Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate you being reaching out allowing me to
Speaker 1: be a part of it, because there's, uh, there's really
Speaker 1: not many people I like and respect more Tim. And
Speaker 1: it really is such a sad thing because he was
Speaker 1: so great what he did, worked so hard, loved his
Speaker 1: family so much, and then to have the time, yeah,
Speaker 1: in retirement, taken away from him with this with Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: is really a sad thing. Put another log on the
Speaker 1: fire and nobody hears is give the time. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the fire pit with Matt Chanella. Tim rose Afford spent
Speaker 1: his life telling stories about golf's greatest players. Now it's
Speaker 1: time to tell Rosie's story. A towering figure in the
Speaker 1: golf media, Tim died on January eleven, at the age
Speaker 1: of sixty six from complications related to early onset Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe anything could fill this pillar of strength.
Speaker 1: In press rooms and on the course, he moved slowly
Speaker 1: but diligently, the bow and his legs, a byproduct of
Speaker 1: the sports he played growing up in Brewster, New York.
Speaker 1: He once told me that as an undersized offensive lineman
Speaker 1: in college, subbing in on special teams, he had to
Speaker 1: block Joe Cleco, the future All Pro defensive lineman for
Speaker 1: the New York Jets. Young Roosfort was driven back so
Speaker 1: hard by Cleco that Tim could smell the burn of
Speaker 1: the rubber on the bottom of his cleats. No shock
Speaker 1: to anyone who knew Rosie. Cleco didn't block a punt
Speaker 1: that day. He was proud of that and so much more.
Speaker 1: Tim was proud of his family, which included his wife Genevieve,
Speaker 1: their two daughters, Jenna and Molly, and he was out
Speaker 1: of the men they married, Nick and Mason. He doated
Speaker 1: on his three grandchildren, and he played a significant role
Speaker 1: in the life of Grayson. He helped raise Grayson as
Speaker 1: though he was his own son. Tim stepped in and
Speaker 1: stepped up because he felt it was the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. In all the years I knew him, which
Speaker 1: goes back to Sports Illustrated in the mid nineties, Tim
Speaker 1: always did the right thing, quietly and consistently. He didn't
Speaker 1: want pats on the back. He just wanted to better
Speaker 1: himself and those around him. Tim had long been celebrated
Speaker 1: as golf's ultimate insider. He built his career not on
Speaker 1: dazzling typing skills, but the kind of tenacity that held
Speaker 1: back Joe Cleco. Tim was always renting a car, hopping
Speaker 1: a shuttle, catching a plane, and he always made one
Speaker 1: more call on one of his two phones. Once Tim
Speaker 1: started reporting a story, he never stopped. He learned from
Speaker 1: his father, a garbage man who saw dignity in hard work.
Speaker 1: As a kid, Tim often wrote around in the truck,
Speaker 1: either helping out the crew or sliding around in the
Speaker 1: cab while reading books. His first set of golf clubs
Speaker 1: were cobbled together from what his dad would rescue out
Speaker 1: of the trash bins. That kid, from humble beginnings, the
Speaker 1: oldest of four in his family, went on to win
Speaker 1: Lifetime Achievement awards for his writing. The craft didn't come
Speaker 1: easy for him, so he compensated with conviction, filling his
Speaker 1: stories with details no one else had and anecdotes only
Speaker 1: he could get. His first beat was dirt track car racing,
Speaker 1: and he once interviewed Doc Gooden as a Little League
Speaker 1: All Star. He covered over a hundred and fifty majors,
Speaker 1: winning some forty awards, and writing four books along the way.
Speaker 1: In all of his travels, Tim rarely missed a chance
Speaker 1: to tee it up at Olive golf's greatest citadels, his
Speaker 1: incomparable Rolodex coming in quite handy for setting up a match.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't want to play for much, and by the
Speaker 1: end he preferred to play for nothing at all. A
Speaker 1: plus eight at asking the tough questions, Tim was a good,
Speaker 1: let's say, ten handicap on the course, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: because of a lack of effort. It never was with Tim.
Speaker 1: From Sports Illustrated, Too, Golf Digest, in Golf World, and
Speaker 1: then to Golf Channel. I seemed to always be somewhere
Speaker 1: right behind him, and what a good place to be.
Speaker 1: Tim never stopped being a lead blocker for me, opening
Speaker 1: holes so broad and inviting that even I could run
Speaker 1: right through him. It was as if I had a bodyguard,
Speaker 1: a guardian angel. I wouldn't hesitate to call him a
Speaker 1: big brother, and although that felt so special, I know
Speaker 1: I wasn't alone. Tim Rosaffort was beloved because he was
Speaker 1: a great teammate for so many of us. The godfather
Speaker 1: of golf journalists, Tim led by example, selflessly and unconditionally,
Speaker 1: always supporting someone in need. No one ever outworked him.
Speaker 1: He had no enemies, and everyone called him back and
Speaker 1: when I asked long list of Tim's friends and colleagues
Speaker 1: to help me produce this podcast, he'd smile, knowing they
Speaker 1: all called me back. So settle down, settle in the
Speaker 1: Tim Rose Afford story here is about to begin. My
Speaker 1: goal was to out rosy Tim rose effort on his
Speaker 1: own story upon hearing about his diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: which goes back to the summer of I did what
Speaker 1: he taught me to do, be intrepid. On that note,
Speaker 1: we start with Jerry Tarney, who was the editor in
Speaker 1: chief of Golf Digest for over four decades, who throughout
Speaker 1: this podcast offers his perspective on Tim's incredible life and
Speaker 1: the legacy he was the bridge from the past to
Speaker 1: the present in terms of the way journalism is practiced.
Speaker 1: You know, Charlie Price is an example. Used to take
Speaker 1: a month to write one column. That's all he did.
Speaker 1: He wrote one column a month, and it was the
Speaker 1: words on paper that matter. That's the thing in the past. Now,
Speaker 1: what Tim brought to it is he could do all
Speaker 1: the stuff. Not that not that he was a technologist,
Speaker 1: but but he he ushered in social media that the
Speaker 1: digital age being on television. It all came together with
Speaker 1: with Tim, and what he brought with him was preparedness
Speaker 1: and he took that from the old world. So he
Speaker 1: was that bridge from the old world of journalism to
Speaker 1: the modern one. And I would add the one thing
Speaker 1: that he didn't have that so many guys in his
Speaker 1: profession have and we're all guilty of it, I think,
Speaker 1: except for Tim, is he didn't have that cynicism, that
Speaker 1: cynics virus that so many writers have, and it comes
Speaker 1: from hanging out in bars and pressed and talking to
Speaker 1: ourselves and in many cases trying to write like Dan
Speaker 1: jenkins Um, He's not. He was never a cynic. He
Speaker 1: loved it and he and it's why people trusted him,
Speaker 1: because he wasn't going to take advantage of you. Tim
Speaker 1: told me that it was guys like Davis Sesna, an
Speaker 1: incredibly connected member at Seminole and Pine Valley, who helped
Speaker 1: shape his life and career. I asked Davis what made
Speaker 1: Tim so special? The thing that you immediately recognize about
Speaker 1: Tim roselford is that he asks thoughtful questions from from
Speaker 1: his heart and he and he listens to the answer.
Speaker 1: Here's Craig Doulsch, another Florida base writer who goes back
Speaker 1: to the early eighties with Tim. We all love about
Speaker 1: Tim as he earned everything he ever got in this business.
Speaker 1: Nothing was ever given to him, and if anything, he's
Speaker 1: given an off a lot back to the business, and
Speaker 1: he's ever taken from the business. Mark mulvey was the
Speaker 1: legendary editor of Sports Illustrated in the eighties and early
Speaker 1: nineties who hired Tim from the Palm Beach Post. You know,
Speaker 1: God knows that he worked hard. You know. Writing did
Speaker 1: not come easy to him, you know, but he understood
Speaker 1: that if you saturated a story with facts and let
Speaker 1: the facts flow in a logical order, you have the
Speaker 1: hell of the story. Here's Jim Nance on his friend
Speaker 1: Tim rose Afort. I lean on Nance later in the
Speaker 1: podcast for his insight and information about Alzheimer's. So we
Speaker 1: start with the love of the game undeniable, and then
Speaker 1: you go with the interior in the integrity quotient, which
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how you have so many
Speaker 1: scoops and so much inside information and not have people
Speaker 1: that I feel like they've been burned. I don't know
Speaker 1: anybody never felt like Tim ever burned them on anything.
Speaker 1: And I think what it is is that he's just
Speaker 1: such a good person that people realize he was doing
Speaker 1: his job. He worked it harder than anybody else, and
Speaker 1: he did it with an understanding of the sensitivity of
Speaker 1: the information, how it affected each individual. So he gave
Speaker 1: his audience the truth, and he gave the subjects that
Speaker 1: he was covering. He gave them truth, and he gave them,
Speaker 1: if you will, um a complete understanding that I'm going
Speaker 1: to treat this with integrity. It was a love of
Speaker 1: people Tim has that we'll hear from John Hawkins throughout.
Speaker 1: Hawk was a colleague at Golf World and Golf Digest,
Speaker 1: and together they did some of their best work. Very
Speaker 1: few people brought that type of intensity and compassion, willingness
Speaker 1: to share, willingness to to his knowledge was your not
Speaker 1: and there's not not everybody's like that. He was the
Speaker 1: greatest teammate in history of golf writing. And we would
Speaker 1: go a hundred years and that would still be said.
Speaker 1: And then there's Matt Haggarty, Golf Channels coordinating producer who
Speaker 1: started working with Tim in the early two thousand's. You know,
Speaker 1: he knew so many people. He was really connected. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a heavyweight that was That was my first
Speaker 1: impression of him. And then as we got to go,
Speaker 1: you know, we started to you know, evolve. Then he
Speaker 1: really became like a like a like a big brother
Speaker 1: to me, uh in a way you know, um, you
Speaker 1: know he would I've told this story before, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid to tell me to talk to my shirt.
Speaker 1: He wasn't afraid when I was a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: to act more professional, you know, like he you know,
Speaker 1: I think he I mean, he liked me, you know,
Speaker 1: and I and I was lucky and he liked me.
Speaker 1: And when he likes you, he's you know, he's honest
Speaker 1: and he'll tell you how he feels. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think he's honest with everybody. But he told me how
Speaker 1: he felt, you know, and a lot of that stuff
Speaker 1: was really important. And then when I had my first child,
Speaker 1: you know, I had a daughter, and he would you know,
Speaker 1: he would give me advice on parenting. He would say,
Speaker 1: he can't be so direct, he can't be so direct
Speaker 1: with your kids. You know. He was always there for me, man,
Speaker 1: from the day, from the from the from the you asked.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just going on and on and on.
Speaker 1: But like when you asked the first time I met Tim,
Speaker 1: Like all these moments and memories fled back and I
Speaker 1: spoke to Molly Solomon, the executive producer of the Golf Channel.
Speaker 1: Tim would always track her down and demand coaching on
Speaker 1: how and why he could get better on TV. And
Speaker 1: that's what always frustrated him is that I didn't have
Speaker 1: that much feedback and say, okay, buddy, you know you
Speaker 1: don't need those cards. Like he always had cards on
Speaker 1: the set, right, and he'd rely on his cards. I'd see, Timmy,
Speaker 1: you know this stuff. I just want you to talk
Speaker 1: and have a conversation with the audience, just like you
Speaker 1: have with me. You don't need those cards. But they
Speaker 1: were a crush. He was like, I know, they're a crutch.
Speaker 1: So I always wanted him to believe in himself as
Speaker 1: much as I believed in him. As you can see,
Speaker 1: this podcast is running a little longer than the rest,
Speaker 1: and there are reasons for that. I set out to
Speaker 1: tell the story of his career while also celebrating the
Speaker 1: life of an incredible man, and part of me never
Speaker 1: really wanted to finish this project because by working on it,
Speaker 1: talking to so many people who had so many fond
Speaker 1: memories and incredible anecdotes. Was cathartic. I've done a lot
Speaker 1: of laughing, a lot of crying, and like I said,
Speaker 1: I just want to make him proud. So let's go
Speaker 1: back to the early eighties in Florida. Jeff Russell, Molly
Speaker 1: Solomon's husband, who would go on to be Tim's boss
Speaker 1: at Golf World magazine and work with Tim at the
Speaker 1: Golf Channel, was in his early twenties. He was as
Speaker 1: fresh as fresh kids, and he was new to covering
Speaker 1: the LPGA. I will never forget that Tim welcomed me
Speaker 1: from the from the day I walked in. You know,
Speaker 1: he was interested in me, and he I took the
Speaker 1: time to find out who I was and what you know,
Speaker 1: what my background was, and and of course I love
Speaker 1: to play golf, and so did Tim, and we pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: we pretty quickly, you know, he was inviting me out
Speaker 1: to play golf, and we'd go and and play, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, even on days when he was when he
Speaker 1: was working and had a deadline, you know, he would
Speaker 1: we'd go and play golf somewhere early. You know, it
Speaker 1: was always kind of Tim's choice. And Tim, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, and and we and That's how we met,
Speaker 1: and I just couldn't believe. You know, Tim at that
Speaker 1: time was a you know, he's a big deal in
Speaker 1: the Golf Writers Association of America. I don't remember if
Speaker 1: he was president yet, but he was an award winner.
Speaker 1: He was winning, you know, he was writing awards and
Speaker 1: and and all the players knew him. And here was
Speaker 1: this guy. You know, he took me under his under
Speaker 1: his wing and um and it was fantastic. You know,
Speaker 1: it was fantastic. Made me feel like like I belonged,
Speaker 1: but also pretty quickly made me feel like, wow, you
Speaker 1: know I can you know I can do this. And
Speaker 1: and you'd you know, you'd spend spending a month there.
Speaker 1: You know, the we go to the tournament the next
Speaker 1: week and Thursday or or or Friday, the you know,
Speaker 1: the issue of the magazine. We get to the press
Speaker 1: room and you know, Tim and pick it up and
Speaker 1: read it and come up and go, you know, nice job,
Speaker 1: that was a good story, or hey you got that
Speaker 1: note that was good or you know it was it
Speaker 1: was awesome. It was great. He was you know, could
Speaker 1: not have been nicer, sweeter and more encouraging, you know,
Speaker 1: to a twenty five year old kid who was trying
Speaker 1: to get going in the business. Back to Craig Doltra
Speaker 1: a recap of Tim's resume of Florida papers. Worked at
Speaker 1: the Tampa Times, he worked at the clear Water Sun,
Speaker 1: He worked at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel at that
Speaker 1: point the Palm Beach Post where I was working. They
Speaker 1: went and hired them to be their golf writer, which
Speaker 1: is a great move on their part. And he worked
Speaker 1: there for a few years, and then Sports Illustrators started
Speaker 1: getting really serious about doing their golf plus coverage. So
Speaker 1: Mark mulvoy had hired Tim to come in and really
Speaker 1: kind of head up, be the kind of fullback, the
Speaker 1: guy that would go out and break the news, do
Speaker 1: all the hard work. And so Tim worked for Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrated for about three or four or five years. It
Speaker 1: was actually just a little over two years at Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrator for Tim from nine six. Here's Mark mulveaway again, Timmy.
Speaker 1: When I hired him, I said, Timmy, I really want
Speaker 1: you to be the Peter King of golf. I said,
Speaker 1: I want people when they read your step to find
Speaker 1: out things about themselves they don't even know, which is
Speaker 1: the way Peter. Of course, a Hall of Fame journalist
Speaker 1: UH covered pro football. You know Timmy and Pete. You
Speaker 1: know they're not Rick Riley behind the the typewriter people
Speaker 1: like that, Gary Smith. But they're great, great, great reporters.
Speaker 1: And you can have a tremendous, tremendous success in Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrated or any other publication if you're a great reporter
Speaker 1: or a dependable reporter, and nothing stands in your way
Speaker 1: of getting this. And that was Timmy. Now in the
Speaker 1: big leagues, surrounded by an insane roster of talent, Tim's
Speaker 1: self doubt was immersing itself into his keyboard. I kept
Speaker 1: having to tell him. I said, Timmy, you can't compare
Speaker 1: yourself to Himie, you can't compare yourself to Rick. You
Speaker 1: can't compare yourself to Al Shipment. I said, these guys
Speaker 1: are different stylists. I said, would you bring something to
Speaker 1: the table that we desperately needed Sports Illustrated reprotige. You're
Speaker 1: the Peter King of golf and that's how you'll thrived here,
Speaker 1: believe me, and he did. Here's Himie Diaz, another legend
Speaker 1: of modern golf journalism, who offers his perspective on why
Speaker 1: Tim's time at Sports Illustrated was short lived. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: being honest. Uh, they were difficult days in many ways
Speaker 1: because it was really challenging. Uh. It was a big
Speaker 1: step up for Tim. He wanted it, and he tried
Speaker 1: really hard, and he did a lot of really good stuff.
Speaker 1: But the you know, the atmosphere at Sports Illustrated was
Speaker 1: was cold compared to where he had worked. You know,
Speaker 1: he had worked in kind of family situations where you
Speaker 1: got to know the sports editor and of course everybody
Speaker 1: really loved him, so he would lean on those kind
Speaker 1: of nurturing relationships and it was hard for him to
Speaker 1: get that at Sports Illustrated. Having said all that, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: Mark Moboy hired him and and they remained great friends.
Speaker 1: But I just think the atmosphere was one that was
Speaker 1: challenging more than the actual work. He just he always
Speaker 1: like me, you know, but maybe even a little more
Speaker 1: in some ways. He felt like he always had to
Speaker 1: prove himself and had some insecurities there, and he just
Speaker 1: didn't get a lot of approval at Sports Illustrated in
Speaker 1: the same way he was used to. So, um, I
Speaker 1: think he always felt like, man, that wasn't good enough,
Speaker 1: that wasn't good enough. And probably drove himself a little crazy. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so in that respect, even though Sports Illustrated was
Speaker 1: a great place and in some place, in some ways
Speaker 1: the epitome of sports writing in this country, he did
Speaker 1: better by going to Golf World, by going back to
Speaker 1: Golf World, because there he could, you know, get comfortable
Speaker 1: with people, and they you understood him better, and it
Speaker 1: was just less of a big machine and more of
Speaker 1: a family. Mulvoy left Sports Illustrated, and so did Rose Afford.
Speaker 1: If I had not retired, he would have stayed at
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrator, believed me a lot longer than that. I
Speaker 1: had a specific idea in mind, is to what he
Speaker 1: brought to the magazine, which is what I had for
Speaker 1: Peter and you know Riley and Shipnuk and everybody else
Speaker 1: we brought. Then. I don't think my success or or
Speaker 1: success ors, you know, they just wanted to take the
Speaker 1: magazine to do different things, which is fine, that's the prerogative.
Speaker 1: But if I had stayed her, and I wasn't thirteen
Speaker 1: years was long enough to put out a weekly magazine,
Speaker 1: I think Timmy would have stayed certainly as long as
Speaker 1: I did. Feeling snubbed by S I himI Diaz confirms
Speaker 1: Tim was now even more motivated to prove his critics wrong.
Speaker 1: Every knock back drove Tim ten steps forward, Like you
Speaker 1: better if you're gonna knock them back, you better be
Speaker 1: prepared for what's next, because what was next after Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrat was probably one of the greatest runs in modern
Speaker 1: golf journalism. In my opinion, I agree with you. I mean,
Speaker 1: he really is a fiery competitor, and he definitely would
Speaker 1: keep it hard inside himself to get even you know,
Speaker 1: and to show everybody. And that was a great motivator.
Speaker 1: And he didn't talk about it much, but you know
Speaker 1: it would come out that it was there, that that
Speaker 1: was really in many ways what took him the extra
Speaker 1: mile when he was doing something to do it spent
Speaker 1: in a special way. Here's Jeff Russell on the acquisition
Speaker 1: of a Hall of Fame clean up hitter, you know,
Speaker 1: work king at the other shop. He was a formidable opponent,
Speaker 1: you know, he was he was, he was a pain
Speaker 1: in the ass. He he got, you know, he got
Speaker 1: information that that that we didn't have. Now I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened. I don't never really never really got
Speaker 1: the full story about what happened to him at Sports Illustrated.
Speaker 1: All I know is they one day he became available,
Speaker 1: you know, he became available and we couldn't hire him
Speaker 1: fast enough. And when he came to Golf World, um
Speaker 1: And we were probably so that was probably ninety ninety
Speaker 1: seven in there, so you know, and and I was
Speaker 1: his I was his de facto editor for for until
Speaker 1: two thousand when I became in you know, entitled the editor.
Speaker 1: So I was his editor for fifteen years at Golf World.
Speaker 1: I think we had a great relationship, and you know
Speaker 1: it was it was just a comfort to have somebody
Speaker 1: on the staff that you could say, Tim, I need it.
Speaker 1: I need to know what happened here, you know, I
Speaker 1: need you to you know, what what happened with Tiger
Speaker 1: and Tim Fincham, what happened with you know, what happened
Speaker 1: with Honora you know, Seorenstam and the and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, what happened you know, John Day fell off
Speaker 1: the wagon? What happened? He would go and find out,
Speaker 1: He would go and get the information, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: there might have been times where you felt I felt
Speaker 1: like he was protecting um And and and maybe not
Speaker 1: telling me everything. He knew, but if I pushed him
Speaker 1: on it, he he would, you know, if I if
Speaker 1: I really made it a big deal, I've usually got
Speaker 1: what I wanted. A lot of times Tim would say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you would just if you would just
Speaker 1: back off here and let's take the long view. I
Speaker 1: think this will. I think this is We're gonna have
Speaker 1: enough that we can use it now and and we're
Speaker 1: going to continue to be able to get information in
Speaker 1: the source if we need it and it and he was.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a great partnership and I never
Speaker 1: never felt like like it it costs golf world, you know,
Speaker 1: any anything in terms of I mean, he instantly made
Speaker 1: our team better and and I think not only because
Speaker 1: he made us better, but because the other guys lost him.
Speaker 1: It's Tiger is turning pro and a motivated roos Aford
Speaker 1: gets a seat at Golf Digest table of talent. Here's
Speaker 1: Jerry Tardy on getting access to Tim rose Aford. Even
Speaker 1: in the beginning, he was grounded in that South Florida
Speaker 1: world of golf pros, and he knew he knew golf,
Speaker 1: he knew the tour, and he was he was a
Speaker 1: great reporter. And that even even at the very beginning
Speaker 1: that was the case. So so it was an opportunity
Speaker 1: two get connected to that world and have insight into
Speaker 1: what players were thinking and what they were going to
Speaker 1: do before they did it. Um. Tim wasn't a poet,
Speaker 1: uh and uh and he wasn't a comedian, so he
Speaker 1: didn't bring that style of writing to the magazine. But
Speaker 1: what he brought were facts, insight, uh, the real stuff
Speaker 1: of what was happening. And that was the excitement of
Speaker 1: having Tim join our team. Well, Tim was dominating the
Speaker 1: annual byline count at Golf World a weekly and contributing
Speaker 1: to the occasional Story and Golf Digest a monthly. In
Speaker 1: the late nineties, he was covering the end of Nancy
Speaker 1: lopez incredible career. We grew up together. He wants me
Speaker 1: grow up on the LPG tour and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he was one of those writers that made me who
Speaker 1: I am. Um. Wow. You know he was that friendly
Speaker 1: face in the room when you when you know, the
Speaker 1: press was all of you talking to and you could
Speaker 1: and you saw him. He just he just made me
Speaker 1: always feel happy. He had he had that face you
Speaker 1: know when you you know how people are when you
Speaker 1: see send me come in the room like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: there they come. And then you had that person that
Speaker 1: oh that's tim you know. That's the way he made
Speaker 1: me feel all the time. And he was just the best.
Speaker 1: And I just I will pray for him because I
Speaker 1: just hate this news. Um. But yeah, he was. He
Speaker 1: was specially he was good at what he was, great
Speaker 1: at what he did, not just good he um. I
Speaker 1: think all the players felt that way whenever he was
Speaker 1: around us, um and appreciate his talents and what he
Speaker 1: did for sports. Absolutely he was the best. I spoke
Speaker 1: to Bob Ford, the iconic pro at both open on
Speaker 1: and Seminole, who was Rosfort's close friend. Well, he was
Speaker 1: extraordinary and he uh, I think he he gained everybody's trust.
Speaker 1: Um that so that I mean his Rolo decks like
Speaker 1: hers would be phenomenal. And you know, when he needed
Speaker 1: to dig something out of the dirt, he dug it out.
Speaker 1: And when rose you saw Rosie on your phone, you
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to him. So and he had that
Speaker 1: relationship with you know, all the stars everybody, and so
Speaker 1: I think just trust and faith that we all had
Speaker 1: and Timmy was one of his great great assets. And
Speaker 1: not many players appreciate good writing, especially good reporting and
Speaker 1: the history of golf more than Ben Crenshaw. Going back
Speaker 1: all those years, Matt he was he was a bulldog
Speaker 1: for getting information. He was very very good at that.
Speaker 1: And uh but people respected him greatly. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: insider guy and he wanted to report that and he
Speaker 1: did it so well so many times. Um. But I know,
Speaker 1: as as a writer and a close observer of the
Speaker 1: professional golf scene, he was one of the best. I
Speaker 1: mean he you know, people knew to go to him
Speaker 1: to see what the players actually were thinking. They trusted him.
Speaker 1: Uh and and he could get the information quicker than
Speaker 1: other people could. Ron Sirac, who has ap roots and
Speaker 1: a similar dog and reporting style, offers his perspective on
Speaker 1: his former colleague at Golf World and Golf Digest. Baseball
Speaker 1: is one of my passions. Peter Damon's was the guy
Speaker 1: when I was when I was first starting out in journalism,
Speaker 1: as he was a guy who knew everything. Tim was
Speaker 1: the guy in golf who knew everything. Back to Jeff
Speaker 1: Russell again, who had become the editor in chief of
Speaker 1: Golf World magazine in two thousand and was writing the
Speaker 1: rose Board Train all the way to relevancy within the
Speaker 1: booming industry of golf. The moment when I realized, hey
Speaker 1: we are now, We're now as competitive a magazine as
Speaker 1: any other magazine. I mean, you know, listen, sports Philicide.
Speaker 1: You know, always be a fan of Sports Illustrated. You
Speaker 1: know what an amazing, amazing magazine it was, And and
Speaker 1: Golf Plus was was terrific um and and you know,
Speaker 1: you never there's never a week where you just felt like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what are they gonna have this week?
Speaker 1: You know? But but I remember, and maybe you do too,
Speaker 1: when Tiger Woods was, you know, he was maybe two
Speaker 1: years into his his PGA Tour career, he turned pro,
Speaker 1: and he's been out there like two or three years,
Speaker 1: and he and he got into a he got into
Speaker 1: a showdown with with Tim Fincham in the PGA Tour
Speaker 1: where he was basic. I forget, I'd have to go
Speaker 1: and look, right, but he was. He was They wanted him,
Speaker 1: you know, they were holding him to the same requirements
Speaker 1: for you know, tournaments and tournament releases and all and
Speaker 1: all this stuff that any other player had, right and
Speaker 1: and and Tiger was Tiger was basically saying, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not going to do that. I if you're
Speaker 1: gonna hold me that I might go play the European
Speaker 1: Tour and we're I'll go find somewhere else to play.
Speaker 1: And and this was kind of percolating and Tiger decided,
Speaker 1: I don't know how this happened, but Tiger Tiger decided
Speaker 1: to tell Tim Roseford about it. That's where he went
Speaker 1: with with his story. And we got that story because
Speaker 1: of Tim Rosefort and whatever relationship he had with Tiger
Speaker 1: and and whatever whatever reputation Tim had with Tiger, and
Speaker 1: and it was. We put it on the cover and
Speaker 1: it was, you know, it was a blockbuster story at
Speaker 1: a time when a weekly magazine could still have a
Speaker 1: blockbuster story. And it got everyone's attention, and it got
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour's attention. And I remember thinking that week, like, man,
Speaker 1: people are talking about our magazine. Um, and the story
Speaker 1: that that we got and that was that was Tim
Speaker 1: and and and also John Hawkins. It was you know,
Speaker 1: um and that you know, that was a nice I
Speaker 1: think that was a nice collaboration for us and Golf
Speaker 1: Digest for for for four or five years, Tim and
Speaker 1: John working together. But but again it was you know,
Speaker 1: Tim was the big hitter on that thing, and and
Speaker 1: we were um and and and we benefited. It was
Speaker 1: It was huge inner stage. John Hawkins, another gritty colleague
Speaker 1: who was also operating at the height of his powers.
Speaker 1: With their chemistry came a brotherly bond at award winning work.
Speaker 1: Tim and I were both came from tough towns. I
Speaker 1: come from Baltimore, He came from Brewster, New York. We
Speaker 1: shared that um my dad passed away when I was young.
Speaker 1: Tim didn't have an easy life growing up. He worked
Speaker 1: on his dad's trash truck, as you know, and Tim
Speaker 1: had to work. We both shared that sort of us
Speaker 1: against the world mentality, blue collar kind of mindset, and
Speaker 1: we just we hit it off. I was, I was
Speaker 1: in all of him as a reporter. Still am. As
Speaker 1: I said on their phone call a few a couple
Speaker 1: of months back, Matt, nobody has had a more profound
Speaker 1: influence on my career than Tim Rose Afford Nobody. Yes,
Speaker 1: there was Rick Riley, Himie Diaz, Alan Schipnuk, Michael Bamberger,
Speaker 1: Tom Callahan. Jenkins was still Jenkins. I loved Dave Anderson
Speaker 1: and Dave Kindred. No one could write funny like Bob
Speaker 1: Verdie Garrity was always doing gearty, but when Hawk and
Speaker 1: Rosie would combine forces, the game's cage would rattle more
Speaker 1: from Heimie Diaz and Tim and John Hawkins had a
Speaker 1: great relationship. You know, Tim was the rock. John was
Speaker 1: the mercurial you know, I say, borderline genius in many
Speaker 1: ways because tremendous words, Smith, tremendous ability to turner phrase
Speaker 1: great writer, kind of like Woodward and Bernstein a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, in in a golf Stanse wood Word was Tim,
Speaker 1: you know, the solid reporter who could could always you know,
Speaker 1: get anybody, and and John the guy that could coalesce
Speaker 1: it into something really readable. And those two guys they
Speaker 1: knew they had something and and they took on big projects.
Speaker 1: A lot of ambition in both those guys, and they
Speaker 1: would identify what was really important in golf because had
Speaker 1: very passionate views about this is the story. Man. You know,
Speaker 1: we gotta get this guy, we gotta get this issue
Speaker 1: out there, we gotta do it like nobody else. And
Speaker 1: then you know Tim might feel similarly, but probably not
Speaker 1: to the same extent. But then when he was directed,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what we need, this is what
Speaker 1: we gotta have. Nobody was better at getting it, so
Speaker 1: it was really formidable and they did. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking five or six of those things that were oral
Speaker 1: histories or just simply highly reported pieces long, maybe even
Speaker 1: had more than one, you know, one installment, and very
Speaker 1: much probably well, I want to say the best work
Speaker 1: of their careers, because they did great work individually as well,
Speaker 1: but I think as a team that that's probably as
Speaker 1: good a team as golf riding has ever had. Long
Speaker 1: before the platform of podcast, there was such a thing
Speaker 1: as a quote oral history, but it was done in print.
Speaker 1: Hawk and Rosie right again chronic one of golf's greatest comebacks.
Speaker 1: I don't know whose idea it was um to do
Speaker 1: it in oral history. Back then, we were always looking
Speaker 1: to get into Golf Digests because we got paid extra
Speaker 1: for it, and because it was the magazine. As you know, Matt,
Speaker 1: Golf World was the magazine with a great reputation. But
Speaker 1: but but Golf Digest was the rock star. Golf Digest
Speaker 1: was the much bigger book, you know, three four pages
Speaker 1: some weeks some months back then, and you always wanted
Speaker 1: to get into that one. And we came up with
Speaker 1: this idea and we were just met with nothing but
Speaker 1: help from all the principles I think Tim got. And
Speaker 1: it's not like I didn't do any reporting. It just
Speaker 1: looked like I didn't. Compared to Tim, they kind of
Speaker 1: developed an interesting, you know, sort of an interesting format.
Speaker 1: They came up with a formula where where they would
Speaker 1: work together. They were at work together on big pieces,
Speaker 1: and the Tiger and the Tour story was one of them.
Speaker 1: The final day of the Ryder Cup, you know, was
Speaker 1: the was the big one that I remember they you
Speaker 1: know that that was that day of that incredible American
Speaker 1: comeback UM to win on the final day, and they
Speaker 1: spent um, you know, they spent months talking to every player,
Speaker 1: everybody who had, you know, had anything to do with
Speaker 1: with that UM, with that comeback. That was just like
Speaker 1: putting pieces of a puzzle together. That was fun. And
Speaker 1: he would just keep coming back with more and more
Speaker 1: material and I would just keep on finding spots for it.
Speaker 1: I think it was just one of those cases where
Speaker 1: two guys had a kind of a common background and
Speaker 1: perfect a perfect mesh of skills. It was too much
Speaker 1: good information to try to make a UM, to try
Speaker 1: to turn into a magazine article. I even think at
Speaker 1: one point they were, you know, they were talking to
Speaker 1: like a Hollywood producer about about making a movie about it,
Speaker 1: like maybe there were maybe a documentary film about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, but it doesn't get done without Tim's Tim's
Speaker 1: ability to report, Tim's dogged pursuit of information and his
Speaker 1: relationships with people to this day remains so powerful. It's
Speaker 1: why we're doing this, Matt, because so many people no
Speaker 1: Tim and love them. And and um that was I was.
Speaker 1: I was the prime beneficiary of Tim's greatest strengths for
Speaker 1: the better part of ten years. Regardless of the awards
Speaker 1: and out of boys recognition and respect, Tim never allowed
Speaker 1: himself to tap the brakes on his hustle and pursuit
Speaker 1: of perfection. No one was harder on Tim then Tim.
Speaker 1: A lot of people tried to convince him of his greatness,
Speaker 1: and that was the only time he turned his ears off.
Speaker 1: He loved coaching, he was allergic to accolades. Back to
Speaker 1: Jeff Russell, who again knew Tim for thirty five years
Speaker 1: and worked closely with him for twenty five of those.
Speaker 1: As Jeff notes, the only coaching he needed was to
Speaker 1: get out of his own way. Tim operated always operated
Speaker 1: from a sense of insecurity, you know, he he um,
Speaker 1: you know he could he could have he could have
Speaker 1: ninety nine great weeks in a row and and then
Speaker 1: have a week where he missed something, you know, or
Speaker 1: or maybe wrote a story that wasn't that that wasn't
Speaker 1: um you know, super polished and needed a little work,
Speaker 1: and then it was like man, it sent him into
Speaker 1: the Dolders. It was like he was starting all over
Speaker 1: and you had to remind him. You know. We used
Speaker 1: to say this, Hey, you know, I mean you're Tim
Speaker 1: sucking Roseford. That's all you needed to say to him.
Speaker 1: It's like you are, Tim, Stop stop worrying about it,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, let's get back at it this week.
Speaker 1: You know. But you know you're Tim we fucking Roseford.
Speaker 1: And and you're gonna hear that from Matt Haggerty too,
Speaker 1: you know, um, because he was that way when he
Speaker 1: got to the Golf channel. Pete McDaniel wrote for both
Speaker 1: Golf Digest and Golf World. Both Tim and Pete were
Speaker 1: always being asked to get something special on tiger Woods.
Speaker 1: He did some blocking for me as well, you know,
Speaker 1: quiet as its gift. Yeah, some opportunities that I got
Speaker 1: Tim recommended me. I don't know if I always succeeded
Speaker 1: at him. I probably let him down a few times.
Speaker 1: But I'm guilty of that too. He's this guy can
Speaker 1: do it, he can alest you know, you need to
Speaker 1: give him an opportunity, and I got opportunities. So but
Speaker 1: Tim's wanted to get greatest guys. Um, if you had
Speaker 1: Tim on your team, you had a good teammate. I'll
Speaker 1: just put it that way. Um, funny guy and I
Speaker 1: played a lot of rounds ago off together. Really meticulous
Speaker 1: kind of guy. And the thing that made him such
Speaker 1: a success he worked. It was alreayst working man in golf.
Speaker 1: And without a doubt, I couldn't have no way that
Speaker 1: anybody could could out work And he was not going
Speaker 1: to need to do it prepared, you know, to the end,
Speaker 1: dog gone degree. If there was anything he didn't know,
Speaker 1: he was really gonna find out, had more context than
Speaker 1: anybody in the game. And and that was Tim Roseford.
Speaker 1: I mean, talented and personable and um and a real friend.
Speaker 1: And in our business you could probably count your real
Speaker 1: friends on one hand. And Tim was certainly a real friend,
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. Back to Jeff Russell, who was
Speaker 1: continuing to lean on Rosaford as a captain of the squad.
Speaker 1: I think Tim always had a really underrated talent for
Speaker 1: um knowing, knowing what's a good story, what's maybe not
Speaker 1: a good story, knowing what the what the angle is,
Speaker 1: what the angle should be, and what the angles shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: UM And I think he you know, he was he
Speaker 1: was a good sounding board for me as the editor
Speaker 1: when when I wasn't when I was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out a lot, you know, I reached a point where
Speaker 1: I wasn't always at the major championships on the on
Speaker 1: the weekend, I would need to come home, you know,
Speaker 1: go back to the office and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: run things from the office. And and Tim became my
Speaker 1: kind of my my boots on the ground at the
Speaker 1: tournament and trying to help me understand what was going
Speaker 1: on and and and what the stories were and what
Speaker 1: they should be. UM. He was very He had a
Speaker 1: kind of a good you know, you'd say he has
Speaker 1: an ear for music. You know, he had kind of
Speaker 1: a good ear for a good sense of what what
Speaker 1: the angle should be. More from dis I remember after
Speaker 1: nine eleven that the amount of time and work and
Speaker 1: chronicling he did with Jimmy Dunn was like incredibly you know,
Speaker 1: uh just just you know, it was it was a
Speaker 1: book length stuff almost And of course Bill Fields was
Speaker 1: was was writing the story. And you know it was
Speaker 1: overwhelming Bill, because Bill was a great researcher too. But
Speaker 1: I mean that's the kind of thing when Tim got
Speaker 1: his teeth into something, he really, um, you know, that
Speaker 1: was his identity. Then he was going to prove that
Speaker 1: to himself and to others, that that he could do it,
Speaker 1: that he belonged, that he could not and that he
Speaker 1: could be the best. And uh, I think it really
Speaker 1: um was was really a passionate after a while that
Speaker 1: he found his niche that he loved this. I mean
Speaker 1: he hadn't grown up with golf. He hadn't even grown
Speaker 1: up with sports writing, but he had found something that
Speaker 1: he loved to do um and could be good at
Speaker 1: because through force of will, but also he had the
Speaker 1: head for it. He knew sports, so golf fell right
Speaker 1: in there with sports. That was the mentality brought to sports.
Speaker 1: And and he was a good storyteller and any any
Speaker 1: any knew good stories. He had good news sense. He
Speaker 1: had an idea of how to present something. So it
Speaker 1: was interesting John Hawkins, I think a spike gate with
Speaker 1: v J and Mickelson having a J having a problem
Speaker 1: with Phil with the length of phil spikes, like you know,
Speaker 1: there are usually a one millimeter long and these were
Speaker 1: two millimeters or a millimeter and a half, and it's
Speaker 1: like turn into this big deal. So that was probably
Speaker 1: uh oh five because I was in the Champions locker
Speaker 1: room with them. Um, I don't remember him telling the story.
Speaker 1: I just remember that he uh, he wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: attack anybody. He was just I had to share insight
Speaker 1: into what was going onto the game of golf and
Speaker 1: and do it in a way that was interesting, compelling,
Speaker 1: but uplifting to everybody around him. Tim came back and
Speaker 1: said they almost came to blows in the locker room
Speaker 1: and there was a pretty heated argument and people had
Speaker 1: to get up and separate them and the force Michelson
Speaker 1: to release the statement. And Tim had that kind of
Speaker 1: impact on a regular basis. That was one of the
Speaker 1: more famous ones, one of the ones that I remember,
Speaker 1: But if you went back you could see many instances
Speaker 1: where Tim Tim's reporting had a had a pretty powerful
Speaker 1: impact on the on the on the picture. In general,
Speaker 1: I was never sure what drove Tim's bus the insecurity
Speaker 1: or was it just a sincere humility, you know, like
Speaker 1: he's like Barry Sanders, right. I mean, if you scored
Speaker 1: a touchdown, he handed the football back to the ref
Speaker 1: because that's his job, that's what he does. It wasn't
Speaker 1: about fanfare, it wasn't about to sell. He had no
Speaker 1: celebration dance in the end zone that Tim never danced
Speaker 1: in the end zone in his life. Tim ran around
Speaker 1: the basis with his head down every single time. Nobody
Speaker 1: ever wanted to throw a beanball at Tim rose Afford.
Speaker 1: Well you don't want that big ass guy coming out
Speaker 1: to the mountain and kicking your ass in front of everybody.
Speaker 1: But Tim was was. It was a lot bit. It
Speaker 1: was a lot bigger than Tim's physical stature. It was
Speaker 1: his his ability to generate trust and his ability to
Speaker 1: his his is absolute uh insistence on getting it right
Speaker 1: all the time. Tim didn't want a bad eight hundred.
Speaker 1: A lot of sports analogies here, but Tim. Tim wanted
Speaker 1: to get it right all the time, and and he did.
Speaker 1: He really did, he very very rarely. He I don't
Speaker 1: ever recall him making a mistake that was can sequential
Speaker 1: to the meaning of a story, or the just just
Speaker 1: never happened. Facts always travel. Tim's saturated rolodex, impeccable reputation,
Speaker 1: and incredible consistency had earned him a more prominent role
Speaker 1: on an alternate platform. Tim was taking on TV, and
Speaker 1: although he was getting criticized by Golf World teammates with
Speaker 1: guys like Hawkins who didn't like their starting running back
Speaker 1: splitting time playing center field in another sport, Tim ignored
Speaker 1: those murmurs. They definitely didn't deterine. It was all just
Speaker 1: more motivation to be an all star at both print
Speaker 1: and broadcast. If walls were going to fall and writers
Speaker 1: were evolving into on their talent, who better to smash
Speaker 1: those walls then Golf's Bo Jackson. Back to Molly Solomon,
Speaker 1: who has spent her entire career in TV. I think
Speaker 1: people forget the bigger picture with Tim, like we're all
Speaker 1: in the you know, the golf industry. But Tim was
Speaker 1: the first, really one of the first sports television insiders,
Speaker 1: you know. I remember Will McDonough in the early nineties
Speaker 1: and he started to bring these reporters that came into
Speaker 1: television and gave you so much great reporting and information
Speaker 1: and really kind of fleshed out the stories. And Tim
Speaker 1: very much brought that to golf. So it was really
Speaker 1: being done a little bit in football, but he brought
Speaker 1: it to golf. So it was his reporting and his
Speaker 1: his rolodex or his cell phone, which, as you know,
Speaker 1: he always had two cell phones, but he had everybody's number,
Speaker 1: and everybody respected him and everybody returned a phone call um.
Speaker 1: And that was because of his personality and the trust
Speaker 1: that he created with people. Like you knew that if
Speaker 1: you told Tim something that he wasn't going to misuse
Speaker 1: it or abuse it. He was going to use it
Speaker 1: to flesh out stories. But he would never embarrass you,
Speaker 1: hurt you. He'd give you a sense that something was coming.
Speaker 1: Like people trusted him when they talked to him, and
Speaker 1: that made a difference. I remember when he started doing TV,
Speaker 1: uh and he you know, really started to raise his
Speaker 1: profile at Golf Channel. He was still working for us.
Speaker 1: He would, you know, he would do TV. You know
Speaker 1: you could sense that he he he was he was
Speaker 1: doing a lot of TV and his profile, you know,
Speaker 1: he was getting famous and he was really becoming pretty
Speaker 1: well known and and he went to great pains to
Speaker 1: make sure that I could never accuse him of, you know,
Speaker 1: neglecting his magazine work in order to do TV work.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like as the better he got it TV,
Speaker 1: and the bigger he got it TV, the more the
Speaker 1: more he tried to contribute and do work for the magazine.
Speaker 1: And I remember talking to him one time, was before
Speaker 1: I went to the Golf Channel. So I was still
Speaker 1: at Golf World, and we were on a bus somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, some major writing from a parking lot to
Speaker 1: the media center. And I and he had on you know,
Speaker 1: yacht on his suit and tie and and he was gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, he was gonna write. He was gonna do
Speaker 1: TV and then he was gonna write a story overnight,
Speaker 1: and then he was gonna fly back to you know,
Speaker 1: back to to Orlando to do you know, Monday TV.
Speaker 1: And I said, Tim, you know, you don't what are
Speaker 1: you doing? Like, you don't need to work this hard.
Speaker 1: You're gonna you know, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: run your batteries down. You're gonna kill yourself. And and
Speaker 1: and I want you, I said, I want you to
Speaker 1: know I appreciate everything that you've done for Golf World
Speaker 1: and and and and how important you are to the
Speaker 1: magazine and everything you can, but you don't. If you
Speaker 1: all you have to do is tell me I can't
Speaker 1: do the writing anymore. I just want to do the
Speaker 1: TV and I will understand no hard feelings. And he
Speaker 1: looked at me like I had three heads, you know.
Speaker 1: Um so I never you know, I never had. I
Speaker 1: mean had a lot of people that worked for me
Speaker 1: as you know that that were hard to manage and
Speaker 1: tricky to manage, and you had to find ways to
Speaker 1: motivate them. Um Tim was Tim was never that guy,
Speaker 1: not not one, not one single day. You know. The
Speaker 1: only the only time you ever had to give Tim
Speaker 1: a pep talk was when he when he occasionally felt, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like he wasn't good enough, which which is
Speaker 1: which is lappable. It sounds it's silly, you know, it's
Speaker 1: really silly. But but that's where he that's where that
Speaker 1: incredible energy and in his incredible output, that's where it
Speaker 1: all came from. Was just trying to always trying to
Speaker 1: prove himself. Meanwhile, Gary Williams, one of the original hosts
Speaker 1: of Golf Channel's Morning Drive, was one of many who
Speaker 1: benefited from Tim's lead blocking. Williams made a successful break
Speaker 1: from radio to TV. I love television, and I love
Speaker 1: sports television, and I love the history of people who
Speaker 1: blaze trails for others, and Tim is is in a
Speaker 1: category that I think is very particular and very special.
Speaker 1: I consider will McDonough that the grandfather of information men
Speaker 1: who took the printed word and put it in the
Speaker 1: visual medium. And then Peter Gammon's did the same thing
Speaker 1: in baseball, and coincidentally, from the same newspaper, the Boston Globe,
Speaker 1: Peter Vessey started doing it in basketball. Tim Roosevefort was
Speaker 1: Golf's version of the insider and the one who took
Speaker 1: the print journalism man and put him in front of
Speaker 1: a camera and he just opened up that notebook. Here's
Speaker 1: Phil Nicholson on Tim's transition. Yeah. So Tim rosy Fort
Speaker 1: really was the first to kind of transition with the
Speaker 1: times and with the media, going from print and then
Speaker 1: moving into video and television. And he did such a
Speaker 1: great job. He lost a lot of weight, he got
Speaker 1: physically fit, He had a unique look when he went
Speaker 1: to the shaved head uh and he just uh. He
Speaker 1: was a very attractive guy. He looked twenty years younger
Speaker 1: than his actual age. I can't believe he's sixty six.
Speaker 1: He looks forty five even even the last time I
Speaker 1: saw him. And he was able to articulate as well
Speaker 1: as he could write. He was able to inflect and
Speaker 1: keep you interesting. Will also uh getting the point across.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to do. Some people are great with
Speaker 1: the written words and people are great verbalizing things. And
Speaker 1: he was great doing both. And he really transcended into
Speaker 1: the video world and was the first to do it,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people followed what he was able
Speaker 1: to do it. I don't know if anybody followed quite
Speaker 1: as well or eloquently as he did, but he was.
Speaker 1: He was brilliant in being able to transition his career
Speaker 1: as as social media. Different media's came into play back
Speaker 1: to Heimie Diaz, who stayed pure print and internet a
Speaker 1: little longer than most great reporters and writers, mainly because
Speaker 1: he had a position at Golf Digest in Golf World
Speaker 1: that afforded him less urgency to diversify his platform portfolio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Tim was a reporter, but he wasn't just a reporter.
Speaker 1: He had a look, he had a delivery. He had
Speaker 1: a presence on the air. He cultivated it, uh in
Speaker 1: a in a very professional way with his look and
Speaker 1: stayed in shape. He looked good. Um. He always wanted
Speaker 1: to learn and get better. He also studied what his
Speaker 1: niche should be and that's really, I think so important
Speaker 1: in television because it's so collaborative and it's such a um,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a positional specialization that that is
Speaker 1: demanded sometimes and he had that, you know. He he
Speaker 1: was the guy that could get anybody UM on deadline
Speaker 1: with the phone number, with the guy calling him back
Speaker 1: with the you know, UM, the access to UM a
Speaker 1: particular player that may not talk to anybody else. Those
Speaker 1: were really important things in print and in TV. But
Speaker 1: they really suited TV in a unique way because nobody
Speaker 1: else had that, and to be honest, no one else
Speaker 1: since really has to the same extent. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he liked he liked just presenting. I talked to this guy,
Speaker 1: I got him, here's what he said, and leaving it
Speaker 1: at that. He didn't need to offer his opinion, he
Speaker 1: didn't need to interpret it. He just wanted to put
Speaker 1: it out there for the other guys on the desk.
Speaker 1: To talk about it, and so it was all very
Speaker 1: clean and we're beautifully and you know, there was never
Speaker 1: enough of that. I mean, as far as the Golf
Speaker 1: Channel was concerned, it was like, hey, Roosevelt could get him,
Speaker 1: you know, and we we saw the starting with President
Speaker 1: Obama all the way down, you know, people that nobody
Speaker 1: else could get. Uh And so you know, yes he
Speaker 1: broke he broke a barrier, but in his own way,
Speaker 1: in a way that has has not been equaled in
Speaker 1: terms of that um, that particular specialty. I would imagine
Speaker 1: you build lineups around guys like that, right, you do.
Speaker 1: He's like a part of the starting lineup. And that
Speaker 1: gets me excited because I can think about alive from
Speaker 1: a major championship desk and you've got someone like a
Speaker 1: Rich Learner, the anchor, the quarterback, and you've got a
Speaker 1: Brandle Shamblee who's analyzing, and then you wanted Tim on
Speaker 1: that desk because Tim was going to tell you everything
Speaker 1: you needed to know about the players. Brandle was going
Speaker 1: to analyze, but Tim was going to tell you about
Speaker 1: the person and that was equally as important. I remember
Speaker 1: when I first got too Golf Channel in I moved
Speaker 1: Tim into the Sunday night golf centrals because you wanted
Speaker 1: to know who the guy was or the woman was,
Speaker 1: who life who's life changed that day walking up the
Speaker 1: team fairway and winning a PGA Tour and LPG Tour
Speaker 1: title for the first time. And you knew, right Matt
Speaker 1: he could get anybody on the phone and he would
Speaker 1: find out where they went to high school, what sport
Speaker 1: they played, and what car they drove their first car
Speaker 1: like he always fleshed out a story and made it entertaining.
Speaker 1: Safe to say, Mark Mulvoy, who after retiring from Sports Illustrated,
Speaker 1: has not stopped playing and watching a lot of golf,
Speaker 1: will always be one of Rosafort's biggest fans. What I
Speaker 1: used to love. You know, you'd be watching on when
Speaker 1: Timmy was I guess it was NBC he was doing,
Speaker 1: was an NBC. He'd be doing the NBC thing, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it be some guy that nobody
Speaker 1: ever heard of, you know, Charlie Slumbakavitz from South Peoria Falls, Idaho.
Speaker 1: Suddenly he'd be within four shots of the lead, and
Speaker 1: they said, oh my gosh, this is slumback of its
Speaker 1: four shots within the lead. Tim what do you know
Speaker 1: about him. Tibby would tell you that when he was
Speaker 1: a little league third base, when he had a home
Speaker 1: run against the future Major League picture picture that he dated,
Speaker 1: he took his date to the senior prom was this
Speaker 1: he hit that? I mean, you knew more about this
Speaker 1: kid than anybody in the world. Of course, maybe the
Speaker 1: kid the next day shot eighty four. But the point
Speaker 1: is Timmy provided instant information. But he knew what he
Speaker 1: was talking about. It wasn't something off the top of
Speaker 1: his head. I mean he was missed a fact toy
Speaker 1: for the networks, which is what I really wanted it
Speaker 1: to be. For Sports Illustrated. Well, Gary Williams is the
Speaker 1: king of recall. He respected Rosafford's rolodex. He always has
Speaker 1: been so unassuming about all the things that he's accomplished
Speaker 1: in his career that he never liked hearing this, But
Speaker 1: it's the truth. There's nobody else walking earth who has
Speaker 1: every phone number of every living number of the World
Speaker 1: Golf Hall of Fame. I think he's the only one,
Speaker 1: and he's the only one Matt that if he calls
Speaker 1: or texts that they're all calling him back. Now there's
Speaker 1: a there's a handful of guys and every Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame members like, I'm not calling him back, but Rosie,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? The king of the callbacks, Why
Speaker 1: you being on the other side and one of the
Speaker 1: most prominent players in modern golf, why would you called
Speaker 1: him back? So I would always called him back because
Speaker 1: he would fact checked and he would want to know
Speaker 1: the truth, and you would when you when you told
Speaker 1: ask some things to be looked this as sensitive, I
Speaker 1: don't really want to be on the record about this.
Speaker 1: He would respect that, and he wasn't trying to tear
Speaker 1: anybody down. He would present the facts based on his knowledge.
Speaker 1: And because people trusted him, they were more open with
Speaker 1: them and they and that's why he was so great
Speaker 1: at what he did as far as being an inside
Speaker 1: of me gave a golf because he earned players trust.
Speaker 1: He earned people's trust in the golf business and was
Speaker 1: able to uh to gather knowledge and insight because of that.
Speaker 1: And he he handled it with as he would present
Speaker 1: it to the public. He handled it delicately that such
Speaker 1: in situations that could be a little bit sticky, he
Speaker 1: always had a real classy way of presenting it. Lanny
Speaker 1: Watkins always called Tim back as a player, you ended
Speaker 1: up with writers you could trust, you know, if you will, Okay,
Speaker 1: Tim Rosefort was always one I could trust. I mean,
Speaker 1: I get a kick out of telling people about Jeff Rude.
Speaker 1: That know, Jeff Rude. You know Jeff Rude. Rude was
Speaker 1: the Dallas Morning News golf Friday when I was rather
Speaker 1: kept captain, and Rude warmed me out. Wanted my captain's picks.
Speaker 1: I mean, he had to have these picks before I
Speaker 1: announced him the morning answer the PJ because he wanted
Speaker 1: to have in the paper. He gave me such a
Speaker 1: hard time about it. I gave him the wrong names
Speaker 1: he had. Rude would love that. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: Rosefort does that. I Tim would call me about things
Speaker 1: and he and I would talk. I would be the
Speaker 1: off the record guy, if you will, for Tim on
Speaker 1: a lot of things. He would ask me questions. I said, Timmy, no,
Speaker 1: I really can't have my name out there about that.
Speaker 1: But if you here's the deal, here's the school, here's
Speaker 1: what happened. Back to Russell on the subject of Ryder
Speaker 1: Cup captains, you know what a big deal it is
Speaker 1: when the PGA of America decides who the next rider
Speaker 1: Cup captain is going to be you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: like a big story to them. It's a big story
Speaker 1: in golf. It may it may seem like well it
Speaker 1: you know, after a couple of days, it's maybe not
Speaker 1: such a big story. That was a big story. And
Speaker 1: three or four years and three or four times in
Speaker 1: a row, Tim figured out. Tim got the name of
Speaker 1: the Ryder Cup captain before before anybody else. I think
Speaker 1: at least one of you know that Tom wat When
Speaker 1: when when Tom Watson became the captain before Glenn Eagles.
Speaker 1: Tim was the guy who got that story. And that
Speaker 1: was the most remarkable one because nobody saw Tom Watson coming,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody saw Ted Bishop was gonna was gonna
Speaker 1: pick Tom Watson. And and I remember we were at
Speaker 1: the Golf Channel then and Tim came to me and said,
Speaker 1: you know, told me that he had And I was like, Tim,
Speaker 1: what are you talking to? Like I think you're wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, I told me, I don't know, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be Tom Watson, right, And he was right. And but
Speaker 1: the but the thing I'll never forget is that he
Speaker 1: became he really became a a thorn in the side
Speaker 1: of the PGA of America. The PGA of America loved
Speaker 1: Tim Roseford. You know. They they were in West Palm.
Speaker 1: Tim lived in West Palm and it was like a
Speaker 1: hometown thing. But man, they wanted to keep that secret
Speaker 1: until they could, you know, introduce the captain themselves. You know,
Speaker 1: they themselves like they wanted that's something they wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And Tim kept finding out and breaking the story, and
Speaker 1: and they and and they would get like, you know,
Speaker 1: they would get so angry and upset about it, and
Speaker 1: and there's just nothing they could do. He was he
Speaker 1: was too good a report and had you know, his
Speaker 1: sources were too impeccable. Um that you know, we had
Speaker 1: to we had to talk about something else. Act they
Speaker 1: would just get Uh. Here's Matt Haggerty of The Golf
Speaker 1: Channel for more on Tim's impact on the types of
Speaker 1: breaking news that went from the Ticker to Twitter and
Speaker 1: vice versa. The one that always sticks out to me
Speaker 1: was Dustin Johnson and the Masters when he when he
Speaker 1: fell down the steps. You know, Um, you know Tim was,
Speaker 1: you know, we were, you know, we were on the air.
Speaker 1: It was I think we were. I think we were.
Speaker 1: It was weather that day and we were trying to
Speaker 1: tape the show, so we were like in this tape mode,
Speaker 1: so we were just trying to get the show to air.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden Tim calls and he says, hey,
Speaker 1: Dustin Johnson just fell down a flight of steps and
Speaker 1: it's questionable whether he's going to be able to play
Speaker 1: the Masters. And then the next thing, you know, Tim
Speaker 1: was on the phone with all these different people, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it was Claude Harmon or Butch Harmon or David Winkle,
Speaker 1: whoever it was, you know, all these people on the
Speaker 1: inner circle of Dustin Johnson and um. And it was
Speaker 1: a big story because Dustin was, you know favorite, I
Speaker 1: mean he was he was number one player in world.
Speaker 1: He was favored to win the Masters. I mean it
Speaker 1: was huge, and he just it was a really big
Speaker 1: story and he covered it and he had it all
Speaker 1: and it was there was and then he delivers it perfectly,
Speaker 1: you know, on air, and it all happened like boom boom,
Speaker 1: boom boom. It all happened really fast, and we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had that Golf Channel wouldn't have been as good
Speaker 1: that day. If we didn't have Tim roaster Ford, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been good and we were great that night
Speaker 1: because we had Tim. So that's the difference cut to
Speaker 1: I'll never forget the day I noticed that there might
Speaker 1: be an issue. We were on set together at Morning
Speaker 1: Drive and we did a segment with Damon Hack. Although
Speaker 1: I've been victim of and witnessed to several glitches in memory,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to live TV, but I saw
Speaker 1: that day in from Tim was something different. Something wasn't right.
Speaker 1: As we all emptied into the hallway outside of Studio AP,
Speaker 1: I asked the Arna Palmer of our industry if he
Speaker 1: felt okay. He said he did. Damon Hack and e
Speaker 1: Sidebard about what we had seen. We were both concerned
Speaker 1: but not sure what to do about it. As the
Speaker 1: story goes, he was at Pebble for the US Open
Speaker 1: and things were just so far off and disoriented that
Speaker 1: Jeff Russell called Genevieve and said, we've got to send
Speaker 1: Tim home. It's just we were really concerned about him,
Speaker 1: and was the point basically when his career as he
Speaker 1: knew it came to a close. That week at Pebble,
Speaker 1: Tim forgot Webb Simpson had won the US Open. He
Speaker 1: forgot the U s g A changed their playoff policy,
Speaker 1: and when asked to chase down some information on Nate Lashley,
Speaker 1: who was finishing in early round near the top of
Speaker 1: the leaderboard, Tim burst into the scores tend in search
Speaker 1: of an interview. Tim, of all people, knew the Scorers
Speaker 1: trailer is off limits to the media. Matt Haggerty with
Speaker 1: his perspective, it's almost like, why didn't we say something sooner?
Speaker 1: You know, like, but there was so much. You know,
Speaker 1: Television is such a television is such a fucked up
Speaker 1: world at times, you know, and you don't and you
Speaker 1: and and and it it can be there can be
Speaker 1: tons of insecurity in it. There's tons of pressure involved
Speaker 1: in it. And I think at for a long time
Speaker 1: we just thought that, you know, this is part of
Speaker 1: the business. You know, it's stressful. You know, you're looking
Speaker 1: over your shoulder and there's you know, and there's pressure
Speaker 1: to get things and get things right and get things
Speaker 1: right on time and quick and fast. You know, like
Speaker 1: there's so much and I think that so much of
Speaker 1: of some of the early signs we saw, we just thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's the pressure. And once, you know, like once we
Speaker 1: get through this, you know it's gonna get better and
Speaker 1: once we get through this, it'll get better. And then
Speaker 1: it it didn't, and it manifested itself in a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways, like asking the same question a couple
Speaker 1: of different times, and then you're like, why is he
Speaker 1: asking that question? Is he asking me that question because
Speaker 1: he wants to make sure he gets it right? Or
Speaker 1: is he forget it? And there's a fine line because
Speaker 1: some people ask questions because they want to make sure
Speaker 1: they they've got it right right, And you're always telling people,
Speaker 1: if you've got any questions, make sure you ask right,
Speaker 1: Like if you got any if she asked, so he's asking,
Speaker 1: and so you walk away. I get answered that question
Speaker 1: a few times. Was he just trying to get rock
Speaker 1: solid on that m again, that was a sign more
Speaker 1: from Himie dis When I heard about Tim's diagnosis for Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a terrible shock, and it was
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario, obviously, because there was concerned that
Speaker 1: that Tim in some ways was losing some cognitive skills
Speaker 1: um for whatever reason. And uh it had been going
Speaker 1: on gradually for about a year. UM it certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: to the point where he was unpresentable on TV. He
Speaker 1: was you know, masking it. Well, it was bothering him
Speaker 1: that he was starting to forget a little bit more.
Speaker 1: He went to get checked out. Um, he was told
Speaker 1: it was anxiety. Um. You know, we were all concerned.
Speaker 1: We knew he played football. You know, you wondered, CTE,
Speaker 1: could there be some kind of progressive problem physiologically and UM,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. UM, I didn't really consider Alzheimer's because
Speaker 1: that just seems as if, um, it's it's more uh, well,
Speaker 1: obviously it's just more grave. And I guess I didn't
Speaker 1: want to let myself go there. Um. And Tim was
Speaker 1: in denial a bit about not about Alzheimer's, but about
Speaker 1: the possible issues. You know, he wanted it to be anxiety.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be something he could correct, something he
Speaker 1: could deal with, and and he was talking to specialists
Speaker 1: and he thought he was making progress. And he and
Speaker 1: I had a lot of conversations, you know, just about
Speaker 1: how to relax. Not that I was any model of
Speaker 1: relaxation or am on television, but I was sitting next
Speaker 1: to him, and you know, I knew it was going
Speaker 1: to be a struggle for whatever reason. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've seen him on the golf course sometimes get anxious, uh,
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, just getting his own way
Speaker 1: about the golf swing or whatever. And you know, it
Speaker 1: was a strength and a weakness for him to be
Speaker 1: so conscious of, you know, how to get better, how
Speaker 1: to get better, and always be you know, focused on that,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it helps you get better to care so much,
Speaker 1: but it can help me get worse. Two to to
Speaker 1: not be able to forget in the moment that you know,
Speaker 1: all those things that you've been worried about. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to Jeff Russell. The diagnosis was crushing. I mean
Speaker 1: it was crushing, but a little part of me was like,
Speaker 1: I'm it explains a lot, you know, to find out
Speaker 1: that he's got a medical condition explains a lot because
Speaker 1: what I saw, you know, what I saw happening in
Speaker 1: the last year could not have been you know, it
Speaker 1: just wasn't the Tim Roseford. I I knew, you know
Speaker 1: it and and um, but but yeah, you know, if
Speaker 1: it it's it's uh, he is such a great storyteller.
Speaker 1: And it's and the really sad thing is too, is
Speaker 1: he's got you know, he gets Alzheimer's, which is impacts
Speaker 1: the storyteller, right, um, and and and really damages that
Speaker 1: and now Jim Nance, who had gotten involved after it
Speaker 1: was clear everyone needed definitive answers. Nance's father died of Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand eleven, in his father's honor, he
Speaker 1: created the Nance National Alzheimer Center, which since it opened
Speaker 1: has become a world leader in alzheimer research. The hospital
Speaker 1: in Houston treats thousands of patients a year, with goals
Speaker 1: to prevent the disease, slow down memory loss, and improve
Speaker 1: the quality of life for their patients. Tim, along with
Speaker 1: his wife and daughter Molly, went to Houston for almost
Speaker 1: a week for a series of tests and analysis. Nance
Speaker 1: picked up the bill for everything that wasn't covered by insurance.
Speaker 1: Has been a friend of mine for a long long time.
Speaker 1: But all of a sudden you start hearing from the
Speaker 1: pulse banglers and that Davis testiness of the world. And
Speaker 1: I hate to even just start rattling off names because
Speaker 1: there were many many people said, he have you heard
Speaker 1: about Tim? What can you do? I mean, instantly I
Speaker 1: got on the phone called Genevieve. I had met her
Speaker 1: and his daughters years ago. I remember when the girls
Speaker 1: were young, and how proud of father he was, and
Speaker 1: how great father and husband he is um And I said, Genevieve,
Speaker 1: please please let me just get you at says to
Speaker 1: our people down in Houston. Let's let's get Tim to
Speaker 1: Houston and we can get a game plan going and
Speaker 1: we can try to give him the best care and
Speaker 1: give him a chance and give him hope. In an
Speaker 1: effort to try and educate all of us on this
Speaker 1: horrific disease. Nance put me in touch with his lead
Speaker 1: doctor in Houston, Dr Stanley Appell, a specialist in neurology
Speaker 1: and neuromuscular medicine. Well, Alzheimer's is a very difficult proposition.
Speaker 1: It's been difficult for patients, it's been difficult for families,
Speaker 1: and it's really been hard for the medical profession to
Speaker 1: come up with a meaningful therapy. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: at present, there are truly no meaningful therapies. And the
Speaker 1: difficulty is this isn't just a diagnosis of an individual patient.
Speaker 1: This is a diagnosis that affects the whole family. The
Speaker 1: old family is implicated. You know, during the early stages
Speaker 1: of Alzheimer's, the patient is aware at the earliest stage,
Speaker 1: the family might not be aware, and only the patient
Speaker 1: might be aware, but as you progress through the varying stages,
Speaker 1: it turns out that the family is aware and the
Speaker 1: patient is aware. And then we get to what I
Speaker 1: consider the most horrific part of it, when the patient
Speaker 1: is not aware and the family and friends and loved
Speaker 1: ones so totally aware, and you can't connect. And that's
Speaker 1: the difficulty. This interview was almost a year ago. Dr
Speaker 1: Appelle was incredibly generous with his time, and I'll follow
Speaker 1: up this podcast with much more on the disease itself
Speaker 1: from both Nance and dr Appelle, but for now here
Speaker 1: he is on the indicators. Is there a few things
Speaker 1: you give people to look forward to better educate them
Speaker 1: about this? Hey, it's time to go see a doctor. Well, look,
Speaker 1: the experience is an interesting one. When you forget a
Speaker 1: few things, we usually say, Okay, I've forgotten something, big deal.
Speaker 1: I'm just getting a little older. Well does that happen? Sure? Uh,
Speaker 1: But then people don't act on that. Patients don't act
Speaker 1: on that, families don't act on that, and you keep waiting.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, in the old days, you would wait until
Speaker 1: people were acting out when they weren't themselves, and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's hit the emotional stage. Therefore, I need to get
Speaker 1: him to the doctor to quiet things down. I think
Speaker 1: we're a lot better about this now. So Ah, could
Speaker 1: there be strong oakes causing this? Sure? Could there be
Speaker 1: sleep at me and causing it? Sure? So the problem
Speaker 1: is any symptom I give you could have multiple explanations.
Speaker 1: All I would say is we need informed patients, and
Speaker 1: we need informed physicians who don't make the assumption that
Speaker 1: everything is a stroke or everything is anxiety depression, which
Speaker 1: people are too easy to implicate. I asked Nance for
Speaker 1: his advice on how to best handle the situation in
Speaker 1: which a loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I just
Speaker 1: got to the point where I savored every stage with
Speaker 1: my dad, even though I would say, for the last
Speaker 1: five years you couldn't really tell, like even knew who
Speaker 1: you were. But you know, the next year would come
Speaker 1: around and you think, man, I wish he was at
Speaker 1: the stage it was a year ago. No. I quickly
Speaker 1: learned that you have to like realize what you have
Speaker 1: that moment. It's it's as good as it's going to be,
Speaker 1: because it's only gonna continue to go down a path
Speaker 1: where it just it worsens, So savor, savor the moment,
Speaker 1: take it for what it is. They're trying their harness.
Speaker 1: I used to look at my dad and think that
Speaker 1: somewhere inside of him, he knows exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: He just can't respond. He doesn't have the ability to
Speaker 1: connect everything and show you that he's hearing you and
Speaker 1: he wants to. I was trying to do some reading
Speaker 1: is to how I should communicate with tim and not
Speaker 1: try to make him feel frustrated that he can't remember
Speaker 1: and or just fill in the gaps for them prior
Speaker 1: to even teeing them up for a story. Like I
Speaker 1: just struggle with that, and I wonder, am I what
Speaker 1: do I need to be doing right or wrong to
Speaker 1: before we to that? And I'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Everyone asked me to predict the future, doc
Speaker 1: how long is my loved one done it? When is
Speaker 1: it going to be worth everything? And we can't do it,
Speaker 1: none of us can do it because everyone is different.
Speaker 1: So that's the first issue. One day at a time,
Speaker 1: you know, that's all we're given, one day at a time.
Speaker 1: So the one day at a time implies patience. It's
Speaker 1: patience on the family's part. It's patient on the loved
Speaker 1: ones part, it's patient on the great friends part. So
Speaker 1: we don't have to remind people that they're slipping. They
Speaker 1: know it at early stages. You know it. Uh, Let's
Speaker 1: not try and make them smarter, because it's frustrating for them,
Speaker 1: frustrating for you. Let's remember a couple of things. Number one,
Speaker 1: most patients with Alzheimer's have great memory of things thirty
Speaker 1: years ago. It's very comforting. Music is very comforting. So
Speaker 1: let's take out the picture alboom of what it was
Speaker 1: like thirty years ago, when we were young, when we
Speaker 1: did daring things. That's comforting. It's comforting for the patient,
Speaker 1: it's comforting for you as a great friend. Music, music
Speaker 1: that you all love. Amazing to me how music and
Speaker 1: dancing at some of our centers is an effective way
Speaker 1: to keep patients involved, happy and remembering what days were like.
Speaker 1: So when you lose function, you lose the most recent function.
Speaker 1: What did I have for breakfast? What did I do yesterday?
Speaker 1: What did I do the day before? That happens to
Speaker 1: all of us anyway. But when we go back twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty years, we may forget the name, but we
Speaker 1: don't forget the experience. We don't ever forget. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not what you said that I remember. It's how
Speaker 1: you made me feel that you don't forget and that
Speaker 1: you can relate to. And guess what, even patients with
Speaker 1: alzheimas can relate to that. So there's no reason to
Speaker 1: challenge anyone to remember anything yesterday or the day before.
Speaker 1: Get in their comfort zone and really address their comfort
Speaker 1: zone so their days can be better. Well. Nance was
Speaker 1: getting rosfort access to his hospital and doctors. The rest
Speaker 1: of us were doing the best we could to connect
Speaker 1: with our friend. By the summer of Tim and I
Speaker 1: had both been bought out of our golf channel contracts
Speaker 1: NBC and Molly Solomon, the channel's executive producer, honored the
Speaker 1: full two years Tim had left on his deal, which
Speaker 1: meant a lot to him and his family. I had
Speaker 1: the time and opportunity to make the same drive Timid
Speaker 1: made so often over the course of his career, Orlando
Speaker 1: to Palm Beach. I picked him up at his house
Speaker 1: on Sunday afternoons and we would play The Palm Beach
Speaker 1: Part three. The course would give us the run of
Speaker 1: the place. Tony the pro never charged us. Patrick the
Speaker 1: starter always had a cart waiting. We jump around, hit
Speaker 1: some shots, drink a beer, have some fun. If it
Speaker 1: was too hot, we just sit at the bar and
Speaker 1: eat lunch. It was a series of Sundays with Rosie,
Speaker 1: started with the par and ended with the par How
Speaker 1: good is that, Jenny Hawk? Where are you? Man? You've
Speaker 1: been mad at that one? That would have won you
Speaker 1: a lot? Think too bad? Do? I hope you're doing
Speaker 1: Bill doing will and I miss you. We had some
Speaker 1: good times on the road. I'm not so good times.
Speaker 1: That's what l's all about, right, amen, buddy. I was
Speaker 1: often joined on these trips by Jeff Russell, Craig Dulch,
Speaker 1: Davis Sesna, and Matt Haggarty. I'll never ever forget that day,
Speaker 1: you know. I'll never ever forget that day. I won't.
Speaker 1: I won't, you know, from picking him up, from driving
Speaker 1: from driving down and not knowing if we were actually
Speaker 1: going to meet him that morning, UM to him coming
Speaker 1: out getting in your car. You couldn't move because you
Speaker 1: just had a spinal tap um a few days earlier,
Speaker 1: so you still sore. Breakfast He was funny. He drank
Speaker 1: a lot of iced tea that morning. And then over
Speaker 1: to the Atlantic Ocean, sitting there looking at it, talking,
Speaker 1: remembering it, crying, laughing, and then I remember him asking
Speaker 1: for beers. He wanted to go good beer. So we
Speaker 1: went back. We had a couple of beers. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a really it was a beautiful day, you know.
Speaker 1: And then at the very end and it was like
Speaker 1: the whole thing, everything was like everything was all right,
Speaker 1: and like all day, everything was all right, all morning,
Speaker 1: everything was all right. And then we get out of
Speaker 1: the car and it's been you and me and tim
Speaker 1: all day. And I get out. I was sitting in
Speaker 1: the back and I get out of the car and
Speaker 1: Timmy has gotten out of the car and we were
Speaker 1: walking and he turned around. He looked at me and
Speaker 1: he says, hey, is is there anybody in the car.
Speaker 1: I need to say goodbye to you guys. Let's do
Speaker 1: this again. Yes, I hope too, buddy. I'm gonna be down.
Speaker 1: I'm around with so I'm gonna come back now cool
Speaker 1: one O nine and just make sure you didn't Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll come and ask you. I love you guys. I
Speaker 1: can get a lift through this. Oh yeah, we're going
Speaker 1: through it. It I missed him Rosafort. Besides the occasional FaceTime,
Speaker 1: and because my family and I moved to San Diego.
Speaker 1: The last time I saw him was in November, the
Speaker 1: weekend of his second daughter's wedding. It was so good
Speaker 1: to watch him see Molly get married to Mason. They
Speaker 1: had moved up. To date, the SESNA has hosted it
Speaker 1: and it was an incredibly special evening in Palm Beach.
Speaker 1: Here's more from Davis. Sesna first and foremost is a
Speaker 1: great friend of mine. I'm I'm blessed to have him
Speaker 1: as a friend, and I'm flattered, Uh that he calls
Speaker 1: me a friend. Uh. And he he is a giver. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're givers and takers in life. And Tim has always
Speaker 1: been a giver. Even when he was on the taking
Speaker 1: side of an interview where he had to get a
Speaker 1: story out. Uh, he was giving of his heart and
Speaker 1: respect to the questions. Uh and to the performance. Uh.
Speaker 1: He has done that. You know. He and Genevieve been
Speaker 1: married a long time with beautiful kids. Uh. And uh
Speaker 1: he uh Uh he never hung out after the show.
Speaker 1: He most half the time I would talk to Tim,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it was with you. Tim was on
Speaker 1: the road between Orlando and West Palm Beach. That was
Speaker 1: the time he had to talk because he wanted to
Speaker 1: get home to the family. Uh and uh Uh this
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's for Tim is devastating for him and us because
Speaker 1: we've sort of felt he was just coming into his
Speaker 1: celebrated years of being a journalist where he was getting
Speaker 1: the best stories. Uh. He could walk into any door
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world. He had achieved the respect and notoriety,
Speaker 1: Uh to perform at the level he always wanted. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then it it just shut him down. It's not right.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh it just hurts. Uh. We love the
Speaker 1: guy and he he so wants to be back, and
Speaker 1: you and and when you talk to him, you so
Speaker 1: want him to be back, and he can't be And
Speaker 1: and that's painful. Roseford had an aggressive case of the
Speaker 1: horrific disease and as a result, he fell. He broke
Speaker 1: his hip, and that only exacerbated his decline. Prior to
Speaker 1: the fall, a wide variet idea of his friends would
Speaker 1: visit Tim. Here's Bob Ford again, the pro It's seminar
Speaker 1: in Oakmont, who would see Tim on a regular basis
Speaker 1: during the opens at Oakmont. You know, he would stay
Speaker 1: with me, and we had a gal that would cook
Speaker 1: for everybody that week. And you know, he came home
Speaker 1: late as you like you would, and you know, ten
Speaker 1: ten thirty eleven, I'm already in bed. I'm not waiting
Speaker 1: up for him. And this guy was so enthralled with
Speaker 1: who he was, and he was so sweet to her,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, and she waited up for him
Speaker 1: and cook, you know, heat his food up for him,
Speaker 1: and he'd eat and go to bed, and uh so
Speaker 1: we didn't get a chance to talk a lot during
Speaker 1: that week, you know, a week of the U S Open.
Speaker 1: He's obviously and we're both busy, but you know, those
Speaker 1: were great times that we had together. And we played
Speaker 1: a lot of golf together. He's come over to Seminal
Speaker 1: a lot to hit some balls with me, and we've
Speaker 1: had a few lunches this uh this season together with
Speaker 1: a few of the guys that he knows, and you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's incredibly engaging and he's timmy pretty much during
Speaker 1: the whole time. You know, you know, when they leave,
Speaker 1: you know, tell me again his name and and things
Speaker 1: like that. But all in all, I think he's been
Speaker 1: doing really well. John Hawkins would send Tim video messages
Speaker 1: which I'd played for Tim while we were on the
Speaker 1: golf course. To the man who taught me more about
Speaker 1: being a golf writer than anybody on earth, the man
Speaker 1: who got me on more great golf courses for free
Speaker 1: than anybody on earth than any twenty five people on earth.
Speaker 1: To my hero, my friend, my idol, one of the
Speaker 1: greatest men I've ever met, t Rose. How about that
Speaker 1: put on eight team bro? Oh my goodness, we could
Speaker 1: have used that at Hillside, as Mattie G pointed out,
Speaker 1: You slept Mattie G upside of the head for that
Speaker 1: with Mattie Gee, huge shout out for sending me a
Speaker 1: video And Tim, I love you, brother, I miss you.
Speaker 1: I talked to Rude as soon as I got previous movie.
Speaker 1: We're both thinking of you. We both love you. You've
Speaker 1: been such a huge part of our lives. You get better,
Speaker 1: you hang in there, you hang tough. I know you will,
Speaker 1: because you don't know any other way. One of the
Speaker 1: hardest working guys I've ever been around, probably the most
Speaker 1: influential journalists in my career. Tim Rosafort. I can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough. Brother. There's anything I can do to make
Speaker 1: your life better. Please give me a shout. I love you,
Speaker 1: talk to you soon. Take care. Tim would often ask
Speaker 1: to fire back. Johnny Hawk here with t Rose Palm
Speaker 1: Beach Part three. I told him you gave him a
Speaker 1: call today and wish him nothing but the best. Kenny,
Speaker 1: where are you been? Man? I miss you and nobody
Speaker 1: to fight against him with the last ten years. So
Speaker 1: let's taking this little injury minor maybe potential setback to
Speaker 1: move up to a couple of teas Grandpa tease you
Speaker 1: used today anyway, right tell Ruda said, Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: let's spend some time together. I was talking about you
Speaker 1: a couple of times in the last month. It's people,
Speaker 1: and here you are, Johnny huk H is just like yesterday,
Speaker 1: Johnny Off. Yeah, come check me out. Man. The guy
Speaker 1: with all the memories doesn't get to share him and
Speaker 1: that's horrible. But you know, life is not fair, and
Speaker 1: this is just yet another very grim and nasty reminder
Speaker 1: of that. Of that premise, here's Heimie Diaz on his
Speaker 1: last trip to see Tim. You went and saw him
Speaker 1: not not that long ago, right a Stow in September
Speaker 1: the last time. And what was that like? Well, he
Speaker 1: was in the facility near his home. He was when
Speaker 1: I uh, you know, he was watching television. Uh he
Speaker 1: was dressed land in bed, uh a little a blanket
Speaker 1: over him. He was to get chills. He was watching
Speaker 1: a college football game. I walked in and uh, the
Speaker 1: nurse that had brought me up to his room said,
Speaker 1: a friend of yours is here, and he didn't respond,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh gosh, I'm too late. And then
Speaker 1: you know, about a minute later, he goes, hey, what
Speaker 1: are you doing here? Iimi, and he recognized me. It
Speaker 1: was odd, and I guess, you know, consciousness and recognition
Speaker 1: and you know, all the cognitive things that fly in
Speaker 1: and out with Alzheimer's are kind of random. So then
Speaker 1: we uh, I said, hey, man, great to see you.
Speaker 1: You know how you know, kept it light obviously, um.
Speaker 1: And even though you know, his short term memory was
Speaker 1: was poor and and he was kind of watching the
Speaker 1: game and this sort of you know, erratic way. We
Speaker 1: were talking about old days and those those conversations they
Speaker 1: weren't long ones, but they were coaching, you know, and
Speaker 1: you'd have a nice little you know, three or forward,
Speaker 1: uh retort to something, or he'd laugh if he remembered
Speaker 1: a name or if I mentioned a name or mentioned
Speaker 1: an old story or a punchline, so you know, it
Speaker 1: was it was nice just to connect, even though I
Speaker 1: knew I probably if I came back again, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: recognize him. So um, I stayed about forty five minutes
Speaker 1: and just you know, I just sat at the foot
Speaker 1: of his bed. Um it was kind of time to go.
Speaker 1: I could tell he was getting tired, and that, you know,
Speaker 1: I told him. I started talking about you know, the
Speaker 1: business a little bit and what a great career he'd had,
Speaker 1: and I already missed him. And uh, I always remembered
Speaker 1: that when I first got started writing about golf, I
Speaker 1: was always impressed by because we were you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't making a lot, even though it's so right now,
Speaker 1: I was very very lucky to be there. It was
Speaker 1: still like a thousand bucks here or there was a
Speaker 1: big deal. And I started noticing in these tournament programs
Speaker 1: when I go to a tournament that this guy Tim
Speaker 1: Roseford always had a freelance story in there, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I knew it wasn't a staffer for the tournament,
Speaker 1: because it was at every tournament it was like five
Speaker 1: or six of them in a row. And he had
Speaker 1: been freelancing those things just out of industry and and
Speaker 1: his work ethic. And uh so I started asking about
Speaker 1: those and emulating them. And you know, I didn't do
Speaker 1: nearly as many as Sam, but I did a couple
Speaker 1: and and um I told him, I said, Tim, I
Speaker 1: followed you, Man. I followed you. I followed your work ethic,
Speaker 1: I followed your industry. I followed, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: way that you just really made that that job of
Speaker 1: your life, or tried to at least, and or I
Speaker 1: tried to. And he goes, no, no, I followed you,
Speaker 1: and uh, I said, no, Tim, I followed you, and
Speaker 1: he goes, I followed you. And so it was this
Speaker 1: sort of emphatic thing that, you know, very kind of
Speaker 1: mutual admiration and and love really and so we both laughed. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you know, I just stayed. I put my hand
Speaker 1: on his put my hand on his on his ankle,
Speaker 1: and I told him I loved him and because I
Speaker 1: love you, Man, I love you, And it was sort
Speaker 1: of this you know, i'll see you again kind of voice,
Speaker 1: and and I left and yeah, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: we all you always hear about male toxicity and how
Speaker 1: we're unable to express emotion. And uh, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: always been kind of a softie anyway, but I might,
Speaker 1: I might, I might. I mean I'm not a tough guy.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that. I just meant, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you compartmentalize things away and and moments like that you
Speaker 1: realize that you're just a kid and and things touch
Speaker 1: you and it's good too. It's good to share that
Speaker 1: with another human that you've known a long time and
Speaker 1: you care about, uh, and just feel like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is life and it ends. But you know, I felt
Speaker 1: like I closed the circle and as much as possible
Speaker 1: at least. But you know, it doesn't mean that it
Speaker 1: wasn't horribly sad, but it was at least something we're
Speaker 1: all going to experience at some point. And and I
Speaker 1: thought when I left him, you know, not not because
Speaker 1: of me, but I just thought, he's at peace, He's okay,
Speaker 1: this has not been emotionally, um, something that he hasn't
Speaker 1: been able to handle. Now. Of course I didn't see
Speaker 1: all the moments, but I just got the sense that
Speaker 1: he had a good handle on on everything, that he'd
Speaker 1: lived a great life, he had a great family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was gonna be too short, but he did his best,
Speaker 1: and UM, a lot of people loved him. And because
Speaker 1: you know when I signed in and that was like
Speaker 1: a Sunday morning, I believe, um in September, and it
Speaker 1: was that it was at I think I got in there.
Speaker 1: There are three names in front of me that day,
Speaker 1: and then the day before I turned the page back
Speaker 1: there had been like six names. So people were visiting
Speaker 1: Tim constantly, and you know, everybody was doing the best
Speaker 1: they could to show him. And I think he actually
Speaker 1: knew shifting gears. And as a celebration of his life
Speaker 1: and legacy, we're circling back to get more uplifting memories
Speaker 1: and reflections from friends, colleagues, and players, starting again with
Speaker 1: Jeff Russell modern day golf writers reporters. I mean he's
Speaker 1: on the Mount rushmant for me, I think he is.
Speaker 1: You know, I think he is. I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you know modern you know you got Tim,
Speaker 1: you got him, me, you got Alan shipnuk Um. But Tim, Tim,
Speaker 1: you know, Tim was the first one to make that
Speaker 1: transition from from writing to television. And look, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, television was was probably his best medium. Um,
Speaker 1: when you talk to You talked to the producers at
Speaker 1: the Golf Channel back in probably from two thousands and
Speaker 1: two on, and they talked about how they'd be doing
Speaker 1: a show and you know, something would fall through, or
Speaker 1: this would father, something would have, you know, or somebody
Speaker 1: was late showing up for a press conference and they'd
Speaker 1: have ten or twelve minutes and they would they didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do, and they would put they would
Speaker 1: put Tim up and just say, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the TV version of empty your notebook. And he and
Speaker 1: he would, he would do it, and he would kill it.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, full of information, full of of nuggets,
Speaker 1: you know, and and it was and it really interesting TV.
Speaker 1: And he was you know, he was the first one
Speaker 1: in golf to do that. And there were you know,
Speaker 1: Adam Schefter and Tim Kirchin and Peter Gammon's and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of all the experts and other sports, but but golf.
Speaker 1: You know, in golf, Tim was you know, Tim was
Speaker 1: that guy. And Um and a lot of really good
Speaker 1: golf writers couldn't make that transition, you know, weren't weren't Um.
Speaker 1: You know, look, TV's hard, it's not it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to get up in front of a camera
Speaker 1: and and and be yourself and and and be entertaining
Speaker 1: and and you know, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: think it's easy. It's not easy. It's hard. But Tim
Speaker 1: was Tim was was really good at it, and maybe
Speaker 1: better at it than then he was, you know, working
Speaker 1: in a media center, although he was good at that too.
Speaker 1: Here's more from Imi Daz. Jim's got his own spot.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, I always measured myself from a different way,
Speaker 1: and I felt way short. And I mean there were
Speaker 1: guys and you know, friends to this day, you know
Speaker 1: who I know, you know, I just I did not
Speaker 1: have their ability of their talent, and and I'm good
Speaker 1: with that. I mean, I think we all just run
Speaker 1: our own race, you know. Um, And I've been I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm very satisfied with the race I ran. I
Speaker 1: could have run it better, but I'm just saying it
Speaker 1: was not going to approach the race a lot of guys, right,
Speaker 1: But but Tim had his own lane, you know. And uh,
Speaker 1: and you know you look back. I mean talking to
Speaker 1: Rick Riley, who was one of those guys who I
Speaker 1: would never be able to approach. He he you know,
Speaker 1: he used to call Tim trunky because the job at
Speaker 1: s I when Tim, when when Rick was doing a
Speaker 1: a major was for the other guys to go out
Speaker 1: and get stuff. And Tim was his you know, secret weapon. Nick.
Speaker 1: He was the guy that you know, he could really
Speaker 1: count on to get something from somebody who would be
Speaker 1: otherwise hard to get or in a difficult, difficult you
Speaker 1: know maybe moment where they had maybe blown it or
Speaker 1: whatever talking about player. I mean, And so he called
Speaker 1: him trunky because he said, look, I want you to
Speaker 1: be there when he opens the trunk in the morning
Speaker 1: in the parking lot and when he slams it at
Speaker 1: night and he leaves and and so that's what Tim did.
Speaker 1: But you know those files he gave the Rick, you know,
Speaker 1: we're just like for Hawk. You know, those were gold
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, nobody could do that better than Tim.
Speaker 1: More from Mark Mulvoy, I think he'd go down as
Speaker 1: as really perhaps the most intrepid reporter maybe the game
Speaker 1: has seen. It was that way both in print and
Speaker 1: on television. You know, I mean the uppiscatory rhetoric or
Speaker 1: rhetoric that I think pervades these broadcasts. They think I
Speaker 1: worry about right now and all of these but going on.
Speaker 1: Is my god, you never hear a discouraging word on
Speaker 1: any of these telecasts in any sports, you know, and
Speaker 1: the dot coms and all these major leagues. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like prov you know, state controlled media. It's really
Speaker 1: I always think I visited once in Muscow the offices
Speaker 1: that comes comes to Mulskaya Pravda. That's what when you're
Speaker 1: reading these various pro leagues, they think, say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is just you know, state controlled. And uh, Timmy
Speaker 1: was not controlled by anybody. Timmy was controlled by his instincts,
Speaker 1: and his instincts were those of a great, great, great reporter.
Speaker 1: And here's Craig Dulch. When you think about how he's
Speaker 1: been honored since this happened. You know, when the PJ
Speaker 1: of America made him the twelfth honorary lifetime member, the
Speaker 1: first journalist he was able to get the award from
Speaker 1: Jack for memorial. You know, Jim Nance presented him up
Speaker 1: at at the memorial h on the classic name the
Speaker 1: Media Room after him, they created the Tim Roseford Distinguished
Speaker 1: Writers Award. You know, all these things happened. You know,
Speaker 1: you're ste Rhode Island endowed a scholarship in his name.
Speaker 1: So there's always going to be a college student going
Speaker 1: to University of Rhode Island and Tim, there weren't a
Speaker 1: lot of college graduates in his family. He was among
Speaker 1: the first to really get serious about it. And to
Speaker 1: know that, you know, Tim has left something behind. At
Speaker 1: least he's had some time to kind of experience the
Speaker 1: love that people have for him. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the one thing that helps a little because I know,
Speaker 1: even though it can be, you know, not the same
Speaker 1: as if he was their full body and spirit, he
Speaker 1: knows that people love him. And I think that's helped
Speaker 1: him get through the last two or three years, and
Speaker 1: I know it's helped his family get through it as well.
Speaker 1: In June, Tim wasn't able to make it to Ohio
Speaker 1: to accept his award from Jack and Barbara Nicholas, so
Speaker 1: instead they made a video of Tim sitting with the Nicholases.
Speaker 1: Jim nance led to the video. Trust is an important thing,
Speaker 1: I always felt, Jack, and you know, you can't walk
Speaker 1: away from a great story, even if it was just hey,
Speaker 1: you play he worded, and so you could tell the
Speaker 1: whole story and still and and have and have a
Speaker 1: relationship with someone over the course of time, and you
Speaker 1: respect the guy his intelligence, his work ethic and where
Speaker 1: he went and what and what he did, and Tim
Speaker 1: rose Afford was that type of person still is. I'll
Speaker 1: never forget, sadly, Jack, the day that I called you
Speaker 1: to tell you what what what's going on with me? Medically?
Speaker 1: And when you talk about authenticity, Um, it couldn't have
Speaker 1: been more than than that day that we went through that. Jack.
Speaker 1: There's billions of people that love Jack, but you know,
Speaker 1: the way he handled the way he felt over that
Speaker 1: was obviously something that I don't think I'll ever forget.
Speaker 1: So thank you for everything starting from that. How bless
Speaker 1: would you Bob everything over all the time. Back to
Speaker 1: Matt Haggerty on the industry rally around Tim rose Afford,
Speaker 1: I've been so impressed with the golf world on this.
Speaker 1: I've been so impressed with the the people in this space,
Speaker 1: whether it's the U s g A or the p
Speaker 1: G A Tour or the PGA of America. Um, Jim Nance,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's a great it's a great industry,
Speaker 1: it's a great sport. It's a great sport. I think
Speaker 1: it's part of the reason why we're so attracted to
Speaker 1: the sport, and it's a great sport. We really do.
Speaker 1: I think, I do think we look out for our own.
Speaker 1: We look after our own, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: and when it's somebody like Tim, when it's the Legend,
Speaker 1: when it's the Godfather, even more so big bear hugs
Speaker 1: all the way around, Timie Diez. Could you describe him
Speaker 1: in one word? Huh? I always think of warmth. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, I just think a heart. I know his effort,
Speaker 1: and but I think what was so endearing and what
Speaker 1: formed his relationships and the relationships became the basis for
Speaker 1: his work, was the the ability to connect with people
Speaker 1: and too really have a relationship, to really be friends,
Speaker 1: you know, to put aside um, you know, the compartmentalization
Speaker 1: that we all do and work and in journalism very
Speaker 1: often even ask you to do that. He had a
Speaker 1: gift for for being friends, being able to write about people,
Speaker 1: still being professional and sometimes you know, having to temporarily
Speaker 1: at least wound that friendship, but always healing it because
Speaker 1: because Tim was a healer. Tim, you know, you couldn't
Speaker 1: stay mad at him, and he could get mad, but
Speaker 1: he wouldn't even stay mad forever either. Um. It just
Speaker 1: there was just a big heart and UM, great sentiment,
Speaker 1: great sense of the right thing to do and and
Speaker 1: the right way to treat people, and decency and just
Speaker 1: those virtues, those human virtues. I think that's what I
Speaker 1: think of because um, that's why I loved him. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, we all work, we all try to do
Speaker 1: our best in the end, that's not what defines us
Speaker 1: as much as the kind of people we are. And
Speaker 1: Tim was a special person and that you know, it's
Speaker 1: reflected by how many friends he has, UM, how many
Speaker 1: will loved him, Molly Solomon. He always wanted to get
Speaker 1: better and be the best at what he did. But
Speaker 1: in a really UM I used the word earnest to
Speaker 1: describe him. And when I went in the possaurus and
Speaker 1: looked up um and said, you know, is that the
Speaker 1: best way to described him? And besides ernest came up diligent, heartfelt, impassioned,
Speaker 1: purpose felt and sincere. Tim Rose support Jeff Russell. I mean,
Speaker 1: Jen told you know, UM, I mean one word, you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's um. UM. You know the word I would
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, just just like indefatigable, like
Speaker 1: like you couldn't um. You know you couldn't. You couldn't
Speaker 1: make him work hard enough. You couldn't. You couldn't outwork him,
Speaker 1: you know he so but but but as just gentle
Speaker 1: sweet kind um you know, good too, you know, never
Speaker 1: I don't think he really ever big time to anyone,
Speaker 1: good too, you know, always good to you know, you
Speaker 1: know I told you the story of him being nice
Speaker 1: to me when I was twenty five. Eventually I was
Speaker 1: eventually I was five, and the boss, you know, and
Speaker 1: and he would he would tell me about some other
Speaker 1: young kid who was just starting out in the you know,
Speaker 1: some hey, you know you ought to pay attention to
Speaker 1: that is so and so golf writer that you know.
Speaker 1: And I'd be like, who, like who you know? And
Speaker 1: and he'd be like, hey, hey, you know, like, don't
Speaker 1: be you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to help
Speaker 1: you here. You know, you might need to hire that
Speaker 1: guy someday, you know, you might want to. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean he never stopped, you know, he never stopped doing that.
Speaker 1: Jerry Tardy, Well, everybody uses it. It's it's trust. He
Speaker 1: had everybody's cell number. Everybody called him back. Um, you
Speaker 1: knew he was going to give you a fair shake
Speaker 1: and to use that old Bob Jones line. When he
Speaker 1: got the unfair shake of all, he still met life
Speaker 1: with a smile on his face and a gratefulness in
Speaker 1: his heart. And that's why we love everybody did the
Speaker 1: people he covered, the people who rode alongside him, the
Speaker 1: people who managed to try to manage him. But he
Speaker 1: didn't need any managing. He he marked. He marched to
Speaker 1: his own DRUMA Craig Dulch loyal, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't begin to tell you, you know, what he's done.
Speaker 1: I mean, it'd be hard to walk into a media
Speaker 1: center these days and not find someone that Tim has
Speaker 1: really played a huge role in their lives, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it was just some advice, whether it was making
Speaker 1: a phone call for somebody, writing somebody up on a resume,
Speaker 1: you know, a nice reference letter. For me, it always
Speaker 1: goes back to my son Eric. Eric almost died of
Speaker 1: nsetholitis in two thousand five, and it was a really,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, a heartbreaking event, not only to
Speaker 1: have this happen, to have your healthy fourteen year old
Speaker 1: son go to completely disabled. We didn't know if he
Speaker 1: was going to live. We had no idea what we're
Speaker 1: going to do for the money, and Tim just took
Speaker 1: it upon himself to plan a fundraiser of the week
Speaker 1: Behind the Classic in two thousand and six, And all
Speaker 1: he ever asked for me was just some names of
Speaker 1: friends and family that I would want invited to it.
Speaker 1: And that's all I really did. At the time, I
Speaker 1: was living up in Boston, My son was in rehab
Speaker 1: up there, trying to get better, and we can down
Speaker 1: to the Monday before Behind the Classic, and Tim had
Speaker 1: this thing all planned at Old Palm. He'd done to
Speaker 1: Raymond Floyd and Maria Floyd and they had everything was
Speaker 1: picked up and the amount of money we received that
Speaker 1: night was overwhelming. I mean it enabled us to to
Speaker 1: buy a wheelchair accessible van to do the accommodations we
Speaker 1: had to do to our house before our son could
Speaker 1: come home. Uh. You know, just how do you say
Speaker 1: thank you to somebody who did something like that? And
Speaker 1: you say thank you when people opened the door for you. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just beyond amazing what he did. He
Speaker 1: never asked for anything, you know, he wasn't you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: I did this for you. You know that scratch your
Speaker 1: back that stuff. That's just what Tim did. And obviously
Speaker 1: my situation is a little unique, but I would think
Speaker 1: you and everyone else out there can think of countless
Speaker 1: times that Tim has done things for you. You know,
Speaker 1: even when it came to coming on the Gulf Channel.
Speaker 1: We had a radio show every Sunday morning for eight
Speaker 1: nine years, and every once in a while, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I hate to do this, but I'm gonna ask him again.
Speaker 1: And Tim never said no. He was always willing to
Speaker 1: split to spend those ten fifteen minutes. You know. As
Speaker 1: as successful as Tim McCain, he never really lost his
Speaker 1: his presence as a down to earth individual and he
Speaker 1: cared about people. Phil Nicholson classes the way I would
Speaker 1: describe him because of the way he treated people, handled himself.
Speaker 1: Everything he did was with class, whether it was his family,
Speaker 1: his career, his friends. He uh, he just always handled
Speaker 1: himself with such dignity in class. John Hawkins dogged D
Speaker 1: g E D. And I mean that as somebody who's
Speaker 1: not dogged. Uh. Tim was the greatest partner you could
Speaker 1: ever have, at least I could. I mean just astounding them, haven't. Tim?
Speaker 1: Hoarding your story was like having rock call Welch is
Speaker 1: your waitress. It's like I can't do any better than that.
Speaker 1: Here's Damon Heck, a giant of golf journalism, someone who
Speaker 1: I read before I met, which was pretty cool to
Speaker 1: finally meet him. I mean, I read his Raising the
Speaker 1: bar on Tiger uh back in two thousand, kind of
Speaker 1: giving us an inside look to to the greatness of Tiger,
Speaker 1: and I'm reading this guy, I'm thinking, Man, this guy
Speaker 1: is someone who I want to be. This is a
Speaker 1: great writer, a great reporter. Uh. You could tell how
Speaker 1: tireless he was in his research. And then to finally
Speaker 1: meet him in the early two thousand's when I started
Speaker 1: covering golf for Newsday and to share press rooms with him,
Speaker 1: just so impressive, larger than life, intense, but a teddy
Speaker 1: bear at the same time, someone who could, you know,
Speaker 1: host a golf writer's dinner at Augusta National and make
Speaker 1: us laugh and not miss a beat. To someone who
Speaker 1: could ask Tiger or Jack or Arnie the toughest question
Speaker 1: and didn't get a great answer. Um. I loved working
Speaker 1: with him at Golf Channel. Someone who was so meticulous
Speaker 1: and insensitive to and for, someone who is a giant
Speaker 1: of our game and journalism, would sometimes have, you know,
Speaker 1: little fits of vulnerability and damon, how did that go?
Speaker 1: Did I do a good job? I'm like, man, I
Speaker 1: would say, Tim, you just beat Tim. Nobody has your Rolodex,
Speaker 1: nobody has your reach in the game. You know, no
Speaker 1: one else can say, you know, I spoke to Tiger,
Speaker 1: I spoke to Jack or find you know, Peter bald
Speaker 1: Naldi's childhood swing coach. Or I just talked to the
Speaker 1: head pro at Tyler Duncan's club, you know in Indiana.
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy just his reach was just breathtaking
Speaker 1: and so cool to grow up reading someone that s
Speaker 1: I and Golf Digest and read his books, and then
Speaker 1: to be able to share a morning meeting with Tim Roseford.
Speaker 1: I would walk by, you know, at his desking golf channel.
Speaker 1: I would just say, there's the legend, there's the legend
Speaker 1: that he used us whatever. Alright, alright, But I knew
Speaker 1: he liked it too at a certain level, because he
Speaker 1: he is a legend, a giant of golf journalism. I
Speaker 1: love I love Rosy Lovel, Matt Haggerdy. You know, I
Speaker 1: just think everybody trusted him that he was, that it
Speaker 1: was going to be fair like it might. It wasn't
Speaker 1: always gonna be what you didn't always it wasn't like
Speaker 1: whoever he was reporting on or whatever he was reporting about.
Speaker 1: There was obviously, you know, in certain circumstances. It wasn't
Speaker 1: going to make everybody happy. You know, it wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: make everybody happy, but it was gonna be fair. And
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, that's I
Speaker 1: think that's what everybody wants. They want to be treated fairly, right,
Speaker 1: and Jim treated everybody fairly and run syrac. Tim and
Speaker 1: I are about the same age. In fact, he's younger
Speaker 1: than me. I think he's five years younger than me,
Speaker 1: and which when all this breakfest was like bone chilling
Speaker 1: for me. Uh so we were sort of of the
Speaker 1: same generation. But talk to somebody who's twenty years younger
Speaker 1: than him, and one of the things that they'll tell
Speaker 1: you is how generous he was with his time, how
Speaker 1: generous he was with his contacts. He would help people,
Speaker 1: he would he would give he would give young writers advice,
Speaker 1: he would share contacts with with the young writers to
Speaker 1: help them on a story. So there was not only
Speaker 1: an innate fairness in the man, an innate goodness in
Speaker 1: the man. Here's Gary Williams. He always did the right thing, Matt,
Speaker 1: because you know what, never burned one person. Nobody ever
Speaker 1: turned their back on him. And the lines of communication
Speaker 1: with tim and every interview subject or every important figure
Speaker 1: in the game of golf was always wide open. That
Speaker 1: never changed. It never changed. And and for somebody who
Speaker 1: loved the game of golf, God, I wish the game
Speaker 1: loved him a little bit more. Back I played in
Speaker 1: one member Guests with the man one member guest. He
Speaker 1: invites me to medalists to play in the member guest
Speaker 1: in and Jordan's playing Tigers, playing Keickan Bradley and Mater Shan,
Speaker 1: and he is so uptight. The practice round we play
Speaker 1: with Ken Kennerley, who's a dear life fog friend of mine,
Speaker 1: and his guests, and and on the second tea he
Speaker 1: starts with, I'm sorry, You're sorry. We played one. Oh,
Speaker 1: Davis saysna tim Uh became a golfer reporting on golf,
Speaker 1: and I must say he was a much better report
Speaker 1: than he is a golfer. That the truth. He's like
Speaker 1: a plus eight and reported, he's like an eighteen time
Speaker 1: major champion of reporting. But he's poor. Guys struggles on
Speaker 1: the under guard. I think he got as probably as
Speaker 1: low as about an eight handicap. I think is uh, well,
Speaker 1: he's so he's so competitive. But every time I say
Speaker 1: H'm going to hit a shot, I I feel like
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz. I want to go get the
Speaker 1: oil can. He's laughing right now too. I can tell
Speaker 1: you that more from Phil Nicholson, his legacy is how
Speaker 1: and the way he'll be remembered will be how he
Speaker 1: made you feel, because he would gather knowledge, gather information, presented,
Speaker 1: do his job and transcend into his business, be the
Speaker 1: best of what he did. But he would always make
Speaker 1: you feel good and positive about it. He was never
Speaker 1: trying to take unnecessary shots. He would always try to
Speaker 1: present facts in a very sensitive way. And I think
Speaker 1: that his legacy is going to be the way he
Speaker 1: made you feel when you are around. Did you ever
Speaker 1: see his golf swing? I have, and I've I've tried
Speaker 1: to suppress that memory. Of all the memories we have,
Speaker 1: not many of us are gonna try to remember his
Speaker 1: his eloquent golfing. I guess exactly. Tim always wore me
Speaker 1: out because we played each other once in a member
Speaker 1: member tournament at the Floridian and he he and his
Speaker 1: partner beat me and my partners. So I have never
Speaker 1: lived that down that I lost a match to Tim
Speaker 1: rose Afort. I mean, the probably the lowest point of
Speaker 1: my career, that I lost a match to Tim rose Aport.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know how he gets worse than that.
Speaker 1: Um he could not play, yeah he could, but he
Speaker 1: loved the game. And he's a dear friend. I miss him.
Speaker 1: I'm missing him and I want to wish him all
Speaker 1: the best because and he does he has want to
Speaker 1: know against me, and so that that will stick with
Speaker 1: me forever. Mark Moulvoy, thank you so much for asking
Speaker 1: me to do this to me. Was a treasure. I
Speaker 1: loved every all the moments we spent with him. Uh.
Speaker 1: We had a very heartfelt I said a very heartfelt
Speaker 1: goodbye last year. I thought, you know it was it
Speaker 1: was coming, and unfortunately we seem to be at that moment.
Speaker 1: God bless him. He's a great guy. He'll be always
Speaker 1: have fond memories of him and what he did for me,
Speaker 1: what he did for Sports Illustrated and what he obviously
Speaker 1: did for Golf, World Golf and Digest and also for television.
Speaker 1: I mean when's the last time somebody on television told
Speaker 1: you things about people that not even the people knew.
Speaker 1: Nobody does that anymore, reporting as a lost art again,
Speaker 1: Jerry Tardy. It really, in my mind was the nineties.
Speaker 1: It build up to it in the latter half of
Speaker 1: the eighties, but it was a golden age of journalism
Speaker 1: when you look back at the number of writers who
Speaker 1: were had come together and sat at our table, from
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of her Wind and Alistair Cook,
Speaker 1: um Ptword, Thomas Uh, certainly, Peter Debriner one of the
Speaker 1: great poets of the game, but Dan Jenkins joining us,
Speaker 1: Charlie Price, Tom Callahan, Uh, and then Dave Kindred, Peter Andrews,
Speaker 1: the start of of High me Diaz, and Tim rose Afford.
Speaker 1: Tim brought a different step than any of those others, Um,
Speaker 1: but he was right there at the top in terms
Speaker 1: of respect, and I think there was there was what
Speaker 1: you talked about, that that humility, that vulnerability that he
Speaker 1: had because he had been kicked around as a writer,
Speaker 1: that he brought preparation to the table like nobody else,
Speaker 1: and all those great voices would would quiet when Tim
Speaker 1: talked because he had the real stuff. Um they could
Speaker 1: take it and make it into poetry some of them
Speaker 1: um and they could make it funny and but but
Speaker 1: Tim was was such a believable humble guy that that
Speaker 1: just carried tremendous respect. Craig. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many times I'd walked into the PJ National entrance and
Speaker 1: go into a Honda cover of the day's tournament and
Speaker 1: we'd be headed to the media center. I'll be there
Speaker 1: with Tim, and I would never make it there with
Speaker 1: because after about halfway through the lobby, everyone's like, hey,
Speaker 1: Tim Rosie, you know, and I'm like looking, I'm like,
Speaker 1: how do you know all these people? How do you
Speaker 1: remember all these people? And he said something that was
Speaker 1: very I thought was very interesting. Well, he said, it's
Speaker 1: like a p J professional, you know, when you go
Speaker 1: to work in the morning and a member walks in
Speaker 1: the door at seven oh five in the morn and
Speaker 1: you better know who their name is. And I think
Speaker 1: that gets back to kind of what we've talked about.
Speaker 1: Tim is his work and like ethic. You know, he
Speaker 1: was a guy that stayed at some really you know,
Speaker 1: got to do some very special things in his life,
Speaker 1: but he was still a nine to five kind of
Speaker 1: guy who punched the clock every day, who worked as
Speaker 1: hard as he could, and who wanted to know your name.
Speaker 1: And I've had a lot of friends telling me that
Speaker 1: is I'm surprised him remembers my name. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not a big shot, but that's the way Tim was.
Speaker 1: Tim remembered everybody's name. And because of that, I think
Speaker 1: we're always gonna always remember Tim rose Afford's name. And
Speaker 1: we ended all with Jeff Russell. You know, you'd get
Speaker 1: to the end of the year and you count up
Speaker 1: the byelines. Nobody had as many bylines as he did.
Speaker 1: And and um, you know, he he just was always,
Speaker 1: you know, always working, always always on it. And and
Speaker 1: I think doing you know, doing it because he was
Speaker 1: he was. It was a kind of a mixture of
Speaker 1: he loved doing it, and I think he he also
Speaker 1: knew that he'd come a long way from from what
Speaker 1: is you know, the life his father had, you know,
Speaker 1: and his his family had and that and you know
Speaker 1: in uh in New York. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe, you know, I think he reached it.
Speaker 1: He was like, I can't believe I'm here in South
Speaker 1: Florida where it's you know, sunshine through in sixty five
Speaker 1: days a year, and I'm playing golf and and I'm
Speaker 1: just you know, I don't ever want it to end.
Speaker 1: I don't ever want it to end. It's just an
Speaker 1: amazing life. Put another log on the fire. Nobody hears
Speaker 1: getting tired, Settle down, and settle in. The story is
Speaker 1: about to begin, the circles starting to tickets, shape seats
Speaker 1: the field, and the tired sun plans and escape, and
Speaker 1: everybody's got some glory. Just wait, unto unphoned. Everybody's got
Speaker 1: some story. Just wait until be too. The place for
Speaker 1: that is here. All those smiles and loose teas, let
Speaker 1: them go. Put another log on the fig. Nobody hears
Speaker 1: getting tired, Settle down, and settle in. The story is
Speaker 1: about to begin. Tales were told of warring, going lover
Speaker 1: is lost in a lifetimes dreams ours so and maybe
Speaker 1: you should stop in the sun at the wisdom and
Speaker 1: the baby. You should pour your heart out. We ain't
Speaker 1: go in anywhere. I'd your mercy in the sound as
Speaker 1: the smoke gets pushed around in your soul. Put another
Speaker 1: log on fire. Nobody hears getting tired, Settle down and
Speaker 1: st m the story hears about to begin, the story
Speaker 1: hears about to begin, the story hears about to begin.