Joel Beall
A passionate voice of fairness in golf journalism
Much like top players define eras in golf, there are voices that do something similar, telling the stories, illuminating the personalities and giving texture to the game.
Joel Beall, senior writer at Golf Digest magazine, is one of those voices, like Andrea Bocelli in a choir.
Beall offers context and conscience, perspective and personality, insight and intelligence. He is one of the most impactful and influential writers of his generation, keeping alive and reinvigorating long form journalism within a sport made for it.
“We all think in terms of the pantheon of others who came before them. Who is he like? Who would you compare him to?” said Jerry Tarde, editor in chief of Golf Digest.
“It’s Jaime (Diaz). It’s not Herb (Wind) or Charlie Price or Dan (Jenkins). His style and his interests are very different from them. Dan was his own thing. The others were more about history or more literary. His is really about reporting.
“He’s willing to dig in deeply into stories and that’s the way Jaime was and what distinguished him. The difference between the two is, in my mind, Jaime loves golf. He has a joy for golf. I would say Joel has a passion for golf. There is a difference between the two.”
“My generation is very guilty of the hot take. I try to go opposite. Why are we talking about this?”
Since he was a child in Cincinnati writing letters to various sports teams, many of which replied, Beall has been captivated by sports. His gift is in being able to capture what he sees and feels and share it with his audience.
In a day when podcasts and hot takes pull at eyeballs and eardrums, Beall is a writer in the truest sense. Rather than offer a raw opinion on a subject, Beall excels at exploring why the subject matters. He’s not afraid to take a side but it’s built on exploration and thoughtfulness rather than emotion.
“My generation is very guilty of the hot take. I try to go opposite. Why are we talking about this?” Beall said.
“There are times I need to be critical but there are ways to do it. Let’s be surgical about it rather than taking a flamethrower to it. If I can make the criticisms and still have a conversation with those people – we owe it to them to talk to them afterward – it gains their respect. They can say ‘He was tough on me but he was willing to talk to me in person…’
“When I write something especially with some heat, I take a step back and sometimes have someone else look and ask, ‘Is this fair?’”
Beall worked on the maintenance crew at a golf course growing up and made the drive with his father from Cincinnati to Augusta for practice rounds at the Masters. He remembers being struck by reading Michael Bamberger’s book “To The Linksland” and realizing that writing about golf was something he could do.
After getting a journalism degree at Ohio University, Beall worked for Fox Sports in Cincinnati covering the major sports, but golf had his heart. When Golf Digest called in 2015, Beall said, “They not only gave me a career but also a purpose.”
At times, Beall has written about himself, telling the story of his brush with death due to a heart issue and being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
He has written about a teenaged golfer in war-torn Ukraine, helping to bring him to the United States to play college golf. He has told the story of Grayson Murray, who committed suicide in 2024, and he has taken deep dives on subjects from Augusta National to LIV Golf.
Beall’s book, “Playing Dirty: Rediscovering Golf’s Soul in Scotland in an Age of Sportswashing and Civil War” takes readers inside the turmoil that radically altered the golf landscape, bringing a clearer understanding of a complicated subject.
“We’re just vessels. It’s not our story,” Beall said. “It’s their story and we are trying to do it justice.
“A lot of what I‘ve found is getting their trust, telling them that we know it’s your story, we just want to do it right. It’s the old Tom Callahan line – ‘fair to you, true to me.’
“I try to look at myself as an avatar to the reader.”
Ron Green Jr.
