WATCH: Award-Winning Sports Writer Larry Guest Among Top Journalists in America

By Maria Sonnenberg // May 6, 2019

2019 SPACE COAST SPORTS HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE

SPACE COAST DAILY TV: A three-time winner of the Florida Sports Writer of the Year award, Larry Guest for almost three decades served as the voice of sports for the Orlando Sentinel, where he was the newspaper’s syndicated lead sports columnist.

THE 2019 SPACE COAST SPORTS HALL OF FAME Banquet and Induction Ceremony will take place at the Cocoa Beach Country Club on Friday, May 10. CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA (Space Coast Sports Hall of Fame) – There are plenty of sportswriters, but only a few true sports journalists who can go beyond the statistics to the heart of the athletes. Larry Guest is one the latter.

A three-time winner of the Florida Sports Writer of the Year award, Guest for almost three decades served as the voice of sports for the Orlando Sentinel, where he was the newspaper’s syndicated lead sports columnist.

The Washington Journalism Review listed Guest among the top 25 sportswriters in the nation.

During his tenure with the Sentinel, Guest covered 25 Masters’ Tournaments, a dozen U.S. and British Opens and half a dozen Olympics, plus many Super Bowls, Kentucky Derbies and Final Fours.

He didn’t just write about sports, he embedded himself in them, making personal friends with legends such as Payne Stewart, Arnold Palmer and coach Bobby Bowden.

Larry Guest’s best-selling biographies include “Arnie: Inside the Legend” and “The Payne Stewart Story.” With sports executive Pat Williams, he wrote “Making Magic: How Orlando Won an NBA Team.”

“I always felt it was my responsibility not just to cover the story, but to connect with the athletes,” said Guest.

Nicknamed “Scoop” by the late Payne Stewart, Guest loved nothing more than to break local and national sports stories, a penchant made possible by the close professional and personal relationships he formed through years of unbiased coverage of sports headliners.

He learned from reading the very best, the work of the late Los Angeles Times Pulitzer-winning sportswriter Jim Murray.

“He was the king of sports columnists,” said Guest, who, like Murray, peppered his writing with humor about the idiosyncrasies of the players and their sports.

Just like Murray, Guest expanded beyond the boundaries of the newspaper page to books, seven of them.

His best-selling biographies include “Arnie: Inside the Legend” and “The Payne Stewart Story.” With sports executive Pat Williams, he wrote “Making Magic: How Orlando Won an NBA Team.”

In “Sports Icons “R Funny!” Guest reveals the humorous inside stories of sports superstars.

Guest began writing on sports at the then twice-weekly Brookhaven Leader Advertiser in Mississippi, where he grew up.

He developed as a writer as the paper expanded into a daily, allowing him the opportunity to cover stories such as the New Orleans Saints in their infancy.

The executive editor of the largest paper in the state, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, saw his work and liked Guest’s lighthearted but heartfelt coverage of sports and offered him a job as sports editor.

The Orlando Sentinel later scooped him for their own and there Guest remained until his retirement in 2000.

As a true journalist, he never steered away from controversy, for he always thought he owed his readers the truth. If he could put a smile on his readers’ faces while reporting on sports news, so much the better.

Guest and his wife Mary now reside in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

THE 2019 SPACE COAST SPORTS HALL OF FAME Banquet and Induction Ceremony will take place at the Cocoa Beach Country Club on Friday, May 10. CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

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