Interview with sportswriter Alan Shipnuck

 

Lee Ross: In 1994, you're in college and write a feature on Rancho Park that ends up, in all places, Sports Illustrated. How did that happen?

 

Alan Shipnuck: I started going to UCLA in the fall of '91 and there was really nowhere else to play nearby. There was a hole in the fence on that downhill par three -- we'd sneak in through the hole in the afternoon and we’d see a twosome, "Hey, the starter sent us out here." So I always loved Rancho Park. And I took a few lessons from Ron Weiner on the driving range there. So I was always just a fan of Rancho Park. And then I did an internship at Sports Illustrated January-August of '94. It went amazing. I ended up writing a cover story. I had to come back and finish my undergraduate degree. So my title was ‘special contributor’. I was paid by the story and I was always pitching them stories. I knew some of the lore of Rancho, like Arnold Palmer's 12 and all that stuff. I just said this is a really cool golf course that means a lot to the city of Los Angeles that nobody really knows about outside of the city limits. They said yes. That's how it came to be.

 

Lee Ross: So now, almost 30 years later, it's fun to read your story again and see what's changed and what hasn't. You called Rancho "a green respite for the everyman in the land of mall and sprawl." I'd certainly agree with that. But the monthly club meetings that functioned as ersatz stag parties, those are long gone. As a writer, you're always looking for a good story. What made Rancho Park a good one to tell?

 

Alan Shipnuck: Because it was personal, you know, I had an attachment to the golf course. You know, I could have probably written a fun story about Griffith Park, but I didn't play out there. But obviously, Rancho had the L.A. Open connection -- that added some glamour. I think one of the things that helped get the story in print was when our photo editor started looking back at the old photos like, 'Oh, we have unbelievable photos, Rita Hayworth and we've got all the L.A. glamour of the '40s and '50s and all that. You know, Rancho is just different.

 

Lee Ross: You include a wonderful contrast between Arnold Palmer, who won three times at Rancho Park and Jack Nicklaus who made his professional debut at Rancho but didn't much care for the course. History shows Jack did the best he could to get the L.A. Open moved to Riviera. But Arnold, who stopped playing in Los Angeles late in his career, made a point to come back to Rancho for its last time as host in 1983. Both are icons of the sport but can you draw any broader narrative about who these guys really were from Palmer being the beloved hero at our Muni and Nicklaus, who you described as petulant?

 

Alan Shipnuck: That might have been a little harsh on Jack. You know, Nicklaus was already the architecture wonk. It wasn't much after that he started working on Harbor Town with Pete Dye. Obviously, Riviera is Riviera, it's one of the best courses in the world. So I could see why that appealed to Jack. Arnie, he definitely had that everyman vibe and I'm sure he thrived on the energy of the crowd. I have observed this many times when you go to a public golf course, the fans are way more into it because it's like the regulars, they want to come out and see how the pros play their golf course. And they have an attachment to each hole and each shot. The energy at a public golf course is just different. I mean, a Torrey Pines U.S. Open versus a L.A. Country Club U.S. Open -- very different. So I'm sure Arnie had a connection with the crowd, you know? The fact that he made 12 there -- if Jack did that he never would have stepped foot in the state of California again. But Arnie could laugh at himself and those things sort of burnished his legend. Palmer's orientation is more a free-wheeling, fun, energetic vibe versus uptight, cloistered, private club.

 

Lee Ross: Also, how do you get away with calling Jack Nicklaus petulant in Sports Illustrated?

 

Alan Shipnuck: The truth is my shield.

 

Lee Ross: Your writing career has essentially paralleled SoCal natives Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. I'm guessing you've seen in person all or most of their major championship wins and plenty of other occasions too. Each was introduced to the game at public courses. How did that exposure through municipal golf shape the champions each became?

 

Alan Shipnuck: There's 100 guys who have the same physical skills as Tiger Woods and probably 75 have the same skills as Phil Mickelson. But what separates them? It's the metaphysical. It's the ability to rise to the occasion. That incredible desire to keep going and keep pushing themselves. The utter fearlessness in pressure situations. Clearly, Tiger was a little bit better than Phil in a lot of things. If you're a public course golfer, there's just a built-in scrappiness. You know, it says something about your family life, right? You're not a country club kid. Probably life has been a little more challenging. And anyone who hangs out at a public golf course knows it's a very colorful array of characters. And if you're a hotshot 10-year-old Phil Mickelson, there's going to be a bunch of teenagers and probably grown men who want to kick your butt on the putting green or in little matches. It makes you a little edgier and I think it hardens you a little bit. Plenty of great golfers have come out of country clubs, but it can't be an accident that the two best players in the last 30-plus years have a similar background and learned the game in similar environments.

 

Lee Ross: Your career has also spanned a transformation in media. You worked for once major magazines Sports Illustrated and Golf Magazine who are a fraction of what they once were. And now you're part owner of a wonderful online entity called Fire Pit Collective. Spending a life covering professional golf sure sounds dreamy and easy, but I'm guessing you've had a lot of professional uncertainty, too.

 

Alan Shipnuck: Only recently. My first 25 years were very charmed. I'm not that old. I am a dinosaur. I caught sort of the end but still the glory years of print journalism. You know, 1994 is when I started. S.I. was probably the greatest magazine in the world. You had an unlimited travel budget. They used to sell a one-page ad in the magazine for $400,000 and all the Detroit automakers lined up. Every Rolex, every airline, every investment company. The last five or ten years at Sports Illustrated, you could see things were changing. There were cutbacks and staff reductions. The guys who ran the magazine -- ran the larger company -- they were always like in their sixties. They just didn't understand the Internet. They didn't really see how things changed until it was too late. I went to Golf magazine for three years. That was kind of a messy ownership management situation and it's kind of a stifling environment. So I was just ready to have more creative freedom, but also sort of take control of my future. It was a leap of faith to start our own company. But it feels better to know we're going to survive or we're going to fail based on our own efforts and our own acumen versus all these layers of management and bureaucracy. I feel like I've got an MBA in the last two years. Words were always my life. Now I know a little bit more about numbers. And so it's been fun.

 

Lee Ross: I think I'm correct in saying that as much as you think of yourself as a writer, you also think of yourself as a journalist, which means you'll shine light on truths that some do not want seen. How do you view your job in this way versus, say, a reporter who covers education, business or government?

 

Alan Shipnuck: Whatever your beat is the job of the reporter is to ask hard questions and look at things with a little jaundiced eye. Your job is to interpret what's really happening for the readers. They don't have time to do the interviews or just sit in the meetings and make the phone calls. Just cut to the chase and tell me what's really happening. Even though it's only golf and it doesn't really matter, that's how I view the job. So definitely there's been many times players are mad at me, tour bureaucrats are mad at me, agents, wives, but those are not my constituents. My relationship is with the reader and I really have an obligation to give it to them straight.

 

Lee Ross: So being a good reporter also means pushing the envelope sometimes. For you, this aggressiveness led to banishment at Augusta National. What happened and was it worth it?

 

Alan Shipnuck: Definitely worth it. At Augusta, there is an expression you hear "you can't wait to get there and you can't wait to leave." It's obviously a great tournament. It's a beautiful golf course. It's a really hard place to do your job because the green jackets are so f****** weird and there's so many rules and everything's about control. It's just a challenge. That was 2012 when Bubba won. So. I was writing what turned out to be a cover story for the magazine. You're not going to get it until Wednesday or Thursday, you know? So, I'm not here to tell people that Bubba Watson won the Masters. They already know that. It's like you have to bring it to life in a different way and have a level of analysis inside and intimacy and take people places they can’t go. I knew the choreography of Augusta National on Sunday night...[after the live television cameras are turned off and] I'm going to come into Butler Cabin so I can really tell the story and bring it to life. And people want to know more about this guy. It's a gray area. There's not like a sign on the door that says 'No media allowed.' But I kind of knew. So I took my credential off. I just kind of blended in for the most part. And it was a great scene. There's other players in there. I talked to Bubba's mom and she's in tears. All his family, lifelong friends, like it's a gold mine for a reporter. And Jim Armstrong, who is the general manager, he's standing at the door with arms crossed, is so pissed. And he's like, we're going to have security help you leave the premises as fast as possible. Just then Bubba walked into that bedroom with this guy who was carrying like six different green jackets because he didn't like the fit of the one he'd gotten for the outdoor ceremony. I had a little exchange with Bubba and it was kind of a cool scene. It was great. But months later, my editor got a letter saying I had committed a procedural violation by being in Butler Cabin. So they suspended me for a year. It was worth it.

 

Lee Ross: Being a good reporter means not everyone is going to like what you write. I'm certain that's happened with your Mickelson biography and probably other times as well. In the insular world of professional golf, that's a dangerous line to tow because you don't want to be so aggressive that you become an outcast. How do you manage that difficult balance?

 

Alan Shipnuck: Yeah. After the Mickelson book dropped and all the controversy I wasn't worried are players not going to want to talk to me. It turned out to be the opposite. I had so many come up to me, plus agents and caddies and wives. “Thank God you wrote that. Someone had to write the truth.” They had seen both sides of Phil, whereas the public had only seen one. And so it was cathartic [for them] that someone actually told the real story about who Phil is. I tried to be as balanced as possible. Phil's done a lot of great things. He has a lot of really winning personality traits. That's all in the book too. But there's also been a lot of messiness and a lot of controversy. I think players just know that I'm going to give it to the public -- straight. I just kind of do my thing and I don't really worry about the reaction. Because people are always mad about something.

 

Lee Ross: Forgive me. I recently went online and saw your current handicap is listed as 8.1. So it appears that a lifetime of covering golf would make you a perfect fit for a membership at Rancho rather than on Tour. So what is it that makes those guys so good?

 

Alan Shipnuck: Well, it's definitely a single-mindedness. I mean, I've done so many player profiles through the years, and one thing you always hear talking to their family or their high school and college teammates is like, these guys are obsessed with golf. And that's all they did. Talent is a funny word. When you say someone has talent -- nobody's born to know how to play golf. I mean, clearly, there's a genetic component. You know, hand-eye coordination, motor skills that can get passed on. But the golf swing, chipping and putting, that's a learned skill. Phil's a perfect example. All he did was chip and putt for hundreds and hundreds of hours as a kid. And so you'll say, “Oh, he's so talented.” He taught himself how to do that. If you look at the Korda sisters their parents are professional athletes. They were given tools to work with that other people don't have. But there's also, you know, Hall of Famers who -- their parents didn't even play golf they weren't even athletes.

 

Lee Ross: We've seen in recent years communities all across the country with significant public/private efforts to rehabilitate municipal courses, most famously with Bethpage, Harding Park and Torrey Pines. But also in Oakland, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. What's the push behind these efforts, not just in one place, but in so many across the country? And what would it take for something similar to happen here in Los Angeles?

 

Alan Shipnuck: It usually takes one person. Who has a lot of capital politically and economically. Because it's a grind and it's a political hassle. Fundraising is onerous. At the Fire Pit, we're documenting the restoration of Golden Gate Park Par Three. It's not on the scale of those things, but it's an amazing facility and it's going to be one the best par three courses in the country and it's going to be $15 or whatever. Someone has to step up in those communities and be the driving force. This is what pisses me off about people who want to turn golf courses into public housing. There's a lot of open space in big cities. There's a lot of empty parking lots. Do we need affordable housing? For sure. I support that. There's not many places in the community where hundreds of people a day go and get exercise and camaraderie and get to test themselves and get to feel like part of a community. When you go to Rancho Park, the diversity of the people, it is truly Los Angeles. You've got kids, you've got retirees, everything in between. And, of course, every language, every race, every orientation, and you don't know who you’re going to get paired with. It’s a total lottery, right? You don't know who's going to be next to you in the driving range stall. Rancho Park, Torrey Pines, Harding Park -- that's the heartbeat of a city. It's really one of the few places left where you're out of your bubble. A great public golf course anybody can really play. That's cool. Rancho Park really is for everybody.