Greetings from the new guy.
If you happened to read the publisher’s message a few pages
back, you’re aware that Jack Purcell and his colleagues at LINKS have shown the
questionable judgment to wrench me out of retirement and stick me on this page.
Please don’t hold it against them—they’re nice people, just a little misguided.
Besides, you ought to be happy for me. Without their charity, I’d surely be
withering toward oblivion, lying in a La-Z-Boy while regripping my ball
retriever and watching “Shell’s Wonderful World” reruns on The Golf Channel.
There’s only one thing that bugs me about my new link with
LINKS, my title: Editor at Large. You see, I’ve just left a company—Time
Inc.—that’s really big on editors-at-large. At any moment, skulking up and down
the corridors of Time, People, Money, Sports Illustrated and Fortune are a
half-dozen or so of these characters. Generally, they’re long-in-the-tooth types
who’ve lost the zip on their editorial fastballs. Whether out of benevolence or
fear of litigation, the company keeps them around, forgotten but not gone. They
earn humongous salaries and do relatively little. It’s a great gig if you can
stand the blank wall.
Last fall, as I neared completion of my 25th year in the
chief editor’s chair at GOLF Magazine, a congenital paranoia told me I was about
to be measured for one of those size at-large straitjackets. The company, I
realized, had run out of titles to promote me to: I was already Editor in Chief,
Editorial Director and Senior Vice-President—large at editor—and had nowhere to
go but down.
So I retired. Now, six months later, here I am as, uh, Editor
at Large, and without the largesse I would have reaped at Time Inc. Smart guy,
huh? Half a year ago I was running the most widely read golf publication in the
world, supervising dozens of editors, writers, artists and designers, honing
copy with Palmer and Nicklaus, staging photo shoots with Sorenstam and Sergio,
and trading insults with Feherty.
Now I run nothing and nobody. My officemates are a terrier
and a schnoodle, and the only insults come from my wife at lunchtime. I’m
neither editor nor large. I’m not even “at.” LINKS, after all, is published from
sunny Hilton Head, South Carolina, idyllic island home to
countless delectable courses. I’m writing to you, however, from a gray little
village on a frozen stretch of the west bank of the Hudson
River, where the golf season is still several long, frigid weeks
away.
If “at large” means everywhere, like Big Brother or God or
George Clooney, then at large I am not. Last year I flew more than 50,000 miles
fulfilling my editorial duties. Now my only business trips come when I walk to
the bathroom. I’m editor-at-small.
Besides, let’s face it, the very term “at large” is
syntactically off the wall. If I’d never heard it before, I would have guessed
it meant something less than flattering. As in: Does Shirley have an eating
disorder? Is she with child? No, she’s at large, poor dear. So, forgive me if
I’m struggling with this sudden at-largement.
I mean, the truth is, it isn’t merely difficult being at
large, it’s impossible, literally speaking, unless you happen to reside in that
curiously named town in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania and work for, say,
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Then, and only then, can you legitimately claim to
be an Editor at Large. The rest of us are mere poseurs.
Finally, correct me if I’m wrong, but the only other
individuals ever referred to as at large are criminals—cons on the lam—the guys
whose sneering mugs get tacked up on post office walls. Does that make me one of
America’s most-wanted editors or have
I simply gone unapprehended for a crime so heinous that I deserve incarceration?
The latter, I suspect. That would at least explain those hangers-on at Time
Inc.
To be honest, I am starting to feel a guilt pang or two of my
own. You see, although I loved working at GOLF Magazine all those years, I had
absolutely no natural affinity for the publication. Its appeal, after all, is
based totally on instruction—how-to articles, something for which I have zero
enthusiasm. I edited GOLF Magazine, but I didn’t read it. It just didn’t stir
me.
This magazine does. In this LINKS, there are no chains—no
paralysis from analysis—just an unending celebration of golf at its best. So
despite being old enough to play the Senior (whoops, make that the Champions)
Tour, I’m feeling like a rookie, with a whole new world of things to explore and
express. Purcell and my new boss, Editor Dave Gould, tell me that if I behave
myself they’ll even let me out of the house to do some traveling.
And ultimately—just a few months from now—this page will be
emanating from a gray town of a different hue, St. Andrews, Scotland. I guess on reflection, if
feeling a little guilty—and feeling a glorious sense of freedom—is what
at-largeness is all about, they got my title right after all.
I’m looking forward to being in this spot every issue, and I
hope you’ll be joining me.
