Quadruple Threat

Ahmad Rashad has flourished in football, broadcasting and producing. But his true passion is golf.

BY GREGORY DL MORRIS
PHOTOGRAPHER: Neville Elder

Ahmad RashadNo one loves golf more than I do,” says Ahmad Rashad in a firm but quiet, confident tone. “You might be better than me, but you cannot love the sport more than me.” In truth, there are not too many people outside of professional golf who could claim to be better at the sport than Rashad, who sports a handicap of two.

Today a generation of sports fans know Rashad as the executive producer and on-air persona of Inside Stuff, a top-rated show on ABC covering pro hoops. The previous generation knows Rashad as a four-time Pro-Bowl wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. Still an earlier generation knows Rashad as a naturally gifted, all-around athlete for the University of Oregon. But Rashad’s friends, and there are many, as well as the A-List athletes and celebrities who move in his circles, know him as a passionate, skilled and insightful golfer.

Of the thousand of athletes who play pro ball, each dreams of an appearance in the broadcast booth. Ahmad Rashad has succeeded throughout what could be any four people’s dream careers: from the NFL records to his Emmy for coverage of the Olympics, to his own shows, to his tour-worthy golf game. “In life you set watermarks,” he says. “I wanted to be the best football player at may position in the league. That did not change when I changed jobs. The coolest thing now about Inside Stuff is that I get to play a lot of golf. If the [NBA] Finals are at night, what are you going to do all day? Play 18, 36 if you get up early.”

Rashad’s home course is the private Manhattan Woods Golf in West Nyack, NY. And while the philosophy of finesse and calculation serve Rashad as well today as it did In the NFL, he holds golf as sui generis, a thing unto itself. “There is nothing that can prepare you for golf. Golf gets its own respect. That is part of the allure.”

Bill Murray, a close friend and frequent player at Manhattan Woods, bought Rashad his first set of Callaway clubs when the Viking hung up his horns in 1982. “I was a tennis player,” says Rashad over a grilled-chicken wrap in the Manhattan Woods bar. “I took my clubs on a trip to Jamaica to learn. But it was too hot and I couldn’t hit. I just didn’t get it. Then I got into covering the NBA, and Michael [Jordan] and I became friends--mostly. We would hang out, but they would go play golf. Michael would play all day. Today the roles are reversed: I want to play all day and he is ducking me,” Rashad says, his face breaking into a sly grin. He could make a living on the golf course. Talking about his start in the game further animates the man and he leans forward in his chair.

“Charles Barkley used to take money from me, but now I’m up on Charles. I’m up on Sam[uel L. Jackson]. We play here, in London, in L.A. Okay, maybe we’re about even. People used to take money from me all the time. But I’ve gotten back on everyone.” Then sometimes, golf is about more than money. “The favorite days of my life are when I go out to L.A. for a week to play with Sidney Poitier. There’s no gambling. We just talk about life for four hours. It’s just, ‘Nice shot. Good putt. What’d you have? Doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about something else.’ TV, movies, children, politics. Sidney is my hero. He still gets the joke.” Some he gets to watch more than others. “Jim Thorpe is the greatest guy to play with. He will play all day.” For emphasis Rashad pauses after each word, his hand cutting the air: He. Will. Play. All. Day. “Jim will say to me, ‘You want to play tomorrow? You want to play 36? Okay let’s play.” Now the appreciative parody spills out all at once: “Okayletsplay.”

Rashad’s most frequent playing partner is close friend Michael Jordan, whose locker is just to the left of Rashad’s in the Manhattan Woods clubhouse; on the right is Roger Clemens’s. “Michael’s got game,” says Rashad. “He’s a scratch golfer. People say, ‘But he’s a five or six on TV.’ I tell them, ‘Go ahead, give him five strokes and see what happens.” Although certainly not huge by NFL standards, he is a commanding presence. In person there is a gravitas to his face and the faintest gravel to his voice that do not come through on the TV screen. On the course, Rashad is almost as fast as he was in his football days. Through 18 at Manhattan Woods Rashad’s party played past two other groups, finishing in about 3:45. Not that he was ever hurrying. He paused to chat with as many other members [that] were out on a Friday afternoon. He replaced all of his few divots­– and raked after himself his one time on the beach. Nevertheless, the caddy only caught up with the party on the third hole.

“Bill [Murray] beat me our first time out--he never told there was handicap. But then I dropped 76 on him in front of his son. He was pissed that he lost, but he was proud that I had come to love the game so much. We are good friends, and this was just one more thing we had in common.”

That bond of golf extends to a wider, but still select community. “I can’t go one-on-one with Michael, and he can’t cover me. But we can still go head-to-head in golf. And still talk trash. We are all friends, we can play and we can compete. That’s why this is the ultimate sport. The happiest I am is when I am playing golf. There is nothing better.”