Golfweek 50th anniversary memories: Brentley Romine handled college, am beats

As part of the fun surrounding our 50th anniversary, Golfweek has been walking down Memory Lane with a number of former employees who helped make the brand what it is today.

We continue the series with one of the many great college golf reporters in the magazine's history, Brentley Romine.

When did you work at Golfweek?

2011-2018

What was your Golfweek title, and give us a brief description of what you did.

Associate editor. The title stayed the same, but the role definitely evolved. It started with covering junior golf and doing agate pages. I then added college and amateur golf, and eventually professional tournaments and majors. By the end of my tenure, we were in the Gannett era, and I was basically covering multiple PGA Tour events a month and all the majors, in addition to the NCAAs, U.S. Amateur, Walker Cup, etc. Those were busy times!

What's your current title and company?

Staff writer at Golf Channel

What's the one moment you're proudest of while working with Golfweek?

There probably isn’t a singular moment, but getting to be at U.S. Juniors and writing the first national stories on guys like Scottie Scheffler and Maverick McNealy; looking back, that was pretty cool for a 20-year-old kid to do and now, at 35, still writing about those same players.

These days, it’s rare for most outlets to even cover the U.S. Junior from home. Golfweek would have pages and pages dedicated to it. That’s what made Golfweek the best.

In the old Golfweek days, you were part of this big family of people who just loved golf and storytelling. It really was like a fraternity, everyone cared for one another, and the vets mentored the kids. We had great leaders, like Jeff Babineau and Steve Harmon, and equally great teammates. I remember most fondly weeks at the NCAA Championship with the likes of Lance Ringler, Beth Ann Nichols, Kevin Casey, Julie Williams and Tracy Wilcox, and major championships with Babs and the gang. Golfweek would literally send armies to these events, and those armies produced some awesome stories.

And one more memory: Covering the 2018 Ryder Cup in Paris from my apartment in Florida. My partner in crime, Kevin, and I worked all week from my living room, expensing too many groceries and barely sleeping as we live-blogged the matches in the middle of the night.

What's the 'hair-on-fire' moment you remember most vividly?

For former managing editor (and hockey ref) Craig Horan, aka Stripes, this was every day. I still have a collection of his best quotes, pages and pages of what I’ve affectionately labeled, “S--- Stripes Says.”

Some samples:

“I’m going to have them draw a cartoon of me with a little box like Lucy in the Peanuts comics that says, ‘Five cents a question.’”

“Next thing you know, we’re going to hear that they all got rabies from Sammy the Squirrel.”

“The only thing I know about the Barn Rat is there was a fire in a barn and all that was left was a dead rat. The Barn Rat.”

But the moment that sticks out above all was when Arnold Palmer died on that Sunday before the 2016 Ryder Cup. Golfweek was the first to break the news that evening, and in a matter of hours, the great team that we had were able to completely revamp the issue, to be pubbed that Monday, into a special edition dedicated mostly to Arnie.

And, of course, this from Stripes: “They’re going to rename the Ryder Cup the Arnold Palmer Cup.” Brentley says, ‘They already have that.’ “They’re going to cancel that one.”

What's your favorite golf course you've played and why?

Augusta National. Perhaps a credit to Golfweek's legacy, Masters first-timers from Golfweek usually won the Monday media lottery. I was lucky enough to play in 2016. But equally great were all the rounds played on the road with colleague Adam Schupak, a close mentor and friend at so many tournaments.

(Editor's note: We appreciate all the former employees who have contributed time and effort to this feature. The golf journalism community is a small one and we're proud of the achievements of all our former colleagues.)

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Golfweek 50th anniversary memories: Brentley Romine handled college, am beats