Vartan Kupelian, a longtime Detroit News reporter who spent decades as one of the country’s most respected golf writers and who thought he covered 168 major leagues during his career, died Thursday. He was 73 years old.
His friend, George Eichorn, confirmed Kupelian’s death to The Detroit News. He had been battling heart complications and diabetes for some time, Eichorn said.
Kupelian underwent quadruple bypass surgery in May 2017.
Kupelian was born in Germany before moving to Michigan at a young age. He graduated from Highland Park High School, where he wrote basketball letters and played golf (“but not very well”), and graduated from Wayne State, where he traveled by bus every day, before getting a job at The News – and quickly becoming a Detroit Red Wings writer.
Hockey was Kupelian’s first specialized beat, but it wasn’t his last.
In 1994, he became a golf writer for The Detroit News, succeeding Jack Berry – 21 years after Kupelian covered his first major in golf, Johnny Miller’s legendary win at the Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania.
Among the majors he held were two US Open in Oakland Hills, Andy North’s victory in 1985 and Steve Jones’s in 1996, as well as the Ryder Cup, also in Oakland Hills, a European rout over the United States in 2004. He also covered three PGA Championships in Oakland Hills, won by Gary Player, David Graham, and Padraig Harrington. Among his most memorable majors in Michigan was the 1991 US Senior Open, when Jack Nicklaus overtook Chi Chi Rodriguez. That ended up in a playoff.
“Who Who was the perfect foil, who said things like, ‘I’m a little mouse and he’s a big bear, what chance do I have?'” Kupelian told The News last summer, for a long-term story of the PGA Tour. Expected to return to Michigan with the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club. “Every time Jack wins, it’s historic.”
In 2009, Kupelian began a two-year term as president of the Golf Writers Association of America. In 2014 he was elected to the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame and won the Golf Association of Michigan’s Distinguished Service Award.
Kupelian has also covered five Olympics, as well as Super Bowls, Stanley Cup playoffs, World Series, and NBA Finals. He has written about almost every sport for The News, and towards the end of his run, he co-wrote a regular column with good friend and Lions joke writer, Mike O’Hara.
In all, he spent 38 years as a writer and columnist for The News.
After retiring from The News, Kupelian remained in the golf writing industry, writing columns for PGATour.com and Masters.com. He has also covered the Champions Tour for 50 years and throughout his career he has also covered the LPGA Tour and the European Tour.
Kupelian, of Farmington Hills, has written four books on golf, one on Tiger Woods, as well as historical texts on Oakland Hills and the Red Run Golf Club in Royal Oak.
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