If ever there were a contest I could win, it was the one organized by the PGA Tour and Golf Digest Magazine in 1985. It was the “Worst Avid Golfer” contest held at the TPC course at Sawgrass, site of the Players Championship every spring. Only I wasn’t signed up to play in it; I was assigned to produce a feature on it for TBS. Though I was neither an avid golfer nor an avid golf fan, I was an avid fan of getting paid, so I trekked down to Florida.

As I said, my golf background was sketchy at best. I took golf lessons as a 16-year-old and quickly became wretched at the game. I hung on to my clubs and carted them with me across the country as I started my career, but rarely put them to use.

Then in 1996 I began what became a seven-year run hosting a show produced by PGA Tour Productions called This is the PGA Tour. It was great fun visiting incredible courses and interviewing the greatest golfers in the world and having an inside-the-ropes look at a game I had sort of ignored. Just being around guys like Davis Love, Peter Jacobsen, and Phil Mickelson rekindled my excitement for the game. So I plunged in again and, with enough practice, became marginally better than I had been a quarter century earlier. (I’m being modest; I became much better. But considering where I had started, that wasn’t saying all that much. I still struggled to break 100. Though I did shoot my age once—had I been born in 1876.)

Anyway, when you’re on TV talking knowledgeably about golf with golfers, people start to believe that you’re a competent golfer yourself, not just a guy who loves the game, wears golf shirts, and knows how to do research.

But I’m getting off track, hitting it into the first cut of rough, if you will. What I want to show you today is the golfing establishment’s effort in 1985 to reach out to the everyday golfer, the golfer I have since become. I only wish this contest were an annual affair.