Bill Robertson (1943 – 2020)
The AGW was very saddened to learn of the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Bill Robertson on Friday, 6th March, 2020.
Bill had been a member of the AGW since 1978 and his life clearly touched many, many members of the AGW as the following tributes so very proudly attest.
* Tributes purely in order they were received.
MARTIN VOUSDEN …
In my first week as a reporter on Today’s Golfer, Bill Robertson took me under his wing and it became a shelter I never subsequently left. Long after we both departed the magazine he was always there as a source of counsel, wise advice, oft-repeated reminiscences but most importantly, as a friend.
In that first week he let me tag along to Hanbury Manor, which was to be the venue for the English Open later in the year.
On a glorious summer day, a flunkey showed us to an upstairs balcony where we sat in the sun and ordered the sort of breakfast on which the English built an empire. We looked out on the course, which we were due to play later, and Bill said, with all seriousness: ‘Don’t ever take this sort of thing for granted.’ I hope I never have but it was only the first of very many lessons and bits of wisdom that he passed on over the next 38 or so years.
He knew golf, and golf publishing like few others and was always generous in sharing whatever he could to make me a better, or at least, less disastrous, journalist. By the time I arrived at TG he specialised in writing instruction but as Alistair Tait and I both quickly discovered, detail was not his strongest suit. If he mentioned a golfer, or tournament, or year, we always checked, usually to discover that Bill had relied on his memory rather than a reference, and his memory didn’t always have the accuracy of an atomic clock.
What I enjoyed most, however, were his reminiscences of tournaments, characters, other journalists and press trips from years gone by. In these, he was remarkably consistent in the telling – something you realised fairly quickly because he often related the same story numerous times, having forgotten who he had previously regaled. I never met Peter Dobereiner or many of the other exemplars of our profession that Bill had known but they came alive in his telling and helped me feel a sense of continuity in what has been both a noble and ignoble calling.
Bill was a gentle, soft-spoken man who never raised his voice, at least not in my company and only once did I hear him swear, and it came as quite a shock. When The Open was last played at Hoylake (like Bill, I can’t be arsed to look up the year) we decided to get up early on the Monday to follow Tiger during his practice round. The grass inside the gallery ropes was long and wet so we followed at a discrete distance down the fairway, once or twice standing at the back of the tee.
Tiger was perfecting his 2-iron stinger and it felt like a privilege to see such a great athlete working out his strategy for the week. But after about a dozen holes, one of the two black-clad Nike minders who were always at Tiger’s side, dropped back to ask us who we were and what we were doing.
Bill pulled himself to his full height (in order to look down his nose) and said, in a sinisterly quiet but threatening voice: ‘We are here, Sonny, at the invitation of the R&A, whose championship this is. It is not owned or run by Tiger Woods, IMG or Nike, so fuck off back where you belong before I get annoyed.’ The man fucked off.
The perennial problem for the freelance journalist is inspiration but whenever I was stuck for an idea or way to develop a theme, I called Bill and his eager enthusiasm always fired me up, not just in ways to complete the piece with which I was struggling, but usually with at least two or three ideas for future articles.
For at least the last three years, having been diagnosed with an inoperable tumour in his intestines, he nevertheless remained upbeat and positive, even when, 12 months ago, he concluded that he had played his last round. During that final illness he received radio and chemo-therapy, lost a great deal of weight, was often in pain and yet never once complained. I have often previously snorted at descriptions of people’s ‘brave fight’ against cancer or some other disease and would think: ‘You’ve only got two choices; give in and die quickly or struggle on as best you can.’ But in Bill’s case it really was a period of tremendous courage and bravery in which he showed enormous stoicism.
It is hard to describe how affected I am by Bill’s death; one of the cornerstones of my own life has been removed and I know I will miss him greatly as, I am sure, will many other AGW members. I am now going to do what I hope will have pleased him the most and play a round of golf in his honour.
PHILIP QUINN …
Sorry to hear the news. I didn’t know Bill but feel I do know after Martin’s informative, heartfelt and humorous tribute.
JOCK MACVICAR – AGW President
Very, very sad to hear that Bill Robertson has passed away.
I did not have a lot of contact with Bill as he lived down south and I am in Glasgow, but the times I met him he was always most friendly and accommodating. He was also a countryman. On a few occasions we met at the annual Golf Writers Home Internationals, and he was a golfer you wanted on your side as he was a very good player.
My sympathy with his family at this time. He was a fine man and will be missed by us all.
NORMAN DABELL …
Saddened and shocked at Bill’s passing. I’d sent him an email wishing him a speedy recovery and expected him to soon be back on his feet. I didn’t realise just how ill he was. I’ll get a condolence card off to Carolyn and Matthew.
Bill was a good friend and something of a mentor to me. When I moved to Golf Illustrated in 1987, just after Bill had left the editorship in Sevenoaks to set up Today’s Golfer, he helped me with good advice on how to work at a golf magazine, something that was a whole new world for me. With us both being then in the same business, we met up often when the magazines were invited to various functions and visits. His was always a welcome and friendly face.
He was a very accomplished golfer and always a competitor to be reckoned with at AGW meetings but when he won it was always with grace. It was always good to see him and Carolyn, too, at the two-day Norfolk meeting which Mike McDonnell organised.
When I moved to Crowland in Lincolnshire, Bill became a near-neighbour just a few miles away in Market Deeping and we would car-share occasionally. Mind you, Bill nearly always wanted to drive us, not the least because when I once did the driving he finished up having to break up a tussle in the press car-park between me and a particularly nasty Wentworth marshal. He was worried about getting home.
JOHN WHITBREAD …
You mention in your tribute that Bill would reminisce on many matters including press trips. So I thought you might like to see this picture (attached) which is on the wall in my home of the British team which played the United States in the 1983 World Writers Cup match on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass where Rory McIlroy will defend The Players Championship next week.
World Writers Cup 1983 TPC Sawgrass-BACK ROW L-R Peter Dobereiner, Bill Robertson, Jack Magowan, Dixon Blackstock, Michael Williams, Mitchell Platts FRONT- Jackie Robertson and John-Morgan.
CHRIS JONES (Editor, Today’s Golfer) …
Bill was from the launch the Editor of Today’s Golfer in 1988, having persuaded the then EMAP board there was a gap in the market for an accessible, unstuffy golf magazine that could offer more instruction and equipment coverage alongside Tour insight.
The title was immediately successful, and Bill stayed at the helm for almost a decade, making TG one of EMAP’s biggest magazines.
I played golf with Bill many times over the years, and it was always interesting – and often amusing – to hear his stories, while he took a keen interest in how modern publishing has changed. But one thing has stayed the same – at its core, the TG brand – in print, but now online, on social media and video – is all about helping the average golfer play better.
And that was entirely Bill’s vision.
BILL ELLIOTT – PAST AGW CHAIRMAN …
SOME emails are better than others, some are just simply bloody awful. So it was with the email I received from Bill’s patient, caring wife Carolyn on Friday morning March 6th telling me that her husband and my dear friend had died at 2am that morning in hospital. Typical of Carolyn to take the time to inform me and Bill’s other friends of his passing despite her own weary drift into grief.
But then it’s been a weary time this past three years for all the Robertson family as they have tried to help Bill through his joust with terminal cancer. It may have been a one-sided joust but Bill never let it get in the way of his love of life, family and friendship. From afar, I threw in my own tuppence worth of encouragement as did others. We talked and emailed regularly while now and then I sent him a daft balloon to make everyone smile hopefully. We chatted and laughed and, when the opportunity arose, took the mickey out of each other.
Occasionally he’d update me on his latest treatment, even more occasionally he would refer to the pain. The pain of the cancer, yes, but also the pain at losing strength and eventually the ability to play the old game which he had been able to caress with some real talent for so many years. I suspect that perhaps his greatest pain was felt when his beloved Jaguar car finally gave up the ghost a year or so ago or so it seemed when reading that particularly plaintive email one morning.
He loved golf, loved his family, loved life. He also liked people, was kind and open and helpful to many, both aspiring journalists and whoever came into his sphere for whatever reason. Others will confirm what a terrific journalist he was himself, how inspiring and thoughtful he was as an editor. He was certainly inspired when he became launch editor of Today’s Golfer, a trailblazing magazine 40 years ago and one that offered a unique template that others swiftly tried to copy. I was both surprised and fortunate that he asked me to write every month for the magazine from the beginning, offering me a chance to get my teeth into some ‘long form’ articles and away from the gnawing brevity of tabloid journalism that was my day job.
He was full of ideas and enthusiasm and possessed a gentle determination and ambition that never left him. Most of all he had a clear idea about what he wanted and knew how to drive it forward while carefully listening to what you had to say about this or that project. Early in the magazine’s life he asked me to do a piece on the vexed question of appearance money on the European Tour at the time. It was something of a scandalous article when it was completed and he knew the Tour hierarchy and others would not be best pleased but he not only had the balls to publish it as offered but to defend it vigorously when the whinging inevitably began.
Carolyn and his son Matthew were with him when he died. In her email to me not many hours later Carolyn said he was “the best man she had ever met”. I know what she means. Rest in peace chum, I’ll miss you.
With deepest condolences to Carolyn and Matthew…Bill Elliott
PATRICIA DAVIES …
I knew Bill was very ill. I last saw him at Brancaster a couple of years ago and thought how cheerful he was considering how frail and ill he was, remarkable really, which tallies with what Martin says in his lovely tribute.
I have a great photo of Bill and Dai chatting with Chi Chi Rodriguez somewhere hot and sunny, they all look very happy and it always makes me smile.
My condolences to Carolyn and Matthew, they’ve had a gruelling few years, Patricia x
JEREMY CHAPMAN …
So sorry to hear about Bill who was a lovely golfer and a good companion on and off the course. He had just taken over from Tom Scott as editor of Golf Illustrated when I first ran across him.
He was a colleague I was always pleased to see, a smashing bloke with an endless supply of stories to tell and a proud Scot who knew the game inside out.
ALISTAIR TAIT …
I don’t know what Bill Robertson saw in me in 1988 when he took me on as an assistant editor for Today’s Golfer magazine. But his decision changed my life, gave me a career in the game we both loved.
Maybe that’s why Bill’s death hit me so hard yesterday, why the tears have been flowing intermittently since I got the news. I’ve never liked the word “gutted,” but that’s how I felt when I heard of Bill’s passing. I’d just finished a round of golf at Woburn and looked at my phone to see the email headline that told me my mentor had passed away.
It was hard news to take. Still is.
Those early days on Today’s Golfer with Bill, Dave Clarke, Paul Crawford, Lauren St John and Pat Toye filled my thoughts yesterday. They were heady, brilliant, exciting, often stressful times. How the six of us, led by Bill, somehow managed to get a new magazine out the door every month on time and on schedule still baffles me.
I’ve never met anyone in the game with more ideas than Bill. He had this little cubicle of an office while the five us operated in what was basically a glorified cupboard. Bill would constantly come out of his office with yet another idea for a feature or a column or series.
Bill Elliott was a columnist for TG in those days. In his fitting tribute to Bill on the Association of Golf Writers website, he writes:
“He was full of ideas and enthusiasm and possessed a gentle determination and ambition that never left him. Most of all he had a clear idea about what he wanted and knew how to drive it forward while carefully listening to what you had to say about this or that project.”
As someone in the inner circle I can relate to the “enthusiasm” part of the sentence, I’m just not sure about the “clear idea” bit. Bill had tons of ideas, but sometimes we were never clear about how to see those ideas through to the printed page. He had so many ideas that I wondered how we’d fit them all into the magazine. Thankfully that duty was left to Clarkie.
In his excellent tribute to Bill on the Association of Golf Writers website, former Today’s Golfer colleague Martin Vousden relays a time when Bill reminds him just how lucky he is to be writing about golf for a living.
“Don’t ever take this sort of thing for granted,” Bill said
Bill never took the game for granted. He loved it, and knew it inside and out. He could play too. He’s pictured above, on the right, taking lessons from TG contributing professional Eddie Birchenough, Royal Lytham’s long-serving club professional. Bill had arguably the best short game of any amateur I’ve ever played with. He was the master of the bump and run, a skill he’d honed from growing up playing courses like Carnoustie in his native Angus.
He had so many stories about the game, about fellow journalists. As a young journalist keen to further my education, I ate up his words like a hungry Labrador devouring its dinner.
I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor than Bill. His enthusiasm for the game was keen to everyone who knew him. He passed that on to me and everyone he worked with.
Today’s Golfer wouldn’t have become the success it became if not for Bill’s enthusiasm. He launched a new magazine into a market filled by two traditional magazines, Golf Monthly and Golf World, and made TG stand because of one very simple philosophy. He realised readers wanted to improve their games and made instruction a big part of the magazine. “Your Golf” was the magazine’s unofficial motto, and it proved effective. It wasn’t long before TG was punching above its weight and taking on Golf Monthly and Golf World on equal terms. Indeed, it didn’t take long from its inception for TG to become market leader. It wouldn’t have done so if not for Bill.
Martin reflects my own feelings when he says: “It is hard to describe how affected I am by Bill’s death; one of the cornerstones of my own life has been removed and I know I will miss him greatly.”
I already do. He was a key cornerstone in my life too.
Thank you, Bill, for giving me my career, for somehow seeing my potential all those years ago that led to a lifetime writing about golf. I’m forever in your debt. R.I.P. pal.
DAVID HAMILTON …
I’m so saddened to hear that Bill has passed away after a long battle with illness and a shock to hear about it a day or so after returning from a sunny holiday. He and I go back a long way, to 1978 in fact, when he took me on at Golf Illustrated in offices high up in a building at Stratton Street near Green Park in West London.
It was my first job in golf in January 1978 and I shall be forever grateful to him for that. We later moved to slightly better headquarters below Fleet Street but I left a few years later because the wages were so low. But we kept in touch and when I began doing evening subbing shifts on the Daily Mirror and The Sun I used to help Bill on GI during the day.
I well recall my first Open Championship in 1978 at St Andrews when Jack Nicklaus was champion and we travelled up in Bill’s car and stopped overnight with, I believe, his relatives near Dumfries.
When GI was taken over by new owners and moved offices to Sevenoaks in Kent in the 1980s I rejoined and later became editor when Bill moved to Today’s Golfer in Peterborough near to his home in Market Deeping.
GI then became part of the Golf World group and moved again to offices in London Docklands before EMAP then took over and took the mag to Peterborough.
Bill was a superb golfer. I used to marvel at his slow, silky swing. He was always off single figures and I don’t ever recall beating him. He kept playing and used to join a group of us at Royal West Norfolk during our regular November weekend away in Cromer. That was until a few years ago when it became too much.
MIKE BLAIR …
Having known Bill for over 40 years, this is a particularly heart-wrenching time but my memories of us working together will long remaining in my thoughts. RIP old pal.
Among my fond memories of Bill was that he gifted me a hybrid golf club. And the first time I used it I had a hole in one at Wentworth East. We had many chuckle over that.
MATTHEW HARRIS …
I can pinpoint and name everyone that has either influenced, guided, supported or simply been there for me during my career as a professional golf photographer – but nobody has impacted my career more significantly than Bill Robertson.
Walking just off Fleet Street one spring day, I was nervous about going to see the Editor of Golf Illustrated with my portfolio and a selection golf prints that I thought he may have an interest in using – but I needn’t have worried; Bill put me at ease before I’d even sat down and by the time I left he had filled me with so much confidence, all I wanted to do was go out there and exceed his expectations.
So began a life-long friendship and a working collaboration with the most innovative and creative golf magazine editor I think Britain has produced.
When he took up the reins as editor of the new title ‘Todays Golfer’ in 1988, Bill invited me to his office to present him with some picture ideas for the magazine and to discuss how we might present both previews and reviews of the mens Majors, player features and so on – as a consequence I got the job as the main contract photographer.
It turned into an outstanding showcase for my golf photography with a demanding schedule, but with Bill always being so encouraging, supportive and forever challenging me and the entire TG team to set the bar high, we took the magazine to number 1 in the UK market – perhaps to the surprise of most, but not the inimitable Mr. Robertson.
Many memorable moments occurred along the journey: working with Ian Woosnam and Bill on Woosie’s instruction series with three shoots that particularly stand out – creating a prison door out of golf shafts with Ian looking like he was trying to escape – him putting on his snooker table at home in Jersey to simulate the speed of Augusta’s greens and at the completion of an instruction shoot at Valderrama when Woosie turned to Bill and I and said, “OK, that’s enough – let’s all go play some golf now!”
Then there was another series we did with Jose-Maria Olazabal, who when asked by the writer, “So how do you play this chip shot off the downslope over the bunker and get it close to the hole?”, replied by saying nothing but promptly holed the shot! I also recall an escape shot series we did with Barry Lane, who no matter where I suggested he try and escape from – even from the roof of an in-play shed – came up with a way to play the shot.
All these and others were very successful with our readers and were all part of Bill’s vision for the magazine to be ‘different yet informative’. It was a vision he applied consistently well with all the features we managed to set up with the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle and of course the one and only Seve Ballesteros, when Bill and I came up with the idea of a feature ‘24 hours in the life of a Superstar’, in which I shadowed Seve in Japan.
Bill Robertson was a true hero of mine who will never to be forgotten in the Harris household … Thank you Bill for so much; and naturally my thoughts go out to Carolyn and your boys at this poignant time. RIP.
ANDY HISEMAN (Former Publisher EMAP Magazines) …
I was Publisher of the golf magazines at EMAP for five years in the mid-90s, arriving eight years after Bill and the team had launched TODAY’S GOLFER.
So I had the pleasure of working every day with Bill and the teams on TG, FORE!, Golf World, Golf Weekly and Golf Industry News.
Bill helped everybody. What a vigorous, approachable, kind man he was, always giving advice with a wry humour. He was our Gandalf, very capable, never flummoxed, always delivering what was needed.
He commanded respect, both with his knowledge of the game, and also with his no-nonsense character .. he was often the experienced grown-up among the excitable media crowd of youngsters.
As a fellow Scottish golf lover, I used to enjoy talking about the courses I had been lucky to play with my father, who lives north of the border. I think we even managed to get a game of golf with Bill once, my father and I, at Tulliallan Golf Club hear the Kincardine Bridge.
I always listened far more than I talked when in his presence.
I played many friendly rounds of golf with him, mainly when we’d all closed another issue, and in my mind he’s up there in heaven now, striping it down the first fairway (and often making the green).
RENTON LAIDLAW (Former AGW President, Chairman & Secretary) …
I had no idea that Bill was as ill as he was or that he had been battling cancer for the last three years so it came as a shock to hear of his death. He was a fine man who put a brave face on his health problems which was typical of him.
Just how highly he was respected can be measured by the number of people who have written to say how important Bill’s friendship was in their own careers. He encouraged newcomers, he helped them settle in and was always on hand to advise in a crisis.
He and I met seldom but our friendship – especially our joint love of Carnoustie – made it extra special. There was no side to Bill. He treated everybody in the same most friendly way and was always one of the most popular journalists in the press tent and most affable golfers on the course.
He was a man you could always rely upon. He would never let you down. Frankly his contribution to the game of golf he loved was immeasurable but all he achieved was done in a quiet unassuming way. I am not surprised he was a role model to many and I am proud I could call him a friend.
To his wife and family, I offer my sincere condolences. This is a very sad time for them but Bill’s suffering is now over.
CHARLES BRISCOE-KNIGHT …
I met Bill Robertson, when he was Editor of Golf Illustrated and immediately struck up a friendship as he seemed totally “on it” with regard to both golf, management of the magazine and how to handle people.
My favourite ditty about Bill was when he encouraged me to shoot a “raw” Nick Faldo in the late 70’s giving a couple of Miss World contestants a swing lesson….. Nick duly obliged but as Miss UK and Miss Brazil weren’t allowed out too far from their hotel, we had to shoot in Hyde Park. It was quite fun with inquisitive police, park wardens and public rubbernecking. Bill liked the images so much he popped one full page on the front cover!
Subsequently, I worked with him periodically and he introduced me to many AGW members and my good friend, now sadly departed, the talented snapper Phil Sheldon.
My condolences to his wife and family
SEE ALSO
Golf Business News – https://golfbusinessnews.com/news/media/bill-robertson-passes-away/
Alistair Tait Golf – https://www.alistairtaitgolf.com/post/thank-you-for-my-golf-career-bill-robertson-r-i-p
News Break – https://www.newsbreak.com/news/1523774031935/bill-robertson-passes-away
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