I read lots of golf writing and there are a few writers I consistently read to the end. About half of them sometimes ply their trade for where I make my living. (Note: some people--including my Mom--think you actually have to get paid to call it making a living. But if that were true I’d have to call myself a bum, and I don’t want to do that.)
Most of the time I’ll read the first two graphs, and that will be it. These writers I read their stuff to the end. Nobody has replaced Herb Wind, Bernard Darwin or Jim Murray, but maybe you have to wait until it is nostalgia before making the call.
Lorne Rubenstein has been great for a long time and I think future generations will still be reading his stuff for years to come.
Our own Geoff Shackelford has now become one of the best writers. He first wrote for GolfWeb as a snot-nosed kid who had talent. Regardless if you agree or disagree with his opinion, it is always worth reading.
John Huggan who writes for the
Scotsman and lives in Dunbar, Scotland is consistently good and deserves being read every week.
George White who writes for
The Golf Channel always finds something worth writing about.
David Feherty for
Golf Magazine has been known to write a clanker now and then, but his good stuff is so good it is worth getting through the clankers to find the gems.
Michael Bamberger is controversial right now, but his stuff is always interesting and well written.
I’d also throw in Brad Klein and Ron Whitten as good writers – though a little to into rankings for my taste.
There are some good newspaper golf writers who show promise, but their papers don’t really give them enough space to shine. I like Thomas Bonk with the
L.A. Times, Jim McCabe for the
Boston Globe, Tod Leonard for the
San Diego Union-Tribune, Art Spander for the
Oakland Tribune, Gary D’Amato for the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mel Webb for the
London Times, Steve Elling for the
Orlando Sentinel, Peter Williams for the
New Zealand Herald, Lynn DeBruin for the
Rocky Mountain News, Bob Harig for the
St. Petersburg Times and Vartan Kupelian for the
Detroit News. That ended up being many more than I thought, but these are some I have bookmarked.
I thought with the Internet we could get back to the two or three thousand word pieces like Wind’s in the
New Yorker. If anything the Internet has gone the opposite way, keeping pieces down to 800 words. The bloggers have even taken it further the other way, contributing a controversial graph or two and then hoping for response. The times in the past when we have published long pieces and split them up into multiple pieces, often we see hits go way down between the parts of the piece.
I’d like to see more of talented writers without golf backgrounds write about golf. Obviously it isn’t going to happen for the small amount we can pay writers, but if we ever get reasonably successful…
Dan King
Golf is the cruelest if sports. Like life, it's unfair. It's a harlot. A trollop. It leads you on. It never lives up to it's promises. . . It's a boulevard of broken dreams. It plays with men. And runs off with the butcher.
--Jim Murray