75TH ANNIVERSARY
WHEN HE GETS INTERESTED in something, which happens a lot, Guy Yocom goes deep.
“There were some racy novels and even some Playboys. That was OK with my mom. She always said, ‘All reading is good.’” Such precocious literacy started Yocom on the path of an autodidact polymath. Leonardo da Vinci is the epitome of the cumbersome and of- ten loosely applied designation, and though Yocom winces at the term and especially the da Vinci reference, he is not a Cliff Clavin. He doesn’t just talk the talk. Consider that his independent research in extreme weather, one of his many passions, is credited by aficiona- dos with debunking a myth that a man who filmed the deadly 1953 Warner Robins tornado was killed. So complete is Yocom’s immersion in his cornucopia of enthusiasms that over
Given the way one of golf’s all-time interviewers has been wired – abun- dantly by nature, sparingly by nurture, dynamically in combination – it seems he’s had little choice. Sixty years ago, when he was 9, Yo- com began diving into the stacks of rejected old books his mother had brought home from her job at a com- munity donation centre. “There was every subject you could think of, but I was drawn to the unusual – UFOs, circus freaks, astrology, palm- istry, unsolved crimes,” says Yocom, leaning back in a West Haven, Con- necticut, diner, clipping his well-cho- sen words with a deliberate cadence.
‘The Best I Ever Did’ How writer Guy Yocom mastered the golf interview BY JAIME DIAZ
20 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2026
PHOTOGRAPH BY J D CUBAN
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