For Tim Rosaforte, this week’s Masters will be like no other. The longtime golf journalist won’t be covering this revered tournament for the first time since 1983.
His absence has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic that delayed the Masters to the Fall. If only it was that simple. Last month, Rosaforte was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. He has been having memory issues for about two years. Rosaforte turned 65 on Oct. 25.
Instead of keeping Golf Channel’s viewers informed throughout the week, Rosaforte will watch this Masters from his Jupiter, Florida, home. Rosaforte retired from Golf Channel last December because of the cognitive problems.
Rosaforte – or “Rosie,” a nickname he has had since high school — last visited a PGA Tour event in late February, when he was at his hometown Honda Classic at PGA National. This week is when his new world, and the diagnosis, really hits home when he stays home.
“I’ve been going to the Masters for a long time,” Rosaforte said Thursday at his Jupiter home. “I’ll miss the tournament and the golf writers award dinner, which I have emceed a lot. Nothing lasts forever. It’s time for me to take a break.
“Truth is, I missed a lot of my family while they were growing up. I now have a chance to spend more time with my family and meet their friends and get to know what great people they are. My youngest daughter, Molly, just got married to a golf professional from Old Marsh (Mason Colling).”
Cold, hard facts
Rosaforte was golf’s original “insider,” one of the first print journalists since Will McDonough to make the transition to network TV. Rosaforte worked at the Palm Beach Post from 1987-94, after stints at the Tampa Times and Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, and before moving on to Sports Illustrated and Golf World/Golf Digest.
His first TV gig was alongside veteran Jay Randolph on the old Sunshine Network in the 1990s. Rosaforte moved on to PGA Tour Sunday on USA Network in 2003 before he started appearing regularly on Golf Channel in 2007.
And we do mean regularly. Rosaforte was ubiquitous on the Golf Channel, seemingly appearing every day to update the world on any breaking news. He eschewed outrageous opinions and instead relied on cold, hard facts he uncovered through relentless reporting.
“I’d receive a call from Tim when nobody else would call me,” Jack Nicklaus said. “He’ll say, ‘Jack, I need your opinion on something.’ Not many guys would do that.”
In a sense, Rosaforte was like Ben Hogan; their success was based on digging – for scoops or the ball out of the dirt. Rosaforte would always make the extra call. Or four. It was in his DNA.
“There’s a lot of insiders in sports today, people like Adam Schefter, Peter Gammons and Tim Kurkjian,” said Geoff Russell, who was Rosaforte’s boss at Golf World and later at Golf Channel. “If you go back 30 years, Tim was doing that before most of them.”
Rosaforte gradually built trust with the players – and a list of contacts that his colleagues would dream of having. Whenever a golf story broke, Rosaforte would call the principals involved; he would receive so many calls, he would always carry two phones so he wouldn’t miss one.
It wasn’t the number of phones; it was the phone numbers he had that was so impressive.
“I used to kid Timmy, ‘How many U.S. Presidents do you have in there?’ ” said Golf Channel host Rich Lerner. “You could start with the Presidents and work your way down to the greatest players of all time. The question should have been, ‘Who don’t you have?’ The answer was ‘nobody.’
“And he was the last person to let you know about it. He wouldn’t brag like some journalists. There is not an ounce of conceit in him.”
Getting a phone number from the world’s top golfers in the 1980s and 1990s wasn’t easy — you had to build years of credibility — and it’s more difficult these days. Rosaforte kept himself relative with today’s stars through his hard work, perspective and knowledge of the game.
Big scoop on President Obama and Tiger
Access was the key to his success. There weren’t many things going on in professional golf that Rosaforte didn’t know about. In 2013, he actually scooped the White House press corps when he broke the story that President Barack Obama was playing golf with Tiger Woods at the Floridian in Palm City.
Rosaforte’s only error came when he met President Obama on the range. “I patted him on the shoulder when he walked over,” Rosaforte said. “I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to touch a President.”
“You could always trust Timmy,” Ernie Els said at last week’s TimberTech Championship in Boca Raton. “He would ask the tough question, but he would always treat you fairly. I’ve known Timmy since the late 1980s. Man, this really hits hard.”
Early last year, his colleagues noticed Rosaforte wasn’t his normal cool, calm-headed self on the set. He was constantly looking at his notes instead of confidently delivering his message.
He was taken off the air last summer and spent the next several months seeing doctors, who initially diagnosed the problem as anxiety. After a four-month break, Rosaforte went back on air late last year, but Golf Channel officials reluctantly made the decision to announce his retirement on Dec. 19, leaving a huge void for his viewers – and Rosaforte.
“I’ll miss the competing, I won’t lie about that,” he said. “I won’t miss getting the names wrong.”
Rosaforte took great pride in knowing and remembering the names of the sports writers — many of who he mentored — as well as the crew at Golf Channel and many other folks in the golf business.
“I always admired the golf pros,” he said. “When somebody comes through the door in the morning, you need to know their names.”
Battling Alzheimer’s
CBS announcer Jim Nantz reached out to Rosaforte to invite him to the Nantz Alzheimer’s Institute in Houston last month to seek alternative treatment (Nantz’s father died of Alzheimer’s). Tests confirmed the disease and doctors decided it was best not to start Rosaforte on new medications.
“Tim is respected by everyone in golf,” Nantz said. “The sport is predicated on several basic tenets — integrity, trust, selflessness. Tim embodies all those characteristics. In a day and age where distrust of the media abounds, Tim was always respected and admired by all. He will be missed at Augusta.”
This week’s Masters will be strange enough without Rosaforte’s absence. He missed in 1983 because he married Genevieve.
“I know I’m going to miss not having him there,” Lerner said. “Tim is in his 60s and he was still out there grinding and digging like he’s a rookie and his job is on the line. That’s how you’re supposed to do it.”
In a sport where even the world’s best players make several mistakes during their round, Rosaforte rarely made one whether he was on air or continuing to write for his other publications.
“You have to know when to toe the line between knowledge that you can divulge and you can’t,” Tiger Woods said. “I think Tim has done a fantastic job of that.”
Rosaforte was taught never to ignore facts. He knows he is facing a formidable opponent in Alzheimer’s.
“I know what I have, and I know things don’t look good,” Rosaforte said. “I’m a fighter. I’m not giving up.”
Rosaforte is showing the same tenacity he did while playing as an undersized (6-foot-1, 230 pounds) linebacker at Bridgeport, then the University of Rhode Island, then during his 40-plus years as a journalist. He grew up in Brewster, N.Y., the son of a mechanic who was in the garbage business, the first of his family to graduate from college.
Former Fort Lauderdale Strikers coach Eckhard Krautzun once tried to stop Rosaforte from entering the locker room after a game because he was unhappy with a story Rosaforte had written. After a staredown, Rosaforte brushed past Krautzun to continue doing his job.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Rosaforte’s work ethic and talent earned him the PGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism in 2014. He was inducted into the South Florida PGA Hall of Fame in 2012, the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.
He was president of the Golf Writers Association of America and has won more than 30 writing awards. He has written two books on Woods and another on the Ryder Cup.
The golf world has recently reached out to Rosaforte. The PGA of America announced Rosaforte would become the first journalist to receive an honorary PGA membership, usually reserved for Presidents and other celebrities.
At last week’s TimberTech Championship, Nicklaus was among many players to sign a get-well poster, a gesture that left Rosaforte emotional. Rosaforte has been covering the Golden Bear since the early 1980s and earned Nicklaus’ respect.
“I think one of the reasons Tim was so good is because he knew the game,” World Golf Hall of Famer Nick Price of Jupiter Island said. “He was very passionate about playing the game. Tim would always ask very specific questions. He always wanted to get the answers correct, and that meant a lot to me.”
Rosaforte spends his days working out, playing golf and visiting with family, friends and his grandson. He hopes to write a memoir on his career. He’s down to one phone.
Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease, as anyone who has watched a family member or friend go through it can attest. It robs someone of the most precious commodity — your memories.
For Rosaforte, that includes covering more than 150 majors and every Ryder Cup since the early 1980s. He has had an Arnold Palmer with Arnold Palmer, won a match with Raymond Floyd as his partner, has had Nicklaus’ trust for decades and many one-on-ones with Woods. With his bald pate, Rosaforte is as recognizable as many of the star golfers who live in our area.
Rosaforte knows he has lived a charmed life, one he built through hard work. Now that he’s been thrown one of life’s big curveballs, he’s not looking for sympathy.
“I don’t want people thinking I’m about to die,” he said. “At the same time, this makes me look at the fact I’m not going to live forever. I never really experienced that. But I’m optimistic. If I continue to work out and eat right, let’s see how it turns out.”
[jwplayer 7NBaZ2A0-vgFm21H3]