MENTORING: PASS IT ON

We’re just about a year from when I began laying down the first words of “Letters to a Future Champion,” thinking it would be a small, paperback book that would be a simple compilation of Mr. Pulver’s letters to me as a teenager, with a few of my thoughts included as explanation.

After putting together a rough plan for the letters and their topics, it became apparent that we had something much bigger; that I needed to tell Mr. Pulver’s life in greater detail than he had ever shared. It was my job to fully introduce my mentor to the reader, and there was no one better to do that than my “right hand gal” at CBS Sports, MK Rotenberry.

MK came to me as a summer production assistant in 2016 and has grown exponentially each year since, now becoming a full-fledged member of our traveling golf caravan through hard work, preparation, and pleasant professionalism.

This book has been so much about connections between moments in time, people, a game(s), and evergreen subject matter. In part because of the Covid lockdown, MK was asked to research the timeline of Mr. Pulver’s life that appears in the book.

That process wasn’t just about MK chronicling my mentor’s life, but rather her having the opportunity to ask questions about Mr. Pulver, interacting with his family, and giving her a deeper connection to golf. It was about providing a chance for her to grow the way the Pulver family did for me 40-plus years ago, which continues today.

Did you have that person in your past or is there someone in your life today that you could nudge in a positive direction?