Jack Berry

John Thomas Berry was born in Detroit, Michigan, on 7 October 1931. His love of sport began early: his father, Clair Berry, was travelling secretary of the Detroit Tigers from 1940 to 1951, and the young Berry spent many days at Briggs Stadium, where his hero was Hank Greenberg. He first picked up a golf club, his father's wooden-shafted driver, in high school, and learned the game from Chet Jawor, the PGA professional for Detroit's municipal courses.

He graduated from Detroit Catholic Central High School in 1949 and attended Marquette University from 1949 to 1951. He served in the United States Army from 1952 to 1954, without seeing action in the Korean War, and then completed his education at Michigan State University with help from the GI Bill. From 1954 to 1956 he wrote for the student newspaper, The State News, serving as summer editor in 1955 and sports editor in 1955 and 1956, and graduated with a degree in journalism.

Berry began working part time at the Lansing bureau of United Press during his senior year and was hired full time on graduating in 1956. He was effectively the bureau's one-man sports desk, covering the Tigers, Lions, Red Wings and Pistons, the Michigan and Michigan State teams and high school sport, and he said the job taught him to "write fast, write short and be able to dictate off the top of your head". His first PGA Tour event was the 1958 Buick Open at Warwick Hills.

From 1959 to 1971 he worked on the sports staff of the Detroit Free Press, reporting on hockey, golf, baseball, skiing and Michigan State football. His first major golf championship was the 1961 US Open at Oakland Hills, and he counted the Tigers' victory in game seven of the 1968 World Series as a career highlight. He was elected vice president of the National Hockey League Writers Association in 1970 and became president in 1971, when it was renamed the Professional Hockey Writers Association.

He moved to The Detroit News in 1971 and stayed until 1993, writing a column in his first year and then covering hockey and the Olympics in winter and golf in summer. His assignments included Jack Nicklaus's bid for the Grand Slam at the 1972 Open Championship, the Miami Dolphins' unbeaten 1972 season and Super Bowl VII, Secretariat's Triple Crown in 1973, and the 1980 Winter Olympics with the Miracle on Ice and Eric Heiden's five gold medals. At the News he originated the Golf Page, giving expanded coverage to players, tournaments and courses, and wrote the Guide to Michigan Golf. He liked to leave the media tent and walk with the crowds to "hear the cheers and groans".

Berry was a founding board member of the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in 1982. In 1984 he was elected president of the Golf Writers Association of America, and that year he was influential in lifting the ban on women reporters in the Masters locker room. He served as the association's secretary-treasurer from 1990 to 1998. In the 1990s he helped open the Michigan Women's Amateur Championship to public course players who met the handicap requirement, work later credited with helping women's and girls' golf grow in the state.

After retiring from the News in 1993 he worked as a freelance, writing for PGA Magazine, Chicagoland Golf and Michigan Golfer, where his "Berry Patch" column and video interviews had a loyal following. He was also a partner in All About Golf, a media relations firm in Grand Rapids, and interviewed Michigan State journalism students for the GWAA scholarship. By 2007 he had covered more than 70 major championships.

Berry lived in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. He was married to Bonnie Humm and had four daughters. In 1986 he contracted acute viral myocarditis at the Tournament Players Championship and covered the Masters two weeks later in great pain before being admitted to hospital at home, where he nearly died. He recovered fully and ran the New York City Marathon in 1988. He described golf as the "game for life".

Jack Berry died in October 2026 at the age of 95. Reports of his death, led by The Detroit News on 17 October 2026, gave the cause as complications from a fall, and Wikipedia's list of 2026 deaths records the date as 16 October. Colleagues at The Detroit News remembered him as a Detroit sports-writing legend who covered everything from the Miracle on Ice to Secretariat but made his mark in golf. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.

Berry is remembered as one of the defining golf writers of the American Midwest and as an advocate for wider access to the game. The Golf Page he started at The Detroit News, his decades of work for the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame and the Golf Writers Association of America, and his part in opening the Masters locker room to women journalists and the Michigan Women's Amateur to public course players all outlived his newspaper career. His honours included the GWAA writing award in 1992, the Golf Association of Michigan Distinguished Service Award in 1997, induction into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in 2003 as only the second journalist so honoured, the PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism in 2007, a Michigan Golf Course Association lifetime achievement award in 2008, and the Michigan Women's Golf Association Hall of Fame in 2017.