Wishing Tim Rosaforte Well In Retirement And Admiring What He Did For Players

Tim Rosaforte interviewing Tim Finchem in 2008

Rosie and I didn’t get off to the best of starts. I can’t imagine what it was? Could have been the Yul Brynner blog references. Which, he mentioned a time or two. Or could have been when we had a minor manspat over his references to The Riv, The Foot and The Beach, for which he later signed a hat that I still keep here on the estate.

As I got to work with Tim Rosaforte at Golf World, I became a great admirer of his reporting skills. I’ll never forget sitting next to him at St. Andrews in 2010 as he worked two phones making long distance calls to South Africa. All in an effort to find out any little nugget on Louis Oosthuizen as he closed in on a surprising Open Championship win.

Those little insights would shape the impressions viewers and readers had of players. No one else in golf media was doing what Tim did by introducing us to players thrust into the limelight, or filling out the backstory of those we thought we knew. That kind of reporter is still valued in other sports but may be a dying breed in golf. Whether the world’s finest golfers genuinely appreciated how much Rosie’s reporting rounded out fan perception of them, I don’t know. I suspect most appreciated his efforts judging by how many returned his calls or texts.

In recent years, as players turn to social media to break news, I’ve begun to have my doubts about the appreciation factor for what a reporter like Tim did to make a player relatable, and therefore wealthier. I’s those little insights into a player’s upbringing, his “team”, his workout schedule, or how he likes his coffee, that tend to humanize the player just a bit more. Cranky agents of the golf world, don’t forget that.

There were also those seemingly insignificant stories Tim would share in Golf World, Golf Digest or on Golf Channel that aged in complex and mysterious ways. Say, Greg Norman taking Andy Mill to Augusta National for a birthday golf trip. The level of humanizing with that one was ultimately not Tim’s fault because at the time he just filled out the details and shared what he thought fans would enjoy learning.

Here is the GolfChannel.com item on Tim hanging up his IFB and maybe getting to consolidate his phones into one. A well-deserved retirement is in order after relaying stories about golfers both brilliant and boring, bombastic and banal. Rosie never judged them, just asked the right questions and shared the best details in making our interest in golfers that much more complete. Congratulations on a great run Tim, you deserve plenty of days whapping it around the links and hanging with the grandkids!