Sports Illustrated’s Best Crossover Golf Covers

As SI Golf continues to celebrate Sports Illustrated’s 70th anniversary, here’s a look back at covers where golf fanatics—not tour pros—were featured.

George Long/Sports Illustrated

This year Sports Illustrated celebrates its 70th anniversary, and golf has been a big part of the magazine since its beginning. As part of our celebration the SI Golf staff looked back at the magazine’s rich collection of golf covers—there were more than 150 to peruse—and selected some of the best “crossover” covers, where stars from other sports and beyond were featured. What's your favorite? Let us hear it on X, formerly Twitter.

More 70th anniversary covers: SI Golf staff favorites | Five with Jack Nicklaus | Five with Arnold Palmer | Best course covers

“A studious golfer”

Farrell Grehan/Sports Illustrated

Ed Sullivan was once a young boy looping bags in Rye, N.Y., alongside someone who would go on to bigger things in golf: Gene Sarazen. Sullivan went on to host America’s most popular TV variety show but never lost the golf itch, and in 1959 he was the subject of an SI profile by Herbert Warren Wind which focused more on hip action than Hollywood. “In recent years Ed Sullivan's average score has been around 80. This makes him (along with Perry Como, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope) one of the few celebrity golfers whom it is not torture to watch, but Ed, nevertheless, has been quite unhappy about his game because it used to be so much better.” The story included illustrations of four tips Sullivan was working on.

“I’m through with basketball”

George Long/Sports Illustrated

In August 1969, the great Bill Russell wrote a first-person piece explaining why he was walking away from basketball after 13 years with the Boston Celtics—and a year left on one of the most lucrative contracts in sports. He speculated about what he might do next and ended with this: “I can tell you one thing for sure—I'm going to play a little golf. I'm going to become the hottest 6'9" black left-handed 16-handicap golfer to come along in years. So if you see a tall, handsome, bearded fellow on your course some day, who looks as though he's ready to laugh—probably at himself—as he faces an impossible putt, let me tell you this: for your own good, don't put any money on that putt.”

Ford on sports

James Drake/Sports Illustrated

Vice President Gerald Ford was photographed at the Kemper Open in the summer of 1974 and wrote a piece for SI about sports which had parts that wouldn’t sound out of place a half-century later: “We have been asked to swallow a lot of home-cooked psychology in recent years that winning isn't all that important anymore, whether on the athletic field or in any other field, national and international. I don't buy that for a minute. It is not enough to just compete. Winning is very important. Maybe more important than ever.” 

“Golf’s my game”

Jacqueline Duvoisin/Sports Illustrated

In August 1989, Michael Jordan was 26 years old and not yet an NBA champion, but very much already bitten by the golf bug. SI turned that into a cover story with E.M. Swift dropping in on Jordan at the pro-am of that year’s Federal Express St. Jude Classic (“FedEx” rebranding was still five years away). “Anybody with that amount of talent can do anything he puts his mind to as long as he dedicates himself to it," Davis Love III said in the story. "But golf is different from baseball or football in that it's not a sport you can play well in your spare time. And for the next five or 10 years, unless he just gets bored, Michael won't be able to spend 100 percent of his time on golf." Jordan, of course, does that now.