG with the methods used to elect new members into golf's World-Wide Hall of Fame.