When Bob Cullen was in college, he never imagined that one day he’d be writing novels about golf. But then again, he never imagined he’d be arrested by the KGB either.

A Pivotal Period
Golf was a passion of Cullen’s from childhood, one that he had to put aside while studying at the University of Virginia. In those days—the late ’60s—there was no course on which he could play.

So, looking for an extracurricular activity, Cullen chose The Cavalier Daily. He thought it sounded cool.

Looking back, Cullen said, "It was a pivotal period for the paper, not only because of what the staff did, but because of the times. While I was there, the University changed dramatically."

It was during Cullen’s time on staff—as a sports reporter, sports editor, and then in 1969-70 as editor under a short-lived managing board structure with a publisher and an editor—that The Cavalier Daily switched its ideology from conservative to liberal.

The paper took stands against fraternity rush, against the war in Vietnam, and in favor of integration.

Some Virginians saw these views, along with the student editors’ long hair and jeans—at a time when coats and ties were the norm—as evidence that the paper had gone radical.

Cullen contends, however, that the CD staffers then were not radical by any means, especially not compared to students at other universities around the country.

"We weren’t radicals," Cullen said, "just different."

The paper’s anti-Vietnam stance, and one editorial in particular in which the CD referred to then-President Richard Nixon as "Tricky Dick," caught the attention of Rector Frank Rogers, who called Cullen into his office to chastise him.

"I think this started the era of the University trying to ‘do something about the CD problem,’" which cumulated in the establishment of the University Journal in 1979, Cullen said.

Physically, the CD underwent drastic changes in those years too.

"When I started, we published four days a week on a small sheet, four pages," Cullen recalls. "We went to a broadsheet and then to a Monday edition during my years there and occasionally published six pages.

"It was pretty amateurish," he admits. "We would cover a Saturday afternoon football game in Tuesday’s paper as if it had just happened on Monday night. We had poor news sense."

There were no women on the staff, since the College did not admit women until the fall of 1970, the year Cullen graduated. The only women involved at the paper at the time were a secretary and two wives of graduate students who were hired to type stories into the computer system.

"We also got the first primitive computer system for setting type," he added.

"The CD looks much more professional now than it did then," said Cullen. "We were not very skilled. I remember how hard it was to find three consecutive issues without a glaring error when we wanted to enter a college newspaper contest."

Nevertheless, Cullen loved working on the paper. "I really enjoyed it. It was the most interesting and engaging thing I did at the University."

International Correspondent
An international relations major, Cullen didn’t have a career goal in mind, but "the CD more or less gave me one.

"Given the hours I spent on it, my grades certainly weren’t good enough to go to law school or business school, and I liked newspapers better anyway."

After graduation he took a job as a reporter for the Newark, N.J., Evening News, then worked for 10 years for Associated Press in North Carolina and Washington, D.C. He left AP in 1980 to study Russian at Stanford University and then accepted a position as Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek magazine in 1982.

This placement began a series of assignments that developed into the best story he has ever covered—the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union.

Cullen reported from Moscow for Newsweek for three years. It was there he broke the story that Soviet leader Yuri Andropov was dying of kidney disease.

"There had been a lot of speculation about his illness," Cullen said, "but I had accurate information."

Shortly after the story ran, Cullen was contacted by a member of the Russian black market who gave him a tip about illegal video parlors, knowing Cullen was interested in writing an article on the subject.

"He told me where to go and to bring a blank videotape, a Pink Floyd CD, and a carton of Marlboros." When Cullen arrived, a group of men and scantily clad women were sitting in a room watching "Deep Throat." When two plainclothes KGB agents showed up, Cullen knew he’d been stung.

He was arrested for pornography, interrogated, and, once the U.S. Embassy became involved, released.

"It was a shot across the bow," he said. "They wanted me to know they had the goods on me."

This incident, in addition to becoming a staple in dinner party conversation, also served as the inspiration for Cullen’s first work of fiction, "Soviet Sources."

From Gorbachev to Golf
Cullen left Moscow in 1986 and spent a year in New York and two in Washington, D.C., writing for Newsweek as a diplomatic correspondent.

In 1989, however, with a book contract, the beginnings of a novel, and a working relationship with The New Yorker in hand, Cullen left the comfort of a full-time editorial position at Newsweek for the sometimes unreliable realm of the free-lance writer.

By then, Mikhail Gorbachev had risen to power in the Soviet Union and Cullen was anxious to return to Moscow.

"I knew I could get into Russia and write the stories that no one had been able to do up to that point," Cullen recalls. "The Russian people were able to tell their stories for the first time in their lives."

Over the next eight years, Cullen wrote numerous magazine articles and two books of nonfiction documenting a country in the midst of "a convulsive crisis." It was during this time also that he wrote "Soviet Sources," a thriller about a foreign correspondent named Colin Burke, as well as three additional novels starring Burke.

As a free-lance writer, Cullen found time to pick back up a passion of his youth: golf.

He also began a collaboration with sports psychologist Bob Rotella, a former director of sports psychology at the University, who was looking for a ghostwriter for a golf book that he hoped would reach a general audience.

The two got together and combined Rotella’s sports psychology with Cullen’s ability to tell a story to create a series of books designed to help golfers improve their game.

Apparently the technique works: Since working with Rotella, "my golf handicap has gone from 21 to 7," Cullen said. The fifth book in the series, "Putting Out of Your Mind," is due out this spring.

Cullen’s fiction has taken a turn toward golf lately too.

"I’ve spent less and less time in Russia in the last five years," Cullen said, "and more time on the golf course. In fiction you write about what you know."

So it should be no surprise that Cullen’s latest novel, "A Mulligan for Bobby Jobe," also expected this spring, revolves around golf.

"I’d be surprised if non-golfers buy the book," Cullen admits, "but I hope they do. It’s about more than golf.

"Golf involves a lot of mental challenges and as a game has a lot of natural metaphors to life," he said. "The action is secondary to the thoughts of the players."

Not What He’d Imagined
Cullen believes a bit of Rotella’s sports psychology, derived from the 19th-century philosopher William James: "People tend to become what they think of themselves."

It sounds trite, he admits, but "you can’t do anything you can’t see yourself doing."