“Would I write some background about Ron Balicki?”
That was the question presented to me by Jim Nugent, the founder and publisher of Global Golf Post.
The question caught me off guard. It stunned me, frankly. Ron was one of the best friends I’ve ever had. As good of a friend as anyone could ever have. Jim’s request to write about Ron – who died March 25, 2014, at age 65 after an eight-month fight with cancer – caused a rush of a thousand memories through my head. The thought of him made me happy … and made me sad. I hadn’t thought of him in a while.
We hired Ron into the golf business when my dad, Charley, and I owned and published Golfweek magazine in Winter Haven, Florida, in the 1980s.
I didn’t know Ron when he came to work for us from the newspaper in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. He was tall, skinny, friendly, enthusiastic and willing to do anything to help us grow the magazine. Ron became our lead competition editor/writer. We told him our goal was to try to have some coverage of every amateur tournament in the country every week – if not a story, at least the scores.
Now, we knew we couldn’t actually do that, but that was our goal. You gotta have goals! Ron worked tirelessly, and I mean day in and day out, to get every tournament result in the country into next week’s Golfweek. He kept a little sign posted in the magazine composing room with a running total of the current record of tournaments covered in a single issue.
That was our charge: to see how many tournaments, from as many cities and states as possible, with every player’s name and scores into next week’s Golfweek. Ron built a phone log of tournament directors, players, golf professionals, club pros, amateurs and other golf writers rivaling the phone book in size. If there was a tournament on any given week somewhere in the U.S., Ron knew about it and wanted to get the results in the next week’s Golfweek – all of the names and scores, not just the winners. Our philosophy was, the more names we published each week, the more chances we had to sell another subscription.
When we decided to start doing national coverage of college golf – men and women, small, medium and large, all college golf – Ron was all for it. The extra workload? No problem!
Ron loved amateur golf, especially college golf. He knew every coach, their phone numbers and nearly every player. Every college coach, men and women, big school, small school, Division I or junior college, knew Ron Balicki.
He became the most popular guy at every college event he attended because the coaches knew (and the young players quickly realized) he was the way to achieve national publicity. You didn’t have to win the Southern Am, the Western Am, the Azalea or the U.S. Amateur to get your name published in Golfweek. Dad and I gave Ron all the pages he could fill, even when our advertising didn’t support it. The more names, the more subscriptions.
If Ron Balicki was at the tournament, you knew people were going to read about it nationally in Golfweek. We sold so many subscriptions to moms, dads, grandparents, aunts, uncles, high school coaches, friends and neighbors who wanted to see their boys’ and girls’ names in Golfweek. How else were they going to read about them? Remember, there was no internet, no Golf Channel.
The college golf coaches probably were Ron’s biggest fans in amateur golf. Back then, the coaches more or less struggled in obscurity, often even at their own schools, unless they had a star player who won a big national amateur event, or got into a PGA Tour event, or the athletic director was a golfer.
Ron was friends with everyone. I challenge you to find someone who didn’t like Ron Balicki. He had only two faults: His golf game was brutally bad – hooks, slices, worm-burners, chunks, he had them all. He would get upset with himself, but he never got angry. First a grimace, a shrug of the shoulders and then a smile. “Oh, well,” he’d say with a sigh and then walk to the next shot, usually not that far away. But he loved to play, and we played a lot of rounds at lots of courses together.
But of all the hours he and I spent together in a car traveling from one tournament to another, we never spent 15 minutes talking about our own golf games. The players whom we covered made for much better conversation topics.
Ron loved amateur golf, especially college golf. He knew every coach, their phone numbers and nearly every player. Every college coach, men and women, big school, small school, Division I or junior college, knew Ron Balicki. Every college or amateur player worth his salt knew Ron Balicki. The players’ parents knew who he was and at the tournaments would find a way to run into him, casually mention his writing in Golfweek and thank him for what he did for college and amateur golf – and perhaps also mention their son or daughter from the “university of …”
If you were a college coach or tournament director, you either knew him, or knew of him, and considered your tournament’s status elevated if Ron Balicki was there. Everyone associated with the tournament knew him, and yet he was always humble, reserved and polite.
He was no dummy but had very little ego. He knew what was going on with all the compliments and pats on the back he got from coaches and players and relatives, but he also knew the players and the college programs would benefit from his work. He knew who was blowing smoke and who wasn’t. He knew which college coaches would call him back or give him an interview, whether they had had a player to tout or not. Ron told me once, “I always remember the coaches who will talk about the players on the other teams, not just their own.”
“He became part of the tournament family. He was around for a week or more every year. He had such a good time, and everyone loved him."
Denny Glass, former Northeast Amateur director
It might surprise you that Ron’s favorite golf tournament was the Northeast Amateur Invitational, which was played last week at Wannamoisett Country Club in Rumford, Rhode Island. Denny Glass, the former tournament director, was no amateur in knowing how to get publicity and prestige for his tournament. What you do is you get the most knowledgeable and most well-read golf writer in the country to come to your event. The fact that Ron’s brother lived less than 50 miles from the course made it even easier for Denny to get Ron Balicki to the Northeast Am.
Ron referred to the Northeast Am as “the Masters of amateur golf” because of the prestige the tournament carried (see Denny Glass). Ron always made a vacation/golf tournament combo out of it and spent time with his brother before or after the event. As Glass said: “He became part of the tournament family. He was around for a week or more every year. He had such a good time, and everyone loved him.”
Ron and his wonderful wife, Debbie, didn’t have any children, and it always seemed to me that his paternal instincts were showered on the amateur and college golfers. I can picture countless times when Debbie, standing aside, beamed with pride and joy when she would see the respect he commanded at tournaments from the players, coaches and parents.
I said he had two faults, but his only real fault was that he smoked cigarettes. He smoked way too many cigarettes, and they eventually killed him.
Do you ever think back on all the people whom you have known, admired and respected throughout your life who are no longer with you? People besides your family, whom you would like to see and talk with one more time. Lots of people, right? Try to narrow that list to just five. It’s hard. If I could pick five, I would have four more choices besides Ron Balicki.
RIP, my friend.
E-MAIL TOM
Top: Golfweek's (from left) Lance Ringler, Asher Wildman, Ron Balicki and Jared Clemons on the amateur beat
Courtesy golfweek