Kevin Robbins joined the journalism faculty in 2012 after 22 years in daily newspapers. He teaches courses in sports journalism and feature writing. Robbins graduated from the University of Central Missouri in 1988 with B.S. degrees in journalism and psychology. He graduated from the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University in 1995 with an M.S. in journalism.
He has worked for community newspapers in Iowa and Kansas, The (Memphis, Tenn.) Commercial Appeal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Scripps-Howard News Service in Washington D.C. He spent the last 12 years of his newspaper career at the Austin American-Statesman, where he became a sports writer in 2002. Robbins twice won the Texas Daily Newspaper Association Fred Hartman Excellence in Sports Writing Award and twice won first place in the Associated Press Sports Editors national writing competition. He has been a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and the National Headliner Awards. His work has been cited in the Notables section in two editions of the Best American Sports Writing anthology (2007, 2008).
His work also has appeared in Texas Monthly, espnW, the New York Times, Sports on Earth, Kansas City Magazine, the Kansas City View, the Kansas City Pitch, Austin Golf magazine, Travel + Leisure Golf and Golf Journal.
Robbins has written five non-fiction books about golf and golf history. His first two, “Harvey Penick: The Life and Wisdom of the Man Who Wrote the Book on Golf” (2016) and “The Last Stand of Payne Stewart” (2019), won the Herbert Warren Wind International Book Award from the United States Golf Association. Robbins’ other books include the centennial histories of Brook Hollow Golf Club in Dallas, Texas; Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland; and the Texas Open, a longstanding PGA Tour tournament in San Antonio, Texas.
