People don’t write letters anymore, the kind you scrawl or type on a piece of paper, fold up, insert into an envelope, lick a stamp, go to a mailbox and slide it in. This is not breaking news. Ever since the mid-1990s, when AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail made the format accessible to non-techies, email has replaced the handwritten or typewriter-generated letter. So much so that many K-8 schools quit teaching cursive (smh). Today, even email is old school. Texting is steadily increasing its market share.
I harbor no nostalgia for the typewriter. Sentimentalists – of which there are many in my line of work – may romanticize the click-clacking of their old Royals or Smith-Coronas or even IBM’s electrics. All I can remember of my typewriter days is searching for the white-out, which was used to paint over minor mistakes of spelling or punctuation. Sometimes entire paragraphs needed to be eliminated and rewritten. This involved pulling an entire sheet of paper out of the roller, crumbling it up, tossing it in a waste basket and inserting a brand-new sheet, all to reconstitute a reconsidered thought. Writing on a computer, with its cut/paste and overwrite functions, is a software dream come true. Typewriters – and sentimentality – be damned.
What does any of this have to do with golf? I was beginning to wonder myself. Answer: In this issue, two of our feature stories feature actual…typewritten letters!
Our cover story is a first-person account written by one of the nation’s most celebrated sportswriters, Dave Kindred, who grew up in the Bloomington area, traveled the world covering all the big events – including 52 Masters – won every writing award there is, and returned home 15 years ago for family reasons. Fortunately, Dave never stopped writing – mostly about the Morton High School Lady Potters basketball team – and we’re fortunate to have his prose poetry grace our pages this month. As you might’ve surmised from the cover photos, Dave’s letters are from Hogan and Nicklaus and their subject is the Masters.
The other “letter story” is about two Illinois Golf Hall of Fame Chicago sportswriters who covered the Masters in its infancy. The legendary Charlie Bartlett of the Chicago Tribune and Herb Gra is of what would become the Chicago Sun-Times chronicled the early years of the Augusta National Invitation Tournament, which was renamed the Masters (formally, in 1939). They and their fellow scribes, including Grantland Rice, helped communicate the mystique of Bobby Jones’ tournament and Alister MacKenzie’s and Jones’s magnificent golf course. Without them, Gene Sarazen’s “shot heard ‘round the world” might’ve just echoed through the pines. Letters from Cli ord Roberts, who ran the tournament for Jones, and Bartlett are reconstituted for your perusal, as our friend Ed Sherman, also a former Tribune golf writer, chronicles how a couple of Chicago newspapermen nurtured the Masters narrative and the golf writing trade forever.
The U.S. Women’s Open will be conducted at Erin Hills next month and we have a preview by Rob Hernandez, senior writer for Wisconsin.golf. Yuka Saso of Japan is defending champion but, if you ask me, traveling to Erin, Wisconsin would be a small price to pay for getting to see Nelly Korda’s mesmerizing golf swing in person rather than just on Instagram Reels. And, if traveling is your vibe, check out the sidebar story by travel writer and golf enthusiast Abbey Algiers, who has the lowdown on where to stay, eat and play golf. Abbey is new to these pages and we’re happy to have her.
Speaking of the Women’s Open, this is the 25th anniversary of the last U.S. Women’s Open staged in the Chicago District. It took place at Merit Club in Libertyville in the year 2000, when LPGA Hall of Fame member Karrie Webb romped to victory. Tim Cronin, who knows a thing or two about Chicago’s golf history, looks back at the proceedings. Meanwhile, Illinois Golf Hall of Famer Len Ziehm pens his memories of the late Ed Oldfield, the former Merit Club president, co-course designer and the man who convinced the United States Golf Association (USGA) to bring the U.S. Open to Merit Club shortly after it opened.
And in a tradition unlike any other, Ron Green, Jr., who has written the Final Word column in our April edition for the last several years, brings his perspective to this year’s Masters. If you like great writing, you’ll love his take.
Congrats to Highland Park native Sam Hahn whose increasingly popular L.A.B. putter was featured in our February issue. Five of 70 contestants in the Arnold Palmer Invitational used a L.A.B. putter, including two top 10 finishers. Nine of the 120 who played the Puerto Rico Open played L.A.B.s.