Tim Schmitt
Tim Schmitt is the managing editor of Golfweek and the golf coordinator for the USA Today Network, overseeing coverage of the sport while writing on the intersection of professional golf, business and golf-focused lifestyles. His work connects tour news, broadcast trends, governance decisions and golf real estate, giving readers a clear view of how the game is played, watched and lived. He works across tours and levels of the game, from global championships and professional circuits to developmental tours and college golf.
Golf real estate and golf-course homes
Schmitt is a leading voice in Golfweek’s push into golf real estate, using the lens of property to show how dedicated golfers choose to live around the game. In his regular features on golf-course homes, he curates multimillion-dollar listings with direct course frontage and outlines the lifestyle attached to each property, including access to signature layouts, club amenities and coastal or resort settings. His coverage of the strategic alliance between Golfweek and a major real estate brand underscores this focus, positioning golf real estate as a core editorial pillar rather than a sideline. He extends the same approach to club-level projects, highlighting renovations such as the recent facelift at Whistler Golf Club and using visuals and detailed description to convey how course updates reshape the player experience.
The through-line is clear: golf properties and facilities are treated not just as backdrops, but as central characters in the story of how people engage with the sport.
Tour news, LIV Golf and player storylines
Schmitt writes fast, accessible coverage of tour news across the men’s and women’s professional game, with a particular emphasis on LIV Golf and other disruptive forces.
He has broken down who is owed money in LIV Golf, listing leading figures and backers to clarify the financial structure behind the league. In another article he reports on a LIV player claiming a “rat” is leaking secrets from a players’ group chat, framing the episode as a window into locker-room politics and trust inside a closed, high-stakes environment.
His tour reporting also follows on-course performance and momentum, including pieces on Jon Rahm’s struggles near the bottom of the leaderboard at the BMW PGA Championship and other high-profile weeks where elite players fall short of expectations. Schmitt covers human stories around the game as well, such as Kai Trump reinjuring her wrist during her first college golf event, translating injury setbacks into clear narratives about development, pressure and recovery.
He brings the same straight-ahead tone to newsy items like the withdrawal of a PGA Tour pro known for hitting a shot near an alligator, using concise detail to explain why a seemingly small decision matters in the context of a season or event.
Broadcast, business deals and global golf governance
Beyond individual tournaments, Schmitt tracks how golf is packaged and sold to audiences, with recurring coverage of broadcast metrics, sponsorship agreements and long-term tour deals.
His reporting on Presidents Cup television viewership documents how ratings can surge even amid vocal fan complaints, tying together audience appetite, event stature and ongoing debates over format. He also covers contract extensions such as the Epson Tour Championship deal in Indian Wells, showing how renewed commitments between tours and venues shape the developmental pathway for players and the commercial stability of circuits.
On the governance side, Schmitt writes on agreements between major championships like the Masters and The Open to extend global qualifying partnerships, explaining how these deals expand access while protecting the prestige of signature events. Across these stories, he focuses on practical details - numbers, terms and timelines - and lets those facts illustrate broader shifts in how the sport is organized and consumed.
Course renovations, destinations and the wider golf ecosystem
Schmitt’s work often situates individual stories within a wider ecosystem, emphasizing Golfweek’s mission to cover “everything happening in and around the game.” His article on Whistler Golf Club’s renovation uses before-and-after imagery and project notes to show how architectural changes, routing tweaks and visual upgrades can reposition a destination in the eyes of traveling golfers.
Similar destination-focused pieces spotlight clubs and communities where course design, surrounding landscape and amenities combine to define a distinctive golf identity, reinforcing Golfweek’s role as a guide for avid players planning trips or following emerging hotspots. In his public comments about Golfweek’s editorial stance, Schmitt describes a dedication to “all things golf” that spans tours, equipment, travel and lifestyle, and his own bylines reflect that breadth.
His background coordinating coverage of major sports events such as the Masters and other flagship championships informs an approach that treats golf stories as part of a larger sports and media landscape, while still keeping the focus squarely on the game and its community.
4 more sports journalists.
Adair Reid
Adair Reid is a sports columnist for The Cavalier Daily who covers Virginia men’s programs with a blunt, fan-aware voice that treats them as long-term projects rather than one-off games. He focuses on trajectory, legacy and risk, using opinion columns to question coaching decisions and program strategy while grounding his arguments in recent results, records, tournament performance and roster realities. Men’s lacrosse is a recurring subject, and his work on the program’s coaching change shows how he uses a single decision to examine overall health, standards and competitive standing. He frames games in terms of stakes, identity and institutional expectations, emphasizing postseason implications, recruiting, national perception and alignment with a championship standard. He writes mostly in the first person only when needed, keeps the spotlight on institutional choices and brings analysis-first, evidence-based judgment to Virginia’s flagship men’s teams.
Adam Stern
Adam Stern covers the business of motorsports and combat sports at Sports Business Journal, focusing on how sponsorships, media deals and new events reshape racing and fighting. His beat includes NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA, rallycross, UFC and boxing. He tracks brands, broadcasters, manufacturers, promoters and streaming platforms, with reporting on sponsorship strategy, rights deals, original content, series growth, team projects and technical regulations. He examines how Cadillac’s Formula 1 entry supports broader marketing aims, how F1 Academy builds commercial momentum and whether new MMA promotions can challenge UFC. His work includes short speed reads on deals and longer features on multi-party investments. He reports on the money and strategy behind the action, treating motorsports and combat sports as connected marketplaces shaped by branding, dealmaking and media innovation.
Albert Burneko
Albert Burneko writes about how systems of power bear down on ordinary people, using sports, politics, technology, food, and domestic life as entry points. He is an assignment editor and writer at Defector and part of its founding ownership group. His politics and capital reporting examines how policy, policing, and public rhetoric turn into harm for specific people, centering victims and vulnerable people. He also covers artificial intelligence, media criticism, and technology’s effects, asking who benefits and who absorbs the costs. His domestic writing focuses on parenting, bodily discomfort, and everyday frustration. His recurring Chefector column turns cooking failures into comic studies of impatience, ego, and routine. He writes sharp reported essays, first-person dispatches, mock explainers, and sports-adjacent guides. His work combines moral seriousness, comic voice, close attention to ordinary life, and a focus on how people live under larger systems.
Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is a sports investigative reporter who uses games to examine how power, money and culture shape players, workers, fans and communities. He works in The Washington Post sports section, covering global tournaments, migration, fan culture, sports betting, match-fixing, ownership, NIL money, football safety, participation gaps and the changing culture of women’s basketball. His reporting connects events on the field to decisions in boardrooms, betting markets, government offices and law enforcement. He previously reported for BuzzFeed News and wrote for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly and the Riverfront Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Paris Review. He writes long, deeply reported stories that combine narrative scenes, data analysis, public records, medical records and other documents.