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PGA Tour media official lives life on the green
By Tami Kamin-Meyer, Columbus Wired Columnist

Sports have always played a major role in the life of PGA Tour official Joan Alexander. As a child growing up, she was active in tennis and basketball, and even played a year of collegiate golf. Today, she is one of three PGA Tour media relations officials, traveling to many tournaments and keeping things between the players and media in check.

Her path to the PGA Tour became clearer after being hired as assistant sports information director at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in 1994. She was promoted to director in 1996, a job she held until the PGA Tour came calling in 1998.

In her first year as NC State’s sports director, her lifelong involvement in sports led to her meeting her life mate, former amateur golfer Buddy Alexander, the head men's golf coach at the University of Florida. NC State’s men’s golf team, decidedly the underdog, played for the NCAA regional championship against Alexander’s Gators golf powerhouse.

“NC State beat Florida,” she said with a smirk during a rare break from her hectic schedule at the Memorial Golf Tournament, being played this week at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. Although NC State took the trophy, UF’s coach won the former Joan von Throm’s heart.

The pair got engaged in 1998 and married in November, 1999. Not surprisingly, the couple’s nuptials occurred when the golf season tends to be slow. “There’s not a lot of golf going on around that time,” she said. The newlyweds enjoyed a honeymoon cruise and, according to Alexander, “we didn’t even take our clubs.”

Alexander also enjoys local ties to the Columbus community. Her mother graduated from Bexley High School over 60 years ago and both her parents are alumni of The Ohio State University. She also has a lot of family in Central Ohio.  As a child, she visited the city often and even attended the Memorial Tournament, not knowing one day she would be part of its media team. She also has other fond memories of the Memorial, she said.

One of her favorite recollections harkens back to 2001, her first year working the Memorial in her capacity as a PGA Tour media official. Her husband’s golf team was playing for the NCAA National Championship in New York at the exact time she was at the Memorial Tournament handling her media responsibilities. “I watched their tournament on my laptop in real time. They won and I cried,” she said.

Ever since then, each time she returns to Muirfield for the Memorial, she recalls the excitement and tension she felt that weekend. Perhaps as testament to her husband’s success as a college golf coach, his Gators are once again playing for the championship this weekend, this time in Oregon. And, just like she did in 2001, Alexander steals a moment here and there to check the Internet on his team’s progress.

As important as golf is to the Alexander’s careers, they try to keep it separate from their personal lives. There is one major exception to that rule, though, she said. “We have a room in our house which I call Buddy’s ‘I love me’ room. It has all his golf trophies and the two trophies he won for coaching UF to the NCAA golf championship in 1993 and 2001,” she said.

For Joan Alexander, golf has proven to be more than just a game. It’s become a way of life.

Tami Kamin-Meyer is a columnist for Columbus Wired, a Columbus attorney and freelance writer.