Gary D’Amato has covered golf since 1980. The author, and long-time writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was inducted into the WSGA Hall of Fame in 2017. He currently writes for Wisconsin.Golf and sat down with WTMJ’s Gene Mueller for this week’s WTMJ Conversations. Read a portion of their chat below.
Transcription provided by eCourt Reporters, Inc.
GENE MUELLER: So, Gary, how much of what you took from your perfect childhood did you apply later on in life as you were putting your own family together and raising kids and such?
GARY D’AMATO: Boy, that’s a really good question. I hadn’t — I hadn’t really thought about that one, Gene. I think a lot. I think, you know, some of those experiences that form you as kid, some of the disappointments you live through and some of the triumphs and some of the lessons you learn along the way, I think we all apply those later in life, and especially when we have our own families and our own children. I’ve told a lot of those stories to my kids long before I wrote the book, because I think they’re just — they’re such good instructional stories, some good lessons to be learned I think in some of those stories. And I think anyone that grew up in that era, or any era, can look back on their childhood and, you know, relate to today and relate to their children and their families.
GENE MUELLER: Yeah, there is a saying, I think it goes along the lines of, you know, “When I was 17 years old, I couldn’t believe how stupid my parents were.”
GARY D’AMATO: Yeah.
GENE MUELLER: “It’s amazing how smart they got ten years later.” And that whole frame of reference, the things your mom or dad would say to you as you would leave the house, obviously, you know, “Be careful,” and it’s like, you’d swear to yourself, “I’m never going to say that to my kids.” And you’ll wind up hearing it in your parents, it’s in you, it comes out, and it all comes from that same good place.
GARY D’AMATO: Exactly, and, you know, thank goodness we had, you know, in my case just speaking for myself, the parents that I had who were nurturing and supportive and encouraging. and I was — you know, I was lacking quite a bit in self-confidence and self-esteem, for whatever reasons when I was young, but their encouragement and their support, you know, made a world difference in my life, and so that’s, I guess, what I try to apply to my kids, too.
GENE MUELLER: Gary, in terms of you spent a career writing about the feats of others, athletes, golfers, obviously that was your beat, and still is, but how hard was it to turn the table and write about yourself?
GARY D’AMATO: It was a very hard because, you know, I wrote two chapters — well, especially the chapters about sports, because I long identified — my whole life I identified with sports, it became my career writing about sports. And, you know, I got that passion from my dad, he was a huge sports fan. And my mom had a lot of writing talent, so I guess, you know, I inherited two things from them and melded them together and forged a career out of it. But especially hard writing about sports because I wasn’t a very good athlete, I really wanted to be, and so it was painful writing about the fact that I wasn’t a good baseball player and that I wasn’t a good football player. Those are things I probably really haven’t told many people. Even my kids, you know, I don’t think realize that I wished I could have been an athlete and really wasn’t.
