David Birtill was born in 1941, joined the AGW in 1995 and sadly passed away on Christmas Day 2020 following a lengthy illness at the age of 79.
Those who knew Dave well agree he was a walking encyclopedia of all things North West of England golf.
For over 30 years, Dave was the PGA North Region press officer.
In a tribute appearning on Lancashire Golf, Dave also worked in Manchester for the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Sunday People and Sunday Express when the city was the hub for Northern editions of the national press.
By the end of the 80s, production had moved to London but he stayed put and took up golf writing and working for trade magazines before joining the Manchester Evening News sports desk as a sub in 1999.
He retired in 2006 but continued to write extensively from his home in Withnell Fold, Chorley. Among the many magazines to which he has contributed are PGA Professional and English Club Golfer. Dave also was the proud author of ‘Lancashire Links’, a three-year labour of love that was released in 2010 to celebrate the 100-year union of Lancashire golf clubs. (See photo)
It’s an understatement also that for over 30-years Dave knew personnally so many of England’s top golfers including Nick Dougherty who appears on the cover of ‘Lancashire Links’.
In 2017, Dave attended his last AGW annual dinner at Royal Birkdale. His son Matthew was Dave’s guest.
Dave is survived by Matthew and daughter Claire and stepson Richard from his marriage to Val.
His funeral was held on Friday, 15th January, 2021.
AGW MEMBER TRIBUTES (In order of receipt)
TREVOR PEAKE
Sorry to hear about the passing of Dave, a former colleague on Saturday shifts at the Sunday People and a man I shared accomodation with at several Opens.He cornered the golf freelance market in the north west and his excellent tome on the Centenary of the Lancashire Union of Golf Clubs is a fitting legacy for his dedication to the game he loved.
TONY GARNETT
So sorry to hear the sad news about Dave Birtill. I did not know him well but met him at PGA Regional Press Officers’ get-togethers at The Belfry more than once. The late Peter Godsiff was usually there as well representing the West. Dave was very much the elder statesman.
MARTIN DEMPSTER
STEVE CARROLL
Replying to @DempsterMartin and @AGWgolfwritersVery sad news. David was incredibly helpful to me when I first started writing about golf and PGA North events at the York Press. Hugely knowledgeable and great company too.
ISABEL TRILLO AMORES
So sad!!! It was good friend and altas gentle!! DEP in Peace!!!
ALISTAIR TAIT
RIP Dave “Scoop” Birtill .. Thanks to Alistair Tait Golf ( Click on: bit.ly/3syjNJq )
Many of you reading this have probably never heard of Dave Birtill, who has died at the age of 79. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who shed a tear on hearing of his passing. Bet there were quite a few players doing the same.
Dave is worth shedding a tear for.
He was the PGA North Region press officer for over 30 years. There wasn’t anything Dave didn’t know about golf in the North West of England.
As the Lancashire Region of Golf Clubs website reported, Dave began his newspaper career at the Chorley Guardian. He was a reporter and sub-editor at the Lancashire Telegraph in the mid-60s before moving to the Wigan Evening Post and Chronicle. He later worked in Manchester for the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Sunday People and Sunday Express.
He took up golf writing in the 1980s and worked for trade magazines before joining the Manchester Evening News sports desk as a sub in 1999. After retiring in 2006, he continued to write extensively from his home in Chorley, contributing to magazines such as PGA Professional and English Club Golfer.
Regional newspapers have become, well, paper thin in recent years thanks to the advent of the internet. That’s if they even exist anymore. I remember when they were invaluable sources of local information. Including information on rising golf stars.
Dave knew his beat, everyone in his beat, players and officials alike, and he covered it brilliantly. As 1989 European Open winner Andrew Murray tweeted, some called him “’scoop, coz he always was 1st to know ‘stuff.’”
Nothing got past Dave. He was a treasure trove of information. Many a time at an Open Championship I would tap him on the shoulder and ask him about a player from his beat, and he would gladly rhyme off everything I needed to know.
I covered my first Lytham Trophy in 2002 when England’s Lee Corfield won the prestigious title. Dave had been covering the Lytham for 20 years by the time I turned up. In those days, there would be at least five, maybe six, golf writers covering the Lytham, one of the four British amateur majors along with the Amateur Championship, the St Andrews Links Trophy and Brabazon Trophy. Needless to say, Dave’s knowledge of the tournament was invaluable, and he was generous in sharing it with us. He didn’t take himself too seriously either, and loved a good laugh and a joke. We had some fun times at the Lytham back in the day.
Those were the days when amateur and regional golf got the coverage it deserved. Dave covered the North West of England, Dave Hamilton the South East, Bob Davies the Midlands and the late Peter Godsiff the South West for English Club Golfer. Alan Booth covered Hertfordshire, Alan Hedley the North East of England.
Nowadays the Lytham Trophy is probably lucky if one journalist turns up, and regional golf newspapers no longer have the funds to pay for golf coverage.
Whisper it, but national newspaper golf writers perhaps looked down their noses at their regional peers. Yet the regional newspaper writers were just as valuable a source of information as the national newspaper writers, perhaps more so because these were the golf writers who knew the stars before they were the stars.
Every future Tour player who came out of the North West of England would have met Dave at some point, been interviewed by him. They’d have received column inches in regional newspapers as a result. They perhaps found it easier to get sponsorship deals because of the coverage Dave gave them.
You only had to hear the tributes from the likes of Murray, Lora Fairclough, Paul Eales and many more to know not only the esteem in which Dave was held, but how many lives he touched in his career.
He certainly touched my life and helped my career. I’m forever indebted to him. He was a diamond of a guy the like of which, sadly, we’ll probably never see again. RIP Dave.
DAVID HAMILTON
So sad to learn that my long-time friend and colleague David Birtill has passed away.
Our association can be traced back to the 1980s when I worked for Golf Illustrated, Golf Weekly and he was a regular contributor and champion of Lancashire golf.
We used to meet up at the Open Championship each year or when an English Golf Union event was played in his neck of the woods.
He could be irascible at times but his heart was in golf and golf writing and we used to get along well. RIP old friend.
Dave HamiltoN
BOB DAVIES
It was with great sadness that I learned of the passing of David Birtill.Our paths first crossed when we were among the founder members of a group invited on an annual golfing trip to Southern Ireland around 40 years ago.It was the brainchild of Tim McGuinness to publicise the delights of the many stunning courses in that part of the world.Like me,
David happily endured the overnight ferry trips from Liverpool in the early days, before things became a little easier when we sailed in the daytime from Anglesey to Dublin.The trips brought together journalists from all over the country, cementing many friendships which have survived for all those years.The golf was always fiercely competitive but one thing that always stuck in our minds was that, invariably, on the bus trip back to the hotel Tim would direct the driver to pull into a pub, where the order would be something like 25 pints of Guinness, two whiskies and three gin and tonics!
Among his many roles, David covered the north of the country for the English Club Golfer, while my area was the Midlands.We also had an association with amateur golf, David as press officer to the Lancashire Union of Golf Clubs and me as secretary of Shropshire and Herefordshire Union of Golf Clubs, which guaranteed we always had plenty to talk about when we got together.
David, I know, was particularly proud of the book he wrote to celebrate Lancashire’s centenary, which was the envy of many other Unions around the country.There will not be any golfers in the north of England or, indeed, further afield, who were not aware of the contribution David Birtill made to the game we are so devoted to.
GOLF FOUNDATION (Ben Evans)
It was sad to hear of David Birtill’s passing, he was a leading authority on golf in the North West of England of course and apart from the elite levels of golf he was always ready to write about the grass roots, including the Golf Foundation’s work to support young people in the game. He was very helpful to our Foundation regional development officer for the area, Andy Leigh, who said: “David was much respected by our team as a golf writer, and was a consistent supporter of the Golf Foundation and junior golf. He gave me some strong local contacts, happy to help.
“David would always champion the junior scene, especially if it was a story linked to Chorley Golf Club and the local area. He told me what his father George did for the golf club and was proud of his Dad’s journalism career. George wrote a book called ‘The hall that climbed the hill’, which was the history of Chorley Golf Club. The club’s halfway house was built by David in his father’s memory. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this sad time.”
ALAN HEDLEY
I first met David at a tournament in the North-East, it was a PGA North Region event, probably the Wansbeck Classic or Sunderland Masters and despite some initial wariness on both sides, common ground was established fairly quickly over a pint or two and we did get on really well after that, possibly because we both liked a pint and the occasional bottle(s) of red wine.
David could be abrasive – but then so was I – and we both wouldn’t take any crap from anyone, spoke our minds, liked a laugh and loved golf. It’s not surprising we got on.
David was a top man as a journalist. Completely reliable with a good eye for a story and a damn good writer. He could be a bit of a pain on the golf course especially when he was playing badly…and, again, that made two of us!
He was the PGA North Region’s press officer for more than 30 years and he did a sterling job and as Alistair Tait said in his excellent tribute, he probably didn’t get the credit he deserved.
David really knew his stuff and he also knew just about everyone, both players and officials, and if you needed a contact number, he usually had it, plus plenty of biographical detail.
We were often in each other’s company along with the likes of Peter Godsiff, Dave Hamilton, Bill Johnson, Bob Davies, Alan Booth to name just a few at the likes of the Lytham Trophy, the Brabazon, the Amateur Championship, and the Open.
David and I often shared digs at the Open – I have no idea how he put up with my snoring – and we also worked well together for the R and A at Open qualifying.
Alistair also referred to the days “when amateur and regional golf got the coverage it deserved” and he’s right, and David had much to do with that as he serviced many of the nationals, plus regional mornings and evenings, who took golf seriously in those halcyon days.
In the 30 plus years our paths continually crossed we became really good friends and it’s that friendship I treasure most as well as memories of so many excellent days in and around golf, especially with David and Peter.
RIP David
ADRIAN MILLEDGE
My first meeting with David did not bode well for a harmonious relationship. When, as the PGA members’ magazine’s new editor charged with making some changes to the publication, I suggested there could be times his copy may need a trim or amending to accommodate advertising, let’s just say he bristled.
In the event, there was no need for either of us to worry. There were no changes to the page he contributed and the copy he continued to submit for the next 11 years was always accurate, informed and informative, well researched, fresh, written to length and filed on time.
Four years after that inauspicious beginning, unprompted, he offered to propose me for AGW membership. It was a gesture that, coming from someone I’d describe in a non-pejorative way as an old-school journalist who had paid his dues, flattered and delighted me in equal measure.
In the years that followed we often spent time on the phone putting the world to rights and it was always a pleasure to catch up with him at The Open.
By way of a tribute, my erstwhile boss at the PGA, Nat Sylvester, summed David up perfectly.
“He was a top, top guy. Soft heart under a gruff exterior. I liked him a lot.” Me, too.
ADAM LANIGAN
Dave will always have a unique place for me as he will forever be the first person to interview me! During his years on the Manchester Evening News, Dave covered the local golf scene in great depth, including junior golf. Back when I was 16, I achieved my finest ever golfing moment as a player when I happened to win the Mersey Junior Championship (contested by five clubs in the South Manchester area) with a nett 62 off my 17 handicap at the time.
A few days later, I received a call at home from Dave saying he’d like to interview me at my local club (Northenden) , so we chatted at the putting green about my ‘feats’. The subsequent article and photos took pride of place at my parents’ home for many years to come. It was something I always reminded Dave of when I subsequently bumped into him at Open Media Centre more than a decade later. So thanks Dave, and rest in peace.
May I also pass on my condolences to his family, as having lost my own mother 12 months before on Christmas Day, I know how unusual and traumatic such an event can be, especially on a day like that.
David’s last tweet – March 14th, 2019. (And not very different to his first in promoting the sport he loved)
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