John Woodruff Stewart was born in Auburn, New York. He was a graduate of the Darrow School in Lebanon, New York, and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1952 from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he was inducted into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001. After leaving college, he served in the Coast Guard as a Quartermaster from 1952 to 1956.
Mr. Stewart began his journalism career in 1957 as a sports reporter and later sports editor of The Dispatch and The Herald Statesman in Yonkers, New York, where he covered the 1960 Rome Olympics. In 1963, he joined the sports department of The Baltimore Sun, where major assignments included covering the 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1984 Olympics. He also covered the Baltimore Colts, University of Maryland basketball, and the Orioles, including the 1970 and 1983 World Series. Mr. Stewart reported on professional golf and was a familiar figure at the U.S. Open, PGA championships, U.S. Women’s Open, and The Masters.
Mr. Stewart also was an active member of Baltimore Municipal Golf, a Past President of the Atlantic Coast Sports Writers Association, and involved with Maryland Special Olympics. His work earned him wide recognition. In 1991 and 1995, he won the PGA of America Golf Writer of the Year Award, and in 2009, received the Professional Golf Association’s Keeper of the Game Award, and he has been honored by the Golf Writers Association of America.
While Mr. Stewart retired from the Baltimore Sun in 1999, he continued to cover golf in Maryland for the next 20 years for the MSGA, MAGA, & WMGA. He may have been involved with the process of receiving scorecards as many times as anyone in the history of the game. He stayed till the last player was off the course and finished his interviews before traveling home to complete his article before his deadline, aka, sleep. John served on the Maryland Golf Hall of Fame, Nominations Committee from 2019-2021. He was the encyclopedia of Maryland golf.
In 2011, he was inducted into the Mid-Atlantic Golf Association’s Hall of Fame, and in 2012 he received the Dawson Stump Outstanding Achievement Award for his many years of tireless and dedicated service to the MSGA and Golf.
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