R.I.P. Ed Coleman

Glenn Bunting files a superb remembrance of a true Los Angeles icon, longtime Rancho Park golf instructor Ed Coleman.

He passed at the age of 92 after over 100,000 golf lessons and many more life lessons shared with his pupils. No one will ever know if he set a record, but it's fairly safe to assume Ed game as many golf lessons as any person ever has.

And I'm so glad Bunting notes Ed's relentless pursuit of America's ombudsmen (when papers had them). Besides never sparing a pupil of the latest Murray or Wind (with a hard copy of the offending column to share the mistake mid-golf lesson, or, if you were merely at Rancho hitting balls like I was many times), he had a special affinity for the stumbles of Frank Deford.

From Bunting's LAObserved remembrance:

Deford's exaggerations and distortions in his NPR essays and Sports Illustrated articles became a staple of our golf lessons. Ed was obsessed that such a talented, distinguished and (in his view) arrogant journalist could commit so many blatant errors.

In an effort to call Ed's bluff (and shut him up), I handed him a six-inch stack of printouts of Deford articles with a challenge: See how many factual errors you can find. Within a few days, Ed returned the printouts with handwritten notes scrawled in pencil detailing dozens of inaccuracies.

Every one of Ed's corrections checked out. That did it. Ed and I agreed to a quest that would lead me to interview Deford in his New Jersey home. Our journey was detailed in a Jan. 11, 2004 cover story I wrote for the (now defunct) LA Times Sunday magazine.

The article infuriated Deford, his loyal readers and his editors at SI. And it pleased Ed to no end.