Remembering Vince Spence, the One-Eyed Golfer

For those of us in the golf blogosphere, Vince Spence (otherwise known as the One-Eyed Golfer) was as familiar a writer as he was a great human being. While I never had the opportunity to meet Vince in person, he and I have exchanged quite few emails and messages over Twitter over the past year or so.

I do not tend to enjoy writing about the loss of someone whom I respected and supported, mainly because I prefer to remember better times as opposed to situations of sorrow. However, I will quickly mention one particular memory of Vince that I will always have.

Being relatively new to the golf blogging world, I have struggled with developing a readership that could even be remotely considered "consistent". Opinions and pieces I have written have come and gone, and more often than not they have received more negative comments than positive. However, Vince (while not always in agreement with a post) was one of the few readers and co-bloggers that never once offered his opinion in a negative or condescending manner. Instead, he simply offered his view of the topic at hand and respected those of other readers.

This sense of mutual respect was seen in a post Vince published on WaggleRoom.com pertaining to a topic I had covered days before that had received quite a few negative comments. While Vince did not agree with how I handled a particular off-color joke, the fact that he took the time to draft and publish his article meant more to me than most will know.

Humility and tact is something that most people only have a weak grasp on, myself included. However, Vince consistently proved to everyone that not only was he a gentleman when it came to respecting others, he was also a writing talent that will forever be missed.