He covered Fidel vs. Che

Cuban journalist Jose Lorenzo Fuentes, 80, who was Fidel Castro's personal scribe, remembers being summoned to cover the Castro-Guevara golf match for the official paper, Revolucion.

"When I got there, Fidel said there was a lot of tension between the U.S. and Cuba and he wanted the report to send a message of detente," he said.

When the game got underway, Guevara quickly leapt ahead.

"Che asked me from time to time, 'Make sure you score your boss correctly,' " Lorenzo Fuentes recalls. "(Guevara) was very competitive. He wanted to win."

Guevara had played the game a bit in his youth in Argentina. Lorenzo Fuentes knew him well. A former war correspondent with Castro's rebel army, he covered some of Guevara's famous battles.

At the end of the match, Castro asked the journalist what he was going to write. "I said, the truth — that Che won," Lorenzo Fuentes replied. "Make sure you note that Che had more (golf) experience than me," Castro responded.

Lorenzo Fuentes, who had spent the previous two years traveling Cuba at Castro's side, says he was never invited to cover an event with Castro again.

They did bump into each other a few months later swimming off the beach at Varadero — and Castro expressed no hard feelings.

Lorenzo Fuentes, who left Cuba in 1992 and now lives in Miami, remembers at the time feeling "trapped between the two great figures of the Revolution." If he had lied, "Che would have considered me an opportunist," he said.

"But my publishing that Fidel lost wasn't politically correct, because the game showed he didn't have the skill to challenge (U.S. President John F.) Kennedy, at least not on the golf course."