From a news release… (separately, Craig Dolch was awarded entrance into the South Florida PGA Hall of Fame today too.)

Randall Mell, a fixture in South Florida and national golf media for the past 25 years, has been named the 2023 recipient of the Tim Rosaforte Distinguished Journalist Award. 

Mell is the third honoree of the award, established by The Honda Classic in 2021 to honor Rosaforte, a generational golf journalistic talent who lost his battle with Alzheimer’s Disease on January 11, 2022. 

Rosaforte covered The Honda Classic for more than three decades as part of his illustrious career, first at the Sun Sentinel and Palm Beach Post, then as a writer for Sports Illustrated and Golf World and lastly as a broadcaster for NBC and the Golf Channel.

Mell follows Rosaforte and Larry Dorman, who covered The Honda Classic for almost two decades as a writer for The Miami Herald, the Sun Sentinel, The National Sports Daily and the New York Times, as a recipient of the award.

“It’s a special award because of the names associated with it,” Mell said. “Tim Rosaforte started a legacy of excellence in golf journalism at the Sun-Sentinel, something I was proud to be part of. I was blessed to eventually follow Rosie to Golf Channel. Larry Dorman was someone I also idolized in the business, and someone I loved calling a teammate when he moved to the Sun-Sentinel. 

“And, of course, there is also The Honda Classic name attached to this. I treated The Honda like it was `my major’ when I was its local writer. I covered it as intensely as I did the four traditional majors.”

Both Mell and Dorman worked alongside Rosaforte for much of their careers. The Rosaforte award salutes their journalistic achievements. 

“Randall Mell has been a journalist who always was very supportive of our efforts to elevate The Honda Classic to status as one of the best events on the PGA TOUR,” said Kenneth R. Kennerly, Executive Director Emeritus of The Honda Classic. “He followed in Rosie’s footsteps as he climbed the ladder of golf journalists around the country.”

Mell, who is retired and living in Winter Garden, covered 25 Honda Classic tournaments. He was a sportswriter at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale for 24 years, spending the last 11 years there as its golf writer (1997-2008). He followed an impressive lineage of golf writers at the Sun-Sentinel, a group that included Rosaforte and Dorman and ended up following Rosaforte to the Golf Channel. He then was a senior writer at Golf Channel for 11 years (2009-2020).

Mell also teamed with Rosaforte and Mark Wood for 10 years as co-hosts of Golf World On-Air, a national radio show carried on The Sporting News Radio network.

During that time, Mell won three first-place awards in the Golf Writers Association of America’s Annual Writing Contest, including the Best Daily Column for his story about Mark Wilson’s 2007 victory at The Honda Classic, in which Mell wrote about Wilson’s admirable display of sportsmanship. He also won first place honors in the Golf Writers Association of America Special Projects category in 2007 and 2020.

As the Sun-Sentinel’s University of Miami football beat writer from 1987 through 1996, Mell won first place for Best Investigative Reporting in the 1995 Associated Press Sports Editors National Newspaper Contest, a story he teamed with Dave Hyde to write about improprieties in the UM football drug-testing program. Mell also won first place for investigative reporting in the 1993 Florida Sports Writers Association Contest for a story about an agent’s secret cash payments to UM football players.

“Tim would be thrilled to know Randall was the latest deserving winner of the Tim Rosaforte Distinguished Journalist Award,” said Genevieve Rosaforte, Tim’s wife. “Tim and Randall worked together numerous times throughout their South Florida careers. Tim always had the utmost respect for Randall’s work ethic, his professionalism and we both really enjoyed being around Randall.”

The award was presented to Mell inside the Tim Rosaforte Media Center at The Honda Classic. 

“We look forward to continuing to honor Tim Rosaforte’s legacy through the very deserved winners of this award,” Honda Classic Executive Director Andrew George said.