Name: Rick Bernstein
Age: 54
Club: Quaker Ridge Golf Club
Hometown: Larchmont, N.Y.
Handicap Index: 9.9

Rick Bernstein is the Executive Producer and Senior Vice president of HBO Sports. His credits include a number of sports documentaries, HBO’s flagship World Championship Boxing, and the journalistic Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.

Met Area sports fans have had the privilege of enjoying some of Bernstein’s productions featuring local teams and sports figures, including Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the New York Jets; 24/7: Rangers/Flyers Road the NHL Winter Classic; Mantle; The Curse of the Bambino; Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush; Nine Innings from Ground Zero; and Shot Heard ‘Round the World (about Bobby Thomson’s game-winning home run that clinched the pennant for the New York Giants). Throughout Bernstein’s 31-year career at HBO, his contributions have earned him eight Peabody Awards and 36 Emmy Awards. We caught up with Bernstein to find out more about his work, golf game, and his involvement with the caddie program at his home course, Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y.

How did your interest in golf develop?
As a child, my parents were members at a golf club, but I never really was that interested in the game. When I moved to New York, it was so difficult to play while living in the city and not having a car, but I knew that once I moved out of the city one of my priorities was going to be joining a golf club and playing on a regular basis. I absolutely love the game. Growing up in Alabama, I never loved New York winters, and since joining Quaker Ridge the winters have gotten even longer for me waiting for the next golf season to start.

How has golf and having access to a golf course impacted your life?
I tell people that since we’ve joined Quaker Ridge it’s changed our lives, and people might think “Gee, are your priorities straight?” but it has added another dimension to our life and the golf is very important. It’s just great having access to a golf course right around the corner from our home.

How often do you get the chance to play?
Quaker Ridge tracks how frequently members play, so I’m proud to say that I was on the course 95 times this year. I guess I’ll shoot for 100 next year! I have a very understanding wife, and on weekends I will usually play twice. In addition, I have two teenage boys, Joby and Jimmy, who love to play and we typically play 9 holes on weekend afternoons. I also play with my wife, who is a great athlete and a good golfer, often on summer evenings. The only thing I need to do now is to get my 13-year-old daughter, Katie, to play. She’ll hit balls with us, but she hasn’t quite gotten the bug yet.

Are you involved in any programs at Quaker Ridge?
I’m very involved with the caddie program, and 2012 will be my third season overseeing it. As much as I enjoy those afternoon rounds when it’s just me and my boys carrying our own bags, it’s just as much fun being out there with our caddies during morning rounds. They are our buddies, and we have a good time with them and I am very proud of Quaker Ridge’s caddie program. There’s always been a Caddie-Ladies tournament, and this past season we instituted Caddie-Men’s day. I’m sure the caddies would call it one of the highlights of the season, but I think the members enjoyed it even more. These are the guys who haul our bags for 18 holes who we have great relationships with, and now we have the chance to get out there and play with them as our partners, drink beers and laugh together.

How did your passion for sports develop into a career in sports entertainment?
As a young boy growing up in Alabama, I had the opportunity and the contacts to sell souvenirs at college football games at Legion Field in Birmingham. One year when I was 13 or 14, ABC sports had their production truck set up next to the table I was working at and one of their technicians befriended me and told me they often pick up local people to be runners and gophers. So the next year they were back in town doing an Alabama football game and I went down to Legion Field, found the individual in charge of hiring the runners, and he claims to this day that I pestered him enough that he finally gave me a broom and told me to sweep up, which was my first job in television. I stuck with it over the years and by the time I graduated high school I was working for ABC Sports about 35 weekends a year, all around the country. I was able to go to college football towns on their biggest games of the season, I worked a lot of Monday Night Baseball when Howard Cosell did baseball for ABC, I was a statistician for Chris Schenkel on college football, I worked the Olympics, I did some golf, not a lot but did a few U.S. Opens, so I did that all through college. When I got out of college I wound up at HBO because one of the guys I worked with at ABC, Ross Greenberg, moved on to HBO and then brought me in. So I came to HBO in 1980 with one suitcase to work with Ross on a one-month project, and I never made it back home.

How did you become so good at telling stories?
I think that’s something that developed over the years here and it had a lot to do with Ross and I both coming from ABC Sports. Storytelling was something ABC was known for with Wide World of Sports and the features they did for the Olympics and for other programming. Now I think it’s something that HBO Sports is recognized for.

If you were to submit a memory for Sport In America, the new HBO/Sports Illustrated series about our nation’s most memorable sports moments and how they have affected the lives of the fans who watched them, what would it be?
I worked the 1980 Olympics for ABC Sports and I had the opportunity to sit behind the U.S. bench during the gold medal game against Finland. When the game was over, people were grabbing souvenirs and I reached over the glass and was lucky enough to get Mike Eruzione’s hockey stick. When the Games were over, several of us flew back to New York together and we threw our stuff in the trunk of a cab at LaGuardia and I left the hockey stick, which is probably one of the greatest pieces of sports memorabilia ever, on the curb. Whoever found it has no idea and some kid probably played street hockey with it and it probably wound up in a fireplace. We did a documentary on the 1980 U.S. Hockey team several years back and we brought in Mike Eruzione. I did not share that story with him.