The American Golfer magazine was started in 1908 by Walter J. Travis. Travis was obsessed with golf, being a fine professional golfer and golf architect was not enough. He needed to talk and write about golf constantly. The American Golfer became his vehicle. Under the editorial leadership of Travis and later Grantland Rice, The American Golfer served golf fans until 1936 when it was joined with Sports Illustrated.

In Charles Price's book about the magazine, he wrote: The American Golfer was a magazine which took for granted that you played golf, not at it, even though that playing might not have been very good. They assumed that you, as they did, dedicated a little part of your everyday thinking to studying, contemplating, or worrying over this jarringly close imitation of life. They weren't interested in turning out just another service book , a self-help manual, a get-you-out-of-your-slice handbook which would con you into thinking that it wasn't necessary to go to a pro to solve your problems. They wanted to print the straight dope, and they went to the best people they could get it from. They simply were not the sort of men who could have contempt for their readers' intelligence, who could turn down an article just because it was relatively recondite, who could say, oh, hell, let's not run that , they'll never understand it. In short, they knew their duty -which was to create good magazines, not to sell lousy ones. As a result, you felt while reading the magazine that if there were a Rosetta Stone to golf -and who doubts even now there isn't? -it would be found among these pages.