Nick Piastowski
Nick Piastowski covers professional golf and the everyday player with a narrative, service-focused approach that mixes tour reporting, instruction and deeply personal essays. He is a Senior Editor at GOLF and Golf Magazine, responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. His work stands out for turning schedule changes, swing fixes and tournament drama into clear, story-driven pieces that show how the game touches real lives.
PGA and global tour coverage
Piastowski reports on the professional game with an emphasis on context and accessible explanation. His coverage of changes to the PGA Tour schedule, including pieces on how the calendar is shifting for 2027 and what that means for players and fans, breaks down complex updates into practical takeaways rather than simple fixture lists.
He writes regularly on major championships, exemplified by his feature on Jordan Spieth’s crushing Masters experience a decade on and what that moment reveals about resilience at the highest level. He applies a similar lens at the U.S. Open, profiling emerging stars and using a single bogey to tell a broader story about a player’s trajectory and temperament under pressure.
His tour reporting is not confined to the PGA Tour; he highlights team events like the Presidents Cup, asking whether golf’s “next megastar” is emerging and tying current performances back to iconic sports memories. He also moves across tours to cover the LPGA, as in his piece on players dealing with swarms of mosquitoes during competition, where environmental quirks become part of the competitive narrative.
Equipment occasionally enters this beat through stories such as his examination of why a 50-year-old putter is still being used on tour, using a single club choice to explore tradition, trust and performance at elite level.
Instruction and game-improvement storytelling
Instruction for the recreational golfer is a central strand of Piastowski’s work, but he treats it as storytelling rather than pure how-to.
In a feature on his longtime swing problem, he uses his own 30-year struggle with a particular move as the frame for walking readers through the fixes recommended by an instructor. That piece blends personal vulnerability with concrete adjustments, showing both the emotional and technical sides of trying to change a golf swing.
He writes service pieces aimed at specific segments of players, such as mid-80s shooters looking to improve without access to high-end technology, where he distills advice from coaches and Top 100 teachers into straightforward changes a typical golfer can adopt. In another article on mistakes amateurs do not realize they are making, Piastowski leans on expert voices to identify subtle problems and to explain why they matter, positioning himself as the translator between elite instruction and everyday practice. Even in more dramatic features, like the story of a desperate golfer who was ready to quit the game until GOLF intervened, he keeps the focus on concrete steps that changed the player’s outlook and performance.
Across these pieces, the distinguishing trait is his ability to tie technical guidance to real people and situations, making instruction feel lived-in rather than abstract.
Personal essays and recurring columns
Piastowski writes frequently in the first person, using his own experiences to explore how golf intersects with life. In his essay about a car flipping into a ditch, he uses that incident as the starting point for a broader reflection on risk, gratitude and the way a round of golf can feel different after a close call.
His piece on his favorite course played in 2025, set inside a prison, turns an unusual venue into a meditation on access, constraint and the character of places where golf is played. Through these stories he shows a willingness to step beyond traditional course reviews, focusing instead on what the setting reveals about the game and the people around it. Piastowski also anchors GOLF’s Weekend 9 franchise, where he writes columns that mark personal milestones - such as his golf turning 35 - alongside observations about professional players’ signature gestures.
That format allows him to blend diary-like entries with curated notes from the wider golf world, reinforcing his role as a writer who connects the sport’s biggest stages to small, personal moments. These essays and columns differentiate him from a generic beat reporter by making his own relationship with the game part of the coverage, without losing sight of broader stories.
Course, culture and offbeat stories
Beyond tours and technique, Piastowski often gravitates toward offbeat or culturally rich angles on where and how golf is played. His prison-course feature is emblematic of his interest in unusual venues and the communities surrounding them, treating architecture, atmosphere and circumstance as central elements of the story rather than background detail. In Masters-related writing, including pieces on what makes the tournament special for newcomers, he approaches the event as a cultural phenomenon, unpacking rituals, expectations and myths for readers who may be encountering them for the first time. His Presidents Cup coverage similarly situates matches within wider narratives about national identity, underdog stories and the legacy of other sports moments. This strand of his work gives communications teams a clear signal: Piastowski is drawn to stories where golf overlaps with broader culture, human stakes and distinctive settings, and he builds feature-length narratives around those intersections.
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