Tim Rosaforte Never Stopped Telling the Truth and That Made Him Different

Morning Read's John Hawkins remembers his friend, whose ability to be trusted made him one of the few able and willing to tell the whole story about a game often reluctant to get its hands dirty

If everyone did their job as well as Tim Rosaforte did his, the world would be a much better place. As a golf writer, he was the greatest teammate who ever lived — a peerless, indefatigable reporter with a $2 million Rolodex and a 50-cent ego. As a man, Rosaforte was perfectly named. Gentle and vulnerable like a flower, tough and durable like a citadel.

My dear friend died last week at age 66, succumbing to the effects of a brutally swift invasion by Alzheimer’s disease, an undefeated sickness that has robbed so many of us of our loved ones and the game of a precious commodity. With a couple of notable exceptions, digging for news in pro golf has become a thing of the past. The PGA Tour is doing everything it can to control the message delivered to the public. Players communicate directly to their fans via social media. Agents protect their prized clients like Dobermans in an unfenced yard.

Sugar and spice, and everything nice. Rosaforte was hardly a sniper, just a journalistic beacon whose ability to generate trust and honor the tenets of accuracy earned him stories few others were capable of writing. He was as fair as a line drive to center field. Nobody questioned his integrity. Those who took exception to the content of Rosaforte’s articles did so only because he was revealing stuff the subjects didn’t want you to know.

As longtime pal and fellow Morning Read contributor Mike Purkey points out, there really was no such thing as unabashed golf journalism before Rosaforte made it his business to report on the business. Back when newspapers served as America’s primary source of information, golf writers usually batted seventh or eighth in the sports department’s lineup.

The game was treated with proverbial kid gloves for a number of reasons. It was an individual competition, not a team endeavor. It was run like a corner store, not a shopping center with high aspirations, much less a mall depending on millions in weekly revenue. And most of all, because pro golfers avoided the police blotter. They were squeaky clean and anything but mean — just like the guy next door except that he played off a plus-6, not an 18.

Most of Rosaforte’s newsbreaks were harmless, anyway. Nicklaus to Renovate Muirfield Village (again), Goosen to join Tour full-time, Mickelson signs multi-year deal with Callaway… But then there was the occasional hydrogen bomb, such as when Greg Norman tore into former commissioner Tim Finchem for stealing his world-tour idea in the mid-1990s. It was a story with legs, as they say, a fascinating, behind-the-curtain look at two power-driven guys with an eye on altering the sport’s competitive structure.

The fact that it ran in Sports Illustrated, where Rosaforte covered golf at the time, only made the article a bigger deal. That said, the biggest scoop I ever landed (there weren’t many) came in a co-bylined piece with Tim on Tiger Woods’ dissatisfaction with the Tour at the end of his remarkable 2000 season. We were both working for Golf Digest at that point, specifically at Golf World, the small-but-mighty newsweekly at which Rosaforte’s career trajectory really began to ascend.

He was the perfect fit for that publication. Our cleanup hitter by any sensible estimation, a scribe with an impeccable reputation who made the tiny magazine a must-read among those in the industry. The Golf Channel began using Rosaforte on a semi-regular basis in the early-mid 2000s and would hire him full-time by decade’s end. It was there that his public profile grew to a higher level than perhaps any golf writer ever.

If Alzheimer’s hadn’t intervened, Tim would still be telling you the game’s dirty little secrets, enlightening you with background and broadening your perspective in a medium with extreme reach but a reluctance to get its hands dirty. Rosaforte did so much to strengthen the network’s credibility that it’s hard to find a realistic comparison. If he wasn’t a juggernaut, he was a true pioneer and vital component to the obscure link between what passionate fans did know and never would.

Indispensable as an employee.

Generous and caring as a friend.

A gift to all who knew him from the Man Upstairs.

There are still days when a story of considerable importance is broken by a dutiful and well-connected member of the press. Golfweek’s revelation of the Tour’s Player Impact Program last year immediately comes to mind, as does Michael Bamberger’s reporting on the compensation flap between Matt Kuchar and his local caddie after Kuchar won the Mayakoba Classic in Mexico at the end of 2018.

Finding well-hidden facts and making any number of tough phone calls to write a bulletproof story will always happen, if not nearly as often, because the world is changing. Because people with a vested interest in such matters are using better shields. Because Camp Ponte Vedra is an ambitious and highly successful organization with a deeply rooted mission to serve its members. Because those players don’t want you to know that their nose is running or their image is leaking.

Because it’s extremely difficult to cultivate the respect given to a man who deserved every last ounce of the success he achieved. God bless Tim Rosaforte for all he did and everyone he touched, although it’s impossible to think that wasn’t taken care of long ago.