John Derr, Chronicler of Golf, Dies at 97 - New York Times

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John Derr in 2014. He went to the Masters the second year the tournament was held, in 1935. Credit Cindy Burnham/The Fayetteville Observer

John Derr, who reported from the Masters golf tournament 62 times and was part of the CBS team when the event was televised for the first time, in 1956, died June 6 at his home in Pinehurst, N.C. He was 97.

His daughter, Cricket Gentry, said he had apparently died of a heart attack while watching the Belmont Stakes on television. She went to his house after the race, in which American Pharoah captured the Triple Crown, and found him in his chair in front of the TV.

“It was like he had stood up and said, ‘Hooray!’ and then fell over,” said Ms. Gentry, who is a paramedic.

Mr. Derr covered the Masters for CBS from 1956 to 1982. According to Golf Digest, he was a 17-year-old reporter for The Gaston Gazette in North Carolina when he went to a college football game and sat next to the sportswriter O. B. Keeler, who suggested he attend a new spring tournament at Augusta National Golf Club hosted by Bobby Jones.

Mr. Derr went to the second Masters, in 1935, the year Gene Sarazen shot a 2 on the par-5 15th hole, helping to put the Masters on the map. Along the way, Mr. Derr forged relationships with some of golf’s giants, including Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson. He wrote about his encounters in his third book, “My Place at the Table: Stories of Golf and Life,” published in 2010.

In an interview with Golf Digest, Mr. Derr told of seeing Albert Einstein taking his daily walk along the golf course at Princeton. He asked Einstein if he had ever played the game, he recalled, and Einstein replied: “I tried once. Too complicated.”