I always read the Globe Sports for Steven Brunt and Lorne Rubenstein, not that the other fine writers aren't worth a daily look, but Lorne and Steven are in a class of their own..
Steven finally packed it in as the Globe like other papers, started the trend of cutting costs, he of course was gobbled up by Sportsnet and is seen and heard on all of their platforms today.
Rube now has decided to join him after 32 years, saying " when I got to the U.S. Open at the Olympic Club [last month], I just found I couldn’t get engaged with the pro game any more. It was an easy decision to make that way. If I’m not engaged in the subject it’s not fair to the readers and to the paper." His last article will be posted after this year's RBC Canadian Open in Hamilton.
Lorne told me once he got started at the Globe in 1980 when he wrote the editor a letter asking if he would consider an article he had written. The editor made a good decision that day... here we are today, 32 years later , thousands of always compelling, often brilliant articles, awards galore, a Canadian Golf Hall of Fame Career, a Canadian Sports Lifetime Achievement Award... and he's hardly done..
When he started in 1980, Arnie won our CPGA Championship, it was in 1997 my 2nd year with Fairways that I finally met the man I'd been reading at the CPGA at Mandarin GC in Markham as we both followed a talented little lefty called Mike Weir. Weirsy lost that one to a player called Guy Hill. Rube wrote about it the next day with his usual combination of insight and articulation.
I call him the Laird, a form of respect in Scotland, following the summer of 2002 he spent staying above the post office in Dornoch, playing one of my all time favourite courses, Royal Dornoch, and writing about it in A Season In Dornoch, Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands, and he captured what I had known for so many years so well, it has always been a bond between us..
Lorne is one of the last newspaper golf columnists, Dave Perkins another for the Star who only writes weekly now, as we plow on into whatever is next in the social media... Sad..
He is Canadiana, he always has an interesting angle, always makes sense, always well researched, has great contacts and uses them to write articles nobody else has. He is principled, articulate, loyal and considerate.
He is respected throughout the game from the starter at Don Valley to the Commissioner's office in Ponte Verde, and is comfortable in them both..
As I said he is hardly done, he will be on with me at www.nextsportstar.com tomorrow at 740am, where he'll tell you what his plans are for the future..
Whatever they are. I'll be reading them..
List of Lorne's awards
Rube won a National Magazine Award (1985) in Canada. The Golf Writers Association of America has presented him with four first-place awards for his writing. He is the recipient of awards from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada for his articles. Rubenstein was inducted into the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2007. He received a Canadian Sports Media Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. The Golf Association of Ontario will present the first Lorne Rubenstein Media Award in May, 2012.
An exerpt from Moe and Me... Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius
The American professionals soon let Moe know he annoyed them. He had come into a world where players conformed to a set of rules. They were trying to impress current sponsors and potential sponsors. Moe sometimes wore the same clothes a few days in a row. His pants were too short, and his shoes were torn. He stood out: his physical appearance, his sweat-stained visor, his white shirt blackened on both shoulders from carrying his clubs, his pants frayed at the bottom, his shoes split open, his speech patterns, his unusual stance, the swing itself, the speed with which he played, the fact that he never studied the line of a putt, and his antics. Moe sometimes hit balls off Coke bottles rather than tees, and when he did use a tee it might be as high as a coffee cup. He used a four-inch tee twice during the 1959 Los Angeles Open.
“I was putting on a show,” Moe said. “I was making the crowd laugh.” Maybe it was only his nervous energy coming out, but it was impossible not to notice him. Maybe that was helpful to the tour, which, after all, was entertainment, as well as a sporting competition. But players and officials didn’t see it that way. “They told me it was big business, this was the tour of the world, and they didn’t care how good I was. I still had to tee it up in the normal way.”
His insecurities poured out, but he did play some excellent golf. A story persists that Moe was leading the 1959 Greater New Orleans Open Invitational with seven holes to play, but I couldn’t corroborate this claim. Moe was two shots behind leader Bill Collins after three rounds and shot 72 in the last round. He tied for fourth, four shots behind Collins and seven better than Arnold Palmer. Moe won $1,100 and was on the cover of the March 20, 1959, issue of Golf World, the U.S. newsweekly of the game. He is shown in two photos. In one, he’s setting up to hit a driver, with the ball on the tee so high that the entire wooden clubhead would fit underneath. He’s wearing black-and-white striped socks and dark slacks. The other photo shows Moe holding four tees high in his right hand, balancing a ball on each of the two middle tees.
Tour players realized that Moe was a superb ball-striker, a marksman. However, many couldn’t go beyond his look and style. In the end, Moe played six PGA Tour events in 1959, making every cut, and returned for the next winter circuit, where he again played six tournaments and finished in the top twenty-five three times. But Moe felt humiliated at one tournament. He showed up at the home that Gus and Audrey Maue had rented in Daytona Beach. Maue was shocked when Moe knocked on his door, He was supposed to be playing in a tournament, Moe told Maue he was finished on the U.S. tour, but he wouldn’t say why.
Bert Weaver, an American pro, went to a Daytona Beach club two days later, after the tournament was over. Maue asked him what had happened. “He said that Moe put his ball on a big tee and that he hit it so well. Moe was playing to the gallery, and he was carrying his own bag. A player in his group called Moe aside and told him to fix his teeth and to get new clothes. Moe was insulted and said he’d never play the U.S. tour again.”
Many years later, I asked Weaver about what had happened. He couldn’t recall the details and said only that Moe was “unusual” and that the American pros all liked him once they got to know him.
But it was evident that some players didn’t like Moe, which is why he showed up at the Maue home. He never did play again in the United States. The Canadian Open was the only tour event he continued to play
Lorne's books..
Brantford (Ontario) Golf and Country Club, 1879-1979
Seasons in a Golfer’s Life, with Jim Nelford
1984 Summit (Ontario) Golf and Country Club, 1912-1987
1987 The Natural Golf Swing, by George Knudson with Lorne Rubenste
1988 Links: An Insider’s Tour Through the World of Golf, ..An Exploration into the Mind, Heart and Soul of Golf,
Touring Prose: Writings on Golf,
The Swing: Mastering the Principles of the Game, by Nick Price with Lorne Rubenstein,
1997 The Fundamentals of Hogan, by David Leadbetter with Lorne Rubenstein,
20002 A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands,
2003 Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters,
2003 A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman
This Round’s on Me: Lorne Rubenstein on Golf,
Moe and Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf’s Mysterious Genius
Bryan Angus also on twitter@mumbles and at www.isr1050.com and co-hosting the Breakfast Club M-F 7-9am at www.nextsportstar.com
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