The late Steve DiMeglio, left, with Rickie Fowler in 2016.
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Steve DiMeglio, the longtime golf writer for USA Today and, laterGolf weekhe was the only journalist who could get out of a press tent, hang out with him Tiger Woods on a practice putting green, take things he could use, and many he never would, and live to do it again a week later.
“DiMegs,” as Woods and many others called him, was 63 when he died at his Ponte Vedra Beach apartment earlier this week after a battle with colon cancer. He lived alone, never married, had no children, his parents were dead. Beating was his life. The players, the corps, the officials and the other writers were like his family.
“Unfortunately the world of golf lost a part of our family today,” Woods said in a message to X. People in golf, especially people associated with the PGA Tour, abuse the word family. The PGA Tour is not a family. But in this case, Woods used the word perfect. A handful of Tour media officials who lived near DiMeglio would check in on him regularly during his 30-month ordeal. They were worried when they failed to meet him on New Year’s Day.
DiMeglio was an 8-handicap golfer with a game and such deep ties to the game that he could play most any course he wanted to play. His preferred mode of transportation to each course was a fast cart equipped with a beer cooler. A golf course that did not allow smoking was a nightmare for him.
DiMeglio was loyal to Delta Airlines, Marriott hotels, Bud Light, Marlboro Gold and the Mellow Mushroom pizza chain. He would rent cars from anyone. He liked to travel with his clubs, but he rented clubs as needed. He wore the club’s shirt wherever he played last. He worked in shorts and basketball shoes, but cleaned up for the annual Golf Writers Association of America dinner in suburban Augusta. He served on the GWAA board of directors for years.
If you were taller than 8 feet, DiMeglio called you Big Guy. He was about 5-foot-5 with a trim goatee and an incredible head of hair that he combed straight back without product. He was born and raised in Minnesota.
Part of DiMeglio’s special status as a well-liked and respected reporter on the beat of golf came from the fact that he worked for a newspaper that most pros read the moment they opened their hotel room door or walked down the lobby. . Before the rise of the Internet, USA Today it was the bible of the PGA Tour, much more than that New York Times OR Wall Street Journal or any other letter. Arnold Palmer read USA Today. Tim Finchem read it. Tiger Woods read it.
DiMeglio brought out the best in Woods. He rarely wrote about Woods’ struggles in his private life. He thought that an athlete should be able to lead a private life. But along with two close friends, AP’s Doug Ferguson and Bob Harig i Sports Illustrated, no one chronicled Woods’ surgical procedures more accurately. These operations affected Woods’ public life.
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DiMeglio wrote with remarkable economy, speed and precision, but also with insight and a sense of golf’s history. He can be hilarious and extremely direct. He would sometimes ask people, “What is your vice?” He knew that having a vice was an essential part of the human condition. The only time he really judged people was when golfing reporters asked boring, killer questions at press conferences.
Before founding Google, DiMeglio could name them all Commissioners of the LPGAincluding Bill Blue, which lasted only two years. DiMeglio knew the ins and outs of the women’s tour almost as well as the men’s. He counted Dottie Pepper, Paula Creamer and Lexi Thompson as friends and as resources. It can be tricky for journalists to navigate these kinds of relationships. For DiMeglio, it was second nature.
He would speak with immense pride of his late father, a university professor. He was a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines and seemed to retain everything he read, but was perfectly modest and thoughtful, in his own way. When he smoked in your presence, he closed his hand around the cigarette and blew his smoke away from you.
DiMeglio achieved golf success after covering major league baseball for years, and no matter where the conversation went he was hooked: baseball, golf, national politics, classic rock music, management’s union-busting efforts at newspapers and the auto factories of the three major car manufacturers. , then back to golf. In politics, he was a known liberal. He had a conservative stance on most changes in golf. He was almost comically dismissive of LIV Golf. Well, he lived a few miles from the PGA Tour offices. You almost never see him speaking on TV. He believed that writers should be read and not seen.
When his editors gave him space, DiMeglio wrote rich and detailed pieces, sometimes on unexpected subjects, like Jack Nicklaus’ sixth-place finish in the 1998 Masters at age 58.
IN Masters 2019at Woods’ pre-tournament press conference, DiMeglio asked Woods what everyone wanted to know.
DiMeglio: “A quick couple. First of all, what is the logo on your shirt?”
Woods: “Frank.”
DiMeglio: “What?”
Woods: “Frank, my headgear.”
DiMeglio continued: “Can you tell us, what do you think about the changes made to five and how are you going to play that hole differently?”
Woods: “Five, it’s just long. The bunkers are still deep. I think they’re unplayable, to get the ball to the green. You have to be very lucky and get a situation where you can get to the front of the green .You have to stay out of those bunkers, but it’s really long.
