Long before her byline appeared in the pages and online chronicles of Golf Digest, Sports Illustrated and The Athletic, Gabby Herzig ’21 penned Sagehens sports stories for , the oldest college newspaper in Southern California.
“I feel my journey started with my college experience,” she says. “I got my most formal journalism training at The Student Life.”
Four years after graduating from ČŐş«ČýĽ¶ with a degree in politics, Herzig now covers golf as a staff writer at The Athletic—the sports vertical of The New York Times.
Since taking her dream job last March, the New York native’s portfolio includes stories of crowning moments, changes to the PGA Tour’s competitive structure, and the ramifications of a potential deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.
“I feel I’ve grown so much as a writer and a voice in the industry because I’m working alongside such smart people,” Herzig says, “people who are truly passionate about journalism.”
As she browsed colleges years ago, Herzig found ČŐş«ČýĽ¶â€™s small class sizes and approach to learning enticing. Add in the location and opportunity to golf year-round, she says, and attending Pomona was too attractive a proposition for a New Yorker to pass up.
“Pomona had a really rich learning environment,” she recalls. “I never felt pressure to study a particular topic or choose a particular class because it would lead me to a particular career. I really felt I had the freedom to learn and dive into topics just because of my own curiosity and my passion for learning new things.”
The summers between theorizing in politics class, decoding dead languages in classics class and playing golf for the Sagehens, Herzig took various sports media internships while at Pomona. As a junior, she studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland—the birthplace of golf.
“It was the perfect fit,” she recalls. “I’m grateful my coach let me go. That’s the benefit of Division III (athletics), you can explore other interests. Your sport doesn’t have to be your entire life.”
Herzig wrote for Golf Digest during her senior year at Pomona and took a writing position with the monthly magazine after graduating. She covered her first PGA Tour event while at Golf Digest, and her body of work landed her a breaking news job at Sports Illustrated.
After 15 months at SI, The Athletic offered Herzig a staff writer position.
“It was a dream come true to land this role,” she says. “I’m still pinching myself.”
Herzig travels up to 12 weeks a year for PGA and LPGA tour events around the country, and while her work schedule keeps her busy with daily reports and feature stories, she’s regularly chipping away at larger projects concerning matters off the links.
“I’ve loved the intersection of sports and politics since taking (Prof.) Tom Le’s Sports and Politics class,” she says.
Covering the PGA and LPGA tours has put Herzig in spaces with quite the company.
To this day she has no recollection of what she said to former President Barack Obama while shaking his hand this past fall at the Solheim Cup in Gainesville, Virginia. Famed sports broadcaster Jim Nantz— “The voice of my childhood,” Herzig says—similarly left her speechless when he told her he’d read an article of hers to prepare for a tournament.
Walking a few holes with four-time major champion Rory McIlroy was an especially humbling experience, she adds. “He’s one of the players I grew up admiring and he’s one of the larger-than-life figures in our sport.”
Beyond her work as a writer, as a woman in a male-dominated field, Herzig says she holds herself to “a really high standard and put a lot of pressure on myself to say the right things, act the right way and to never draw too much attention to myself.”
Such guardrails are self-imposed, she adds, and “come with the landscape. But as a young woman, I can always bring something new and unique to the table, take advantage of that and not let those barriers get in my way.”