"Nobody ever had to ask, 'I wonder what Furman thinks?'"
/Larry Dorman, a longtime colleague, writes about Furman Bisher, a man who loved leaving the press center to observe his subjects.
It would no doubt amuse Bisher that his death at age 93 would shock some of his friends. He reveled in his reputation as golf journalism's Iron Byron, and he was just that -- from the consistently high quality of the more than 10,000 columns he brought to Atlanta Journal-Constitution readers, to the seemingly boundless energy he brought to every event he covered.
When he was at a golf tournament, he would get out there and walk the five miles of course inside the ropes, no matter the heat index, topography or length of the rough.
Even a total knee-replacement several years back did not keep him from his appointed rounds. There is a 5-year-old photograph of Bisher at the 107th U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club, loaded down with binoculars and a shooting stick, tramping though the heavy rough after Allen Doyle, the 6-time Georgia State Amateur Champion.
Scott Michaux on losing a mentor.
Bisher lived an extraordinary life and shared much of it with his legions of endeared readers.
He was so gifted at the craft of sports journalism that at the first golf tournament he ever covered in Greensboro, N.C., in 1938 as a college student, he penned the nickname “Lord Byron,” which stuck forever with Byron Nelson.
And AJC colleague Jeff Schultz remembers his pal.
Before news traveled with the speed of a Tweet, Furman Bisher painted pictures for us. He wrote with a voice. When he was revved up about a topic, and that was more often than not, the words jumped off the page. It was as if he was sitting next to you, talking into your ear.
If he liked you, you knew it.
If he didn’t like you, you knew it.
Nobody ever had to ask, “I wonder what Furman thinks?”
