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The write stuff Advice for aspiring golf scribes
I have been writing for my local newspaper for about two years. I am
interested in a career in sports writing, more specifically in golf. I was
wondering if you would be able to provide me with some advice on how to get in
the major leagues with the likes of
yourself. Well, Brad, your blatant boot-licking bodes well for your prospects, I can tell you that. I get this question fairly often, usually from enterprising youngsters like yourself or from accountants in early stages of mid-life crises. The advice is always the same. Here at Sports Illustrated we writers have a motto: You must write the, uh, stuff. Sunday night at the Masters, elbow-to-elbow in the sweaty press room, there'll be a handful of us straining to produce memorable prose under the tyranny of an imposing deadline, and every so often someone will unleash a spontaneous burst of words, not unlike a Tourette's sufferer: "You must write the s---." It is the soundtrack to my career, and quite instructive to the beginning sports writer. You must write the s---. That is the bottom line. It takes years to strip away all the bad teaching you've suffered through -- nonsense about inverted pyramids, obsolete rules about subjects and predicates. Forget all that. The only way to find your voice as a writer is through repetition, trial and error, and experimentation.
Point is, you've got to start at the bottom, then brawl your way to the top. No assignment is too trivial for a beginning writer. You should write for free, if you have to. Contact the local free weeklies -- they probably need the help, and would be likely to offer you more space than a daily paper. Never turn down a chance to get published. I remember I laughed when the Californian sent me out to cover the Colts' league championship game. I agreed to do it only because I needed the $25 stringer's fee to fill up the tank of my hand-me-down 1968 VW Bug, and to cover the greens fee at Salinas Fairways. It turned out to be an epic football game, decided on the final play. When it was over all these eight-year-old kids were crying, and so were many of the parents. I wrote a long, jazzy story, which ran on the front page of the sports section, above the fold -- a great clip to take to UCLA and help secure my spot on the Bruin staff. The flip side to writing a lot is that you must read even more. In my opinion, journalism school is a waste of time, merely a bunch of tweedy professors who haven't had anything published in a quarter century. If you want to learn about great writing, all you have to do is read it, and absorb it. There are an endless number of sports writing anthologies out there -- I know because I own them all and constantly pore over them for inspiration and instruction. I started subscribing to SI when I was about 10. Even back then I knew I wanted to be a sports writer, and I used to break down the long features, making little flow charts and outlines of how the stories were organized. I used to always ask myself, "Why did they put a line space there? Why italics? Or parentheses? Why are some quotes adorned with says and others with said? The more you read -- and not just SI or sports writing, but great fiction, too -- the more the mysterious secrets of the trade will reveal themselves to you. As for breaking into golf writing in particular, Bradley, you have chosen the right sport, this much we know. Parents, if you want your kids to have promising job prospects, raise them to be either left-handed relief pitchers or golf writers. The interest in golf has exploded at every level, and that is reflected in its ever-expanding presence in the mass media. Most major papers now have somebody working the golf beat full-time, and in the last few years a number of new golf magazines have come on the scene, and good ones, too, like T & L Golf and Maximum Golf. The number of Web sites dedicated to golf has also increased exponentially. In fact, just the other day I received a missive from Pressley Henningsen, some dude from Muscatine, Iowa, who was looking for submissions for his new site, www.egolfweekly.com. Brad, you should drop him a line at phenningsen@slhlaw.com -- it could be a chance to beef up your resume. To further your golf education you should invest in subscriptions to all the golf magazines, however boring they may be. I would also recommend that you volunteer in the press room at whatever professional tournaments are played in your area -- you'll learn a lot about the comings and goings of the professional reporter, and you may make some great connections. Beyond that, just keep writing. Sure, being a sports writer isn't all fun and games. There are plenty of ink-stained wretches out there with bleeding ulcers from the deadline pressure, busted marriages from all the travel, and 46-inch waistlines from all the fatty press-room fare. But let's not kid ourselves: This is the best job in the world. It certainly beats working for a living. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alan Shipnuck periodically waxes about life On Tour for CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or a nice, friendly comment.
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