Dana Mozley (1987)

Dana Mozley was for decades “the” golf writer for the New York Daily News and was the founder and promoter of one of the Met area’s finest golf tournaments – The Ike Championship.

Born in 1916 in Lowell, Mass., Dana attended Colgate Univeristy where he earned a Bachelors Degree in 1938. His writing career started early as a staff member of the Colgate Weekly and later as a stringer on the Syracuse Journal. After a brief stint as sports editor for the Lowell Citizen, Mozley joined the Daily News in 1939 as a copy boy. His career was briefly interrupted by the Army in WWII where he served as a major in Army Combat Intelligence. He rejoined the staff of the News after the war however and was promoted to tabulator and shortly thereafter assigned to the sports department.

Dana covered many sports in his lifetime including Football and Track & Field, but eventually focused on golf and hockey. He served as president of both the Hockey Writers Association and the Golfer Writers Association of America and was honored twice by the latter with the prestigious McGregor Award for “Best Golf Story of the Year.” The GWAA also inducted him into the Pinehurst Golf Hall of Fame.

Dana spent many years covering the PGA Tour and met and walked the course with some of the greatest names in golf. Yet the hometown events, the local tournaments and players, were his real passion. He covered local golf events for 30 years and did it with as much zeal as if he were covering the U.S. Open. It was this great respect for the quality of golf in the Met Area that inspired him to initiate an annual individual and team competition in 1953 that would bring together all the best area players. It is primarily through his efforts that the Ike Tournament, which was backed by the Daily News for 25 years, flourished for so many years. Despite several troubled years in the early 1980s, Dana continued to work toward the success of this tournament and was most influential in the MGA’s decision in 1986 to acquire The Ike as its official Stroke Play Championship virtually guaranteeing its future success and growth.