Golf Digest's Nick Seitz, 83, dies; connected the magazine founders to a newer editorial generation
This tribute to Golf Digest editorial legend Nick Seitz, who passed away last week in Maine at age 83, actually precedes my first meeting with him by 10 to 12 years and begins with the course of my youth, Highland Park Golf Course in Bloomington, Illinois.
When I started playing golf in middle school, having had my interest raised by seeing my older brother, Jeff, hitting balls around our yard, Highland became my first home. Not old enough to drive a car, I would put my clubs over my shoulders and ride my sting-ray bike the two miles to the course, the last mile riding one of the busiest roads in town, which then was old Route 66. How I avoided getting wiped out by a car during these many treks remains one of my greatest daring feats.
In the HPGC shop, on the check-in counter, I saw my destiny. Of the many brilliant marketing ideas the Golf Digest founders instituted, they embedded the Golf Digest brand in as many golf shops as they could. That included having a magazine rack at the counter with the latest edition for purchase. I fell in love with GD and dreamt, with sports-writing aspirations percolating, that it would be my dream job to work at the magazine. Among the editors I would read each month with a new issue was Nick Seitz, who by then was named chief editor.
Nick Seitz’ preface to the Watson book, Getting Back to Basics. He called Tom the best caddie he ever had for his strategy tips during rounds.
Fast forward to spring 1984 and I’m nearing the end of my third year as a sports writer with the Bloomington Daily Pantagraph, the same breeding ground for sports writers Ron Coffman and Dave Kindred. I had applied for a job with Golf Shop Operations, the now defunct trade magazine for Golf Digest, and was coming out for an interview with its chief editor, another Nick, Nick Romano. No suspense buildup, I got the job, but Nick Romano would kid me he pulled me out of the cornfields of Illinois to come East to Connecticut and that’s not far from the truth. I was almost 25 and had never been on a plane before, but my wife of eight months, Mary, and I drove up to O’Hare and flew out for a whirlwind one-day flight to and from Connecticut for an interview. When we arrived at night in a snowstorm, we nearly wiped out driving the 2 and a half hours to Bloomington, but that’s another story.
Nick Seitz was part of the interview agenda, and as I write that I still remember what it was like to come into his office and sit down for a chat. I hate that I can’t recall one thing we talked about or how I might have impressed him. I had been dazzled by my American Airlines flight, trying to glimpse the New York City landmarks upon landing, not realizing my Connecticut Limousine ride really wasn’t in a limo, then finally dumbfounded how rudimentary the GD offices were in a one-story, strip-mall type building on the Post Road in Norwalk across from a Lum’s restaurant, the editors’ lunch watering hole. But there I was, with Nick Seitz, at the fabled GD headquarters, and all the rest of the magazine’s legends in the same confines. When I was later moved over to the GD staff as Assistant Managing Editor in late 1985, my relationship with Nick went into full bloom in my dream job. As I did with all the columnists, I handled his monthly column all the way to completion. Nick, however, was my trickiest to handle because he never understood what the word “final” meant. Here was the normal process: the columnist sent in his copy, it went through an initial reading and editing, went out in galleys to all the editors, their remarks and factchecking were compiled in one master revision, the copy was put into the layout with the artwork, the proof went out to a select group for last reading, and then the page went out the door with the rest of the editorial pages.
However, telling Nick he was looking at a “final” read did no good. He kept wanting to read a new version of the “final” right up until the end of the production cycle. I think he really would have liked to have gone into readers’ homes and mark up his column once more. Nick did not do this to be mean-spirited. I just took it as a sign of how precise he liked to be as a writer and he was in a position to go that route. Overall, he had a philosophy that you can never stop tweaking an issue until right up to the last second before a press run. I now claim “guilty” if I from time to time conveniently “forgot” he wanted another look, but thankfully Nick never came a’calling.
I’ll always be grateful that Nick was approachable and never pulled rank on me. He was a good listener, no bullshitter, and some would say he annoyingly looked at the magazine too logically. His constant complaint about graphic changes and redesigns was that he couldn’t read the small type, so how could the readers do any better. After several years of that criticism, his “I can’t read the small type” became his mantra.
Having grown up as a paper carrier and starting my career as a newspaper sportswriter, I loved that Nick’s office looked like he was having a perennial paper drive. He subscribed to numerous major papers and they would be stacked up around his office, just waiting to be dumped when it was obvious he did not have the time to scan them. When he found out I was a maniac recycler, I was the go-to guy to haul away his old papers.
I think Kansan man Nick likely thought it was a neat thing that I was a fellow Middle American. The magazine started with three boys from Illinois in 1950 so I fit GD’s heritage. And after my youthful allegiance to Arnie had switched in the late 1970s to new golf king Tom Watson, the fact that Nick served as GD’s primary editorial contact and ghostwriter with Watson made him a target of my constant inquiries into all things Watson. I think our little conversations about the first great TW was somewhat welcome because it helped him sort through his own thinking on a Watson event. Nick was more of a hockey man initially, but like so many devoted golfers, he became passionate about improving and always, always tried to pick an expert’s mind about a swing tip that would get him a stroke better. That’s where Watson was invaluable. Nick called him the best caddie he ever had because when he played a round with him he saved many shots through Tom’s club selection and strategy.
Nick was a man of my own heart when it came to living in controlled chaos. I base that not only on how his multitude of paper stacks and such were neatly arrayed around his office, but on the time I briefly shared space with him at a rental house at the Masters. Nick was “floorganized” like I get; he had piles of papers, files and neatly arranged clothing around the room with yellow paper notes on the top describing what they were and what was to be done with them. I use the same system, although I’m vowing to make 2022 the year of the purge.
Nick had a deep voice that was effective in meetings and didn’t require him to raise the volume except in 20-foot boardrooms, and he had a chuckling-type laugh he used often, mainly about the nonsensical people or issues in the game.
Even though I was fortunate enough to know the GD founders Bill, Howard, and Jack, when I reflect on the 17 or so years I actively worked with Nick Seitz, I’ll always appreciate him for the bridge and connection he provided to those guys and to the old days of the Golf Digest I grew up loving.
For more reading on Nick Seitz’ golf-writing legacy, see Jerry Tarde’s remembrance at https://www.golfdigest.com/story/nick-setiz-obituary