Golf’s Laureate In Winter
Herbert Warren Wind Reminisces
On 50 Years of Sage Reporting
Interviewed & written, June 2002 by Bob Labbance
Reprinted from Fall 2002 Florida Golf Magazine

         He is one of our last bastions of civility. A connection with an old world class, poise, manners, gentlemanliness and demeanor that is slowly disappearing in modern society. In addition to his social comportment, he wrote about sports in a style that could stand up to the writing of the great American scribes — writers like Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner. For more than half-a-century, Herbert Warren Wind has carried the banner as America’s greatest sports writer, as well as one of Massachusetts most famous and distinguished residents.
         Now, at age 85, his memory is no longer perfect — but then, whose is?
         If there has ever been a cliché that rings true, it’s that Herb Wind has forgotten more about golf than most close observers of the game will ever know. Wind has been everywhere and done everything, and along the way he’s earned the respect of everyone who’s been involved with the game for the past 50 years. Now that the pressure of deadlines is gone, Wind is content to read a bit, write a bit and watch on television the games he once followed on foot, like a young cop patrolling the streets of his beat. But Herb Wind’s beat was the playing fields of America, and he knew every inch. These days, he’s less than thrilled with the sport he once covered so passionately.
         His articles on golf’s major championships made him seem omnipresent — prowling every corner of a 300-acre property and missing nary a stroke by the top contenders. “Well, that’s what you did,” recalls Wind of his conduct at the big tournaments. “You got out on the course on the first day and you said, ‘I’m going to cover so-and-so.’ You’d watch him and if he played well you might follow him for the whole round. As you did you’d pick up on other things — another player may be four under after five holes and so you pick him up; then you might go in and check the boards, but you’d be back out on the course soon after.
         “Sometimes you might be out on the course for 10 hours — you not only learn how the course is playing but you might see some wonderful golf being played. Then you would rush home and get it down and quick as you could while it’s fresh in your mind. It was common for me to walk 36 holes or more each day.”
         Today’s sportswriters should take a cue. Too many spend most of their time in the press tent watching the television coverage. Wind always believed in seeing the action up close. Perhaps that’s why his writing still occupies such an exalted position. “Some of the writers go out on the course today,” notes Wind, “but most of them just watch on TV and wait until the players come in to be interviewed. I think you have to go out and watch to find out how the course is playing. Plus while you’re out there, all of a sudden a player makes a double bogey and you see how he reacts to that. Then you can gauge fairly well how he’s going to do the rest of the championship.”
         While Wind’s advancing years sadly remind us that even the greatest minds can fall prey to aging’s ills, some things remain clear as a bell 75 years later. “I first started playing golf when I was 9 years old,” he recalls. “My dad had some money so I had the opportunity to play at Thorny Lea [GC in Brockton, Mass.]. We lived at 26 West Elm Street in Brockton and I could walk up to the 15th tee in about 10 minutes. There was a very good coach at Thorny Lea and I started lessons when I was nine. Bill Shields was a very smart guy — ran the whole course and kept the place in good shape — he was a consummate professional.”
         Wind knows how valuable the start he got in golf was, and laments the fact that others weren’t given the same opportunity. “We had two private courses and one public in Brockton, but they didn’t have enough people who cared about keeping them up and teaching others how to play the game. There are many more people today who care about the game and are teaching kids to play.”
         The accomplished author thanks his father for planting the golfing seed in him. “My father played, in fact, everybody in the family played. After dinner my father would say, ‘Who wants to go out and play some golf?’ Sometimes my brother and both my sisters would walk up there to play a few holes with us.”
         Nevertheless, Wind has a realistic picture of his abilities as a youngster. “I was not an outstanding golfer at Thorny Lea,” he says. “There were some kids who were better than I was, but I got plenty of instruction there. You also learned how to play better by watching. There was a Greater Boston Four-Ball League at the time. They would come by in the early spring and you could see some very good golfers play — some became professional.”
         Wind chose college life instead of the competitive circuit, though he both wrote about and played golf at Yale University. In 1933, he picked golf as the subject for his freshman thesis, and so began a romance that would last through six decades. Upon graduation in 1937, he wasn’t so sure what to do.
         “My father owned the Wind Shoe Company. I worked there on vacations from college and I liked my father very much. But the factory life didn’t interest me, and that’s when I decided I wanted to be a writer. So I went to Cambridge for two years.”
         In 1939, Wind received a masters degree in English Literature at Cambridge University, and furthered his golfing education by visiting the great courses of Scotland.
         A far-away look washes his face as he recalls those days.
         “I don’t think the great courses will ever get old, and you never get tired of a good golf course. You have to go to those Scottish courses because those are the ones that are worth getting to know even better. If you go back there you can find what their particular charms are, and what their hidden difficulties are. A good course should still reveal what the designer had in mind when he laid it out, no matter how many years have passed.”
         After Cambridge, Wind enlisted in the Army and served nearly five years during World War II as an administrative officer in the Army Air Corps, stationed in China and Japan. One of his assignments in the military was to write a “true” history of the war in the Pacific for the Japanese people, to replace the propaganda they had been hearing. When he returned to the United States in 1948, Wind sought a career in journalism.
         “When I got out of the service I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but I wanted to write. So I went to New York City and got a job at The New Yorker.”
         Wind began by writing the ‘Profiles’ feature, still hoping to bring sports to the literary magazine. “I bought myself a place in western Massachusetts, about a two-hour drive from the city. It was a nice area, there were three or four courses around and I played there.”
         He must have built upon his early talents from Thorny Lea, because in 1950 Wind entered the British Amateur being held at St. Andrews, and advanced to match play. He was defeated in the first round by J.C. Wilson three up with one to play. “I didn’t do very well in the Amateur, but I did learn something by watching the good players at the Old Course.”
         Wind moved to Sports Illustrated when that magazine was launched in 1954. He stayed five years, and when he returned to The New Yorker the magazine instituted a column entitled ‘The Sporting Scene,’ giving Wind an outlet for his passion for golf.
         He contributed for more than 40 years, while also authoring nearly a dozen books. He collaborated with golfers such as Ben Hogan, Gene Sarazen and Jack Nicklaus; and in his later years he also wrote the introductions to the Classics of Golf series.
         Through the years, Wind was a welcome guest at The Masters, and a friend to Bobby Jones. “When Jones started Augusta National it was great to go down there. It was such a nice southern place with golf people who knew the game and the weather was so enjoyable, especially for Northerners that time of year.” The respect was mutual, as Jones once wrote, “Herb Wind is devoted to golf. He is a fine, sensitive writer whose works range from essays of the most accurately appreciative kind to some of the finest golf reporting I have ever read.”
         Others echoed what Jones so eloquently stated, including Bing Crosby who once wrote: “Here in our country, the dean is, without question, Herbert Warren Wind. Through the years, no man has covered the golfing scene so thoroughly or so beautifully.” Fellow Bay State writer and golfer John Updike adds: “Golf has attracted many fine writers, but none extols the game with more authority and affection than Herb Wind, or more successfully conveys its gracious, fickle, generous spirit to the printed page.”
         When asked if he keeps in touch with these voices from the past, Wind looks melancholy for a moment. “No, I don’t really see any of my old golfing friends,” he laments from the senior care facility where he now lives. “I’m here now seven years. There are very few men, otherwise its all women. I used to have lunch with a couple of the guys who knew golf and we’d talk, but now most of them are gone. But I can’t complain; this is a pretty good place to be an old guy.”
         Wind never married. He has two sisters in the area and a brother back in Brockton. They come by occasionally to remember the old days.
         “When I retired I wanted to come back to Massachusetts, but not necessarily to Brockton. I like the people here and the house atmosphere, and I’ve done a little writing and at first, played some golf. But I haven’t followed golf that much in the last few years.”
         Herb Wind has seen the play of golfers from Bobby Jones to Tiger Woods, but he’s not that impressed with the methods of the modern champions. “I don’t care much for the style of play today. It’s all about power off the tee, and then a putting contest on the green. There are no shotmakers any more; no one that can craft a shot to match the conditions. That’s what disappoints me about golf today.”
         When reminded of the talents of Tiger Woods, Wind offers: “He’s remarkable isn’t he?” And then adds: “Fortunately, the classic courses will always require far more than just a long ball. You have to get to know the course and all its qualities. You have to be able to hit it far but you also have to control the ball. Few can do that any more.”
         This time of year, Wind is much happier to watch the Red Sox, and dream with the rest of New England of that long-awaited World Series victory. “I watch the Red Sox all the time on television. They have a pretty good team this year, but I don’t know enough about the other teams to know if they can keep it up all season. I think they might have the right owners and players this year to go all the way. But you never know until the fall.”
         He pauses, then adds, “Baseball’s the greatest game isn’t it?”
         No Herb, golf is. And it wouldn’t be so without you.

Interviewed and written by Bob Labbance in June 2002
Reprinted from Fall 2005 Florida Golf Magazine