Please, sorry, and thank you.
Someone once said if we all said those things more often, society would be a better place.
Sorry, I have left the Naples Daily News and The News-Press after 24 1/2 years. Please accept my thanks to anyone reading this for everything.
You could’ve been a longtime reader, even all the way back to my first day in December 1997. Maybe you’re a more recent one. Or this could be your first time.
Still, thank you.
Thanks to all of my colleagues, whether they were bosses or co-workers. I’m proud to say we won a lot of awards, some of them big ones, and some of them coinciding as my time as sports editor at the NDN from 2004-19. But the relationships mean more.
Thank you to Tom Rife and Phil Lewis for believing enough in me to hire me from The Southern Illinoisan, where I worked from 1987-97 in Carbondale, Illinois. And for everyone in those roles afterward, especially Allen Bartlett, Manny Garcia and Ed Reed.
Nancy Evans didn’t hire me, but she ran the place from well before the day I got to 1075 Central Ave. through 1100 Immokalee Road, and up to her departure. All of us at the Naples Daily News essentially worked for her, whether we realized it or not.
Thank you to Southwest Florida, not just from me.
Southwest Florida Sports Awards:Area’s top high school athletes, teams honored
The News-Press 2022 Spring All-Area and SWFL All-Region teams in one place
Naples Daily News:2022 Spring All-Area and SWFL All-Region teams in one place
‘It takes a village to raise a child’
In 2003, I shared a column on Father’s Day with the news that my then 8-month-old daughter had been diagnosed with Leber’s congenital amaurosis. She was blind.
From that column: “I always had cringed when I heard the “it takes a village to raise a child” stuff. It takes two parents willing to spend the time to raise a child. This will be a little different. We will need a village to raise Sarah. We will need understanding. We will need cooperation from the school system. She can learn just like any other kid, it just will have to be a little differently.”
Why am I leaving? Well, “the village” more than did its job. Collier County Public Schools did. The Lighthouse of Collier did. And unbeknownst to it, the country music world did too.
Today, Sarah has completed her freshman year at Belmont University in Nashville. She is a songwriting major. She made the Dean’s List this semester. She has performed on stage with the likes of Charles Kelley from Lady A, Locash, Lauren Alaina, and Storm Large through the years. She will have her first single released this summer.
“The village” almost helped find a cure. For eight years, we held the Scramble Fore Sarah to raise funds for both the Lighthouse of Collier, Inc., to help people who are visually impaired, and for the Foundation Fighting Blindness, which researches treatments in addition to so much else.
Southwest Florida club professionals and so many in the golf community and outside of it stepped up with donations for silent auctions and so much more. Nobody did more than Tim Philbrick and Gordon Lewis, who helped run the tournament and used their contacts in the golf community.
Coincidentally, the Foundation Fighting Blindness reached out and there was a clinical trial for those with LCA and the gene mutation that Sarah has. She was in a clinical trial for 18 months in 2018-19, going back and forth with my wife Susan and me to Philadelphia.
Unfortunately, the trial did not work for her, and she ended up having to have cataract surgery. That day a nurse was apologizing because she had to do rounds of eye drops to prepare for the surgery. My daughter said, “It’s OK, there are people going through worse.”
Susan and I have a joke that “This is all Sarah’s fault.” Sarah just says “Yep” sometimes with a smile. Her dream is to be a singer-songwriter and that was born right in Nashville when she attended CMA Fest for the first time in 2010 and has only grown from there. We’d probably still be in Naples if not.
Susan has been living near Belmont’s campus for the past year and I’ve been going back and forth when I can. I can’t thank her enough for being there, but we’ve all decided it’s better if we both are.
What brought Greg Hardwig to Naples
Anyway, back to golf. It’s what brought me to Naples to begin with. I played at Murphysboro High School in Illinois and worked at the pro shop at Jackson Country Club in high school and part of college, and wrote about it at The Southern Illinoisan.
When I arrived in Naples in 1997, one of my goals was to cover The Masters. I finally was able to do that for Scripps Howard News Service in 2002, and again in 2004 and 2008.
I was chosen in the media lottery and got to play Augusta National Golf Club in 2004. I birdied No. 8 and parred No. 9. I also completed the other 16 holes (rim shot).
I also got to cover college football and basketball national championship games and three Super Bowls while working in Naples, for which I am so thankful. But I’m equally as thankful for all of the high school events, including those football Friday nights where I got to see so much passion.
There’s more to golf than The Masters, and so much more to golf in Southwest Florida.
Larry Gantzer is the epitome of that. He was the pro at The Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club back when I started and basically had grown up at the club. Jim Duffy was the head pro the majority of the time he worked there, and after he passed away, Larry wanted to do something in his memory.
So he talked me and David Moulton (then of ABC-7) and Tom James (then of NBC-2) into playing 100 holes. In one day. In the scorching heat. And we did it.
I wasn’t smart enough to say no the next two years when Larry asked. David and Tom were. We roped Seth Soffian from The News-Press into playing in Year 2. The final year Larry and I played as part of the Jim Duffy Memorial Pro-Am. “Coach” rode around in a golf cart announcing our impending arrival to each of the pro-am groups as Larry and I played through.
My hands and feet will never forget it. Neither will my heart. I didn’t know Jim Duffy, but all I needed to know was how Larry felt about him.
I drove by the demolished Beach Club hotel before I left town. It saddened me. The golf course better still be there when I come back to visit.
Southwest Florida is the only place with three tour events in the same metropolitan area, and I thoroughly enjoyed all three of them — the Chubb Classic, which has been there since 1989, the LPGA’s CME Group Tour Championship, and the QBE Shootout. And there were others in between too.
Thank you to all of the tournament directors and media relations people attached to all of them, especially Taylor Ives, Rob Hartman, Bob Burris and Lesley Baker. And to the pros themselves who gave of their time.
The Terra Cotta Invitational and Yuengling Open were two local events I looked forward to every year, so thank you to Denny Glass and the late Rich Lamb.
And there are more South Florida PGA Section and Florida State Golf Association events than I can count. Thanks to Geoff Lofstead and Meredith Schuler from the South Florida PGA, and the many rules officials and tournament directors.
We also have a chapter of The First Tee here, and I was so happy that Chris Gray and Cindy Darland made that happen, and that Cindy has taken it to the level where it will finally have a true home hopefully later this year next to BigShots Golf in Naples.
Thank you to every single club professional that I’ve met and not met. If you haven’t read the Golf Digest article on the state of the club professional, please do so. Members and administrators, please support the current ones, as well as the new ones coming along. It’s crucial to the present and future of this business. And your clubs.
Thank you to the late Marion Heck, Rich Lamb, Brendan Cunningham and Dick Young. I’m sorry that you’re no longer with us, but a tour pro, a club professional, a tee announcer at events all over, and a rules official who did the same. All of them gave so much and represent four corners of the golf world that we should all appreciate.
I’m sorry I’m leaving. Please continue to support the Naples Daily News and The News-Press and local journalism.
And thank you.
Greg Hardwig was a sports reporter for the Naples Daily News from 1997-2000, assistant sports editor from 2000-04, the sports editor from 2004-19, and a sports enterprise reporter for both the Naples Daily News and The News-Press from 2019 to June 2022. He is now a print and digital sports planner for Gannett’s South Region based in Nashville, Tennessee, and can be reached at ghardwig@gannett.com.