For golf writer Steve DiMeglio, the beat was far more than just a job
The late Steve DiMeglio, left, with Rickie Fowler in 2016.
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Steve DiMeglio, the longtime golf writer for USA Today and, later, Golfweek, was the one reporter who could come emerge from a press tent, hang with Tiger Woods on a practice putting green, get stuff that he could use, and a lot he would never use, and live to do it again a week later.
“DiMegs,” as Woods and many others called him, was 63 when he died in his apartment in Ponte Vedra Beach earlier this week following a fight with colon cancer. He lived alone, never married, never had children, his parents predeceased him. The beat was his life. Players, caddies, officials and other writers were like his family.
“Unfortunately the golf world lost part of our family today,” Woods said in a message on X. People in golf, especially people connected to the PGA Tour, abuse the word family. The PGA Tour is not a family. But in this case, Woods used the perfect word. A handful of Tour media officials, who lived near DiMeglio, would check on him regularly through his 30-month health ordeal. They grew worried when they were not able to reach him on New Year’s Day.
DiMeglio was an 8-handicap golfer with a sporty game and such deep connections in the game he could play most any course he wished to play. His preferred mode of transportation on any course was a fast cart equipped with a beer cooler. A golf course that did not permit smoking was a nightmare for him.
DiMeglio was loyal to Delta Airlines, Marriott hotels, Bud Light, Marlboro Gold and the Mellow Mushroom pizzeria chain. He’d rent cars from anybody. He liked to travel with his own clubs, but he’d rent clubs as necessary. He wore the logoed club shirt of wherever he played last. He worked wearing shorts and basketball shoes but cleaned up nicely for the Golf Writers Association of America dinner held annually on the outskirts of Augusta. He served on the GWAA board of directors for years.
If you were taller than 5-foot-8, DiMeglio called you Big Guy. He was about 5-foot-5 with a trim goatee and an exceptional head of hair that he combed straight back without product. He was born and raised in Minnesota.
Part of DiMeglio’s distinct status, as a well-liked and respected reporter on the golf beat, came from the fact that he worked for a paper that most pros read the moment they opened their hotel-room door or went down to the lobby. Before the rise of the internet, USA Today was the bible of the PGA Tour, much more so than the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or any other paper. Arnold Palmer read USA Today. Tim Finchem read it. Tiger Woods read it.
DiMeglio brought out the best in Woods. He seldom wrote about Woods’s struggles in his private life. He felt an athlete should be able to lead a private life. But along with two close friends, Doug Ferguson of the AP and Bob Harig of Sports Illustrated, nobody chronicled Woods’s surgical procedures with more precision. Those surgeries impacted Woods’ public life.
DiMeglio wrote with incredible economy, speed and accuracy, but also with insight and a sense of golf history. He could be hilariously and remarkably direct. He would sometimes ask people, “What’s your vice?” He knew having a vice was an essential part of the human condition. The only time he really judged people was when reporters dropping in on the golf beat would ask boring, rally-killing, stem-winding questions at press conferences.
Before the rise of Google, DiMeglio could name all the LPGA commissioners, including Bill Blue, who lasted only two years. DiMeglio knew the ins and out the women’s tour nearly as well as he knew the men’s. He counted Dottie Pepper, Paula Creamer and Lexi Thompson as friends and as sources. It can be tricky for reporters, to navigate these kinds of relationships. For DiMeglio, it was second nature.
He would speak with immense pride about his late father, a university professor. He was a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines and seemed to retain everything he read, but he was totally unpretentious and thoughtful, in his own way. When he smoked in your presence, he cupped his hand around the cigarette and blew his smoke away from you.
DiMeglio came to the golf beat after covering major league baseball for years and no matter where the conversation went he was all in: baseball, golf, national politics, classic rock music, management efforts to bust unions at newspapers and Big Three automobile manufacturers, then back to golf. On politics, he was an avowed liberal. He had a conservative stance about most changes in golf. He was almost comically dismissive of LIV Golf. Well, he did live a couple miles from the PGA Tour offices. You almost never saw him talking on TV. He believed writers should be read and not seen.
When his editors gave him space, DiMeglio would write rich, detailed pieces, sometimes about unexpected subjects, like Jack Nicklaus’s sixth-place finish at the 1998 Masters at age 58.
At the 2019 Masters, at Woods’s pre-tournament press conference, DiMeglio asked Woods what everybody wanted to know.
DiMeglio: “A couple quick ones. First of all, what’s the logo on your shirt?”
Woods: “Frank.”
DiMeglio: “What?”
Woods: “Frank, my head cover.”
DiMeglio, moving on: “Can you tell us, what you think of the changes made on five and how will you play that hole differently?”
Woods: “Five, it’s just long. The bunkers, they’re still deep. I think they’re unplayable, to get the ball to the green. You have to be very lucky and get a situation that you might be able to get to the front edge of the green. You need to stay out of those bunkers. But it’s just really long.
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