When You Can’t Fake It
A ROUNDABOUT OF TOPICS WITH CBS SPORTS WRITER KYLE PORTER
How did you get started in writing?
That’s a funny one. I was working for an insurance company out of college. It was a good job, but I was a little bored by it, I guess, and wanted to do my own thing and had always enjoyed writing. So I started an Oklahoma State football blog site, which I still run, still own. I did that for two years. My wife kind of challenged me, “Look, do it for two years, and if it leads to something at the end of two years, so be it, and if not, then we just move on to the next thing.” In the last month of the second year, December 2012, I got hired on to cover golf at CBS. I had never covered golf before. They kind of took a chance on me. I had some good recommendations from some very generous people that were very kind with the way they presented me, and CBS was generous as well to take a chance on somebody who hadn’t really done this before and really didn’t know what he was doing.
I think for the first couple years, I wasn’t lost, but looking back, I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. But it’s been a blast doing that ever since.
Did you have any real background or interest in golf at all?
I attended Oklahoma State, so I followed their golf. And I played recreationally growing up. I played baseball competitively, but I played golf recreationally. I knew enough to kind of fake my way around for a while until I kind of figured things out.
Did you have any funny moments that were like, “Oh my gosh, this is something I don’t understand at all and I’ve made myself look like a fool with the way I’ve asked this question”?
I did have one, and this wasn’t funny; it was more serious. I was at the Byron Nelson in 2013 and we were doing these Father’s Day pieces and I asked Jason Day about his dad, not really knowing that the background between him and his dad was not a good relationship. He was very kind about it. He was great about it. But I went back and looked at some of the past stuff, and I thought, Wow, that is not a thing I should have approached Jason Day about. So I appreciated him being kind. Over time you get more context, you get more institutional knowledge that helps you be able to ask better questions and become better at the job.
When you’re on site at an event, what are you looking for? Is there any real chance that you’re going to get something that no one else sees?
Yeah, there is. You just have to know where to look. Half the job is being a noticer, paying attention and noticing things. I was at the US Open [last] year, and I was following Brooks Koepka in the final round at Pebble. He was playing with Chez Reavie, and on the twelfth tee box they were comparing their tobacco cans. They were comparing what kind of tobacco they were both using. That was something I used in a story I was writing. I tweeted it out and I used it in a story. Is that a big deal? No. But it’s a detail that you’re not going to see on TV, it’s a detail that other people who are not out there walking around, they didn’t have it.
So there is value to getting out and walking the course, even though if you sat in the press center, you could see everything that we’re seeing, say, on TV, all the various things happening at once?
Both have value, for sure. It does get hard when you’re at the US Open final round and you’re following the group that maybe the eventual winner doesn’t come out of that group and you have to write about his win, when you saw like three shots. What do I do with that?
I’m walking the ’16 US Open with DJ in the final round and Curtis Strange is there. This was the penalty when his ball moved on the fifth green. And Curtis Strange is there and he’s talking about how he doesn’t know what’s going on, and the crowd doesn’t know what’s going on, and it’s kind of chaotic. I guess it came across like that on TV, but I think it came across much more so when you’re there in person. You can kind of pick up stuff like that, and I think it’s especially beneficial at major championships when people want as much detail and as much color as possible.
They’re willing to read about something about which they already know the outcome.
Yeah, yeah. The DJ story that year was maybe the thing that might be the most read thing that I’ve ever written for CBSSports.com. And everybody watched it. It wasn’t like they didn’t know, but they wanted to know what it was like to be there.
“What does perfection look like, and what does trying to attain it look like?And how close can you come to being perfect for how long a period of time? Can you do it for one hole? Can you do it for 18 holes?”
Does that ever play in your mind—why am I writing this story, they already know what happened?
Yeah, and I think it affects the way that you write. I don’t know how it couldn’t. If you’re Dan Jenkins 60 years ago, you’re going to write a lot differently than I am in 2019 or 2020. I’m writing knowing that you already know the outcome, and he was writing not knowing whether you already knew the outcome. So it certainly affects the way that you present the information and the way you think about the event as a whole.
What are we golf galleries or TV viewers missing about the way Tour professionals approach the game?
They process a lot of information very quickly. Some do it very slowly, but most of the best do it very quickly. And look, the swing speed. The speed of their clubhead is almost impossible to understand unless you’re standing right there. I remember seeing Brooks Koepka on the fourth at Augusta this year and thinking, How does a human being generate that kind of clubhead speed? That doesn’t come across on TV, like when you’re watching a college football or NFL game, the speed of the game doesn’t come across on TV like it does when you’re on the field. I think the same thing about the clubhead speed of a lot of the guys at the highest level of golf.
So generally speaking, what is it about athletes that captures and holds our attention? I ask this because I know you are particularly mesmerized by Tiger Woods and what he’s been able to do, and I’m sure that’s the same for athletes in other sports as well, that you have those who have really captured your attention. What do you think it is that—wow!—gets us?
I think it’s something you see in entertainment across different industries, whether that’s music or acting or anything like that. I think what captures me is this idea of perfection. What does perfection look like, and what does trying to attain it look like? How does that pursuit affect you as a human, how does it affect the people around you? And how close can you come to being perfect for how long a period of time? Can you do it for one hole? Can you do it for 18 holes? Can you do it for an entire week at a major championship? I think this idea of trying to be perfect is incredibly fascinating.
Who were the athletes that captivated you most when you were a kid?
I grew up as an Oklahoma State fan, and I really loved Robin Ventura, who everybody remembers for getting beat up by Nolan Ryan. He was amazing. I loved Robin. I loved Barry Sanders, obviously, being an OSU guy. Those are two obvious ones, but Robin Ventura was probably my favorite athlete growing up. He was maybe the best college baseball player ever and somebody that I wanted to be when I was a kid.
How about your faith? Was that something you grew up with, or did that come later for you?
That’s something that I grew up—my parents introduced it to me at a young age. I would say that I became a Christian in seventh or eighth grade. That’s when it really clicked for me. I had known about it factually, conceptually, all the information, all the different things, but it didn’t really click with me until middle school. I spent the rest of middle school and high school really pursuing the Lord and trying to figure stuff out. When I got to college, as most people do when they get to college, I wandered a little bit. I didn’t run away from what I believed about the Lord, but I just wandered a little more. Then after college is when it kind of crystalized for me. It’s not just about believing, but it’s about following Jesus, every single day.
Let’s put sports and faith together. What is it about sports that is appealing and draws us away from the things that are more important and what are the things we should be recognizing as more important that cause us to put sports in their proper place?
I think there’s a cultural comfortability for rooting for athletes and for teams, because there’s 60,000 people doing it with you, or there’s 100,000 people doing it with you. But if you’re at church on Sunday and you’re worshiping, maybe dancing—however you worship the Lord—you’re more isolated. There’s not 60,000 people singing or dancing with you. I think it’s a cultural thing. I don’t know that it’s more complicated than that. Maybe it is, but I think it’s mostly cultural and following what the crowd’s doing, what we see other people doing.
Do you think somebody can lose their way in the faith by putting too much stock in sports?
Oh, for sure. I think it can become an idol very quickly. There’s all kinds of idols in our lives. We ourselves can be an idol; we can idolize ourselves. We can idolize people around us, our spouses; our kids can be an idol—that’s a big one. But sports is an easy one, and the reason it’s an easy one is because it’s one of the easiest ones to give your time and your attention and your money to, right?
I know that sounds crazy, because I’m a sportswriter and I’m presenting this to you, but I try to always point to something of greater significance within that. I don’t always do a great job of it. I don’t always do a great job myself of working that out. But I certainly think that is the goal, to kind of hold all these things as shadows. I talked about perfection earlier. All the perfection that we see, or the facsimile of perfection, is really a shadow of true perfection, which is the Trinity, which is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. My hope is that people see all these different things that we love, and we celebrate, and we appreciate simply as shadows of what true perfection is.
Sportswriters are not supposed to have a bias, but we are sports fans. That’s why we want to write about sports, because we love them. So what is it about Jesus that captures and holds your attention above sports?
For me it’s a fulfillment deal. I’ve talked to golfers that are Christians about this. When you get to the end of the day, even if you win a tournament, even if you write the best column from that tournament, it’s not fulfilling. It feels like it’s going to be and it’s not. Jesus is. Jesus is fulfilling. And not only is he fulfilling here on earth, but he’s fulfilling eternally as well. So you have something you’re living for that is an eternal thing and doesn’t just terminate at the end of a week or the end of a month or whatever. It goes on and on and on.
You and your wife found that you especially needed Jesus four years ago, and your personal tragedy took you to places in your writing that you never wanted to go. Tell me a little bit about that.
Yeah, so our daughter Kate was born at 36 weeks. She was stillborn. Well, she died at 36 weeks, and she was stillborn the day after we found out that she had died. That was a hard time. That was the hardest week, month, year of our lives. Up to that point, so much of my life had gone the right way, kind of in spite of myself. Some of the dumb decisions I’d made, things just kind of worked out. Now we were seeing a very big thing that did not work out. So you’re presented with options. I can suffer the way that Jesus did, which is to say that I’m going to cling to the Father. I’m going to believe this no matter what, or I can just punt on it, I can eject on it, I can be out on it. And there are times when that feels like the easier option, but it’s not the better one. It’s not the most fulfilling one. The fulfilling part for us was to feel the Lord’s nearness and goodness despite our daughter dying.
When you sit down to write about this—and you did so again recently in the book Joy in the Sorrow—does it hurt to write about it, or does it help to write about it?
Both, I think. It’s hard. It’s hard to think back on a lot of that stuff, to read back on a lot of that stuff. But it’s also good, because you appreciate things more. Look, my prayer has always been that I would use whatever platform I have, that I would leverage that platform for the good of the kingdom, for the glory of God. I think in that sense, I’m pushing this forward, I’m pushing this forward, I’m pushing this forward. But it does still sting. Every time I write about it, I cry a lot. It’s a very difficult thing to walk back through. I think that’s part of leaning into the suffering. It’s not a thing that I desire to do, but I also know that it’s good not just for myself but mostly for other people’s hearing about it—or I hope that it is good in their lives. So I think that’s a lot of the reason that I do it.