APRIL 2025 NEWSLETTER
Awards and dinner
Ahead of the annual dinner at Royal Portrush the committee got together to discuss awards – and there was also the opportunity for members to say yes or no to the appointment to Vice-President of the AGW of Jose Maria Olazabal and Padraig Harrington in recognition of their contributions to European golf, plus the continuation of Lewine Mair as President. There was nothing but praise for the three suggestions from members.
The two awards were also agreed upon. Francesco Molinari will receive the Arnold Palmer Open Award (awarded to a golfer who, in the opinion of the committee, has made particular efforts to to assist AGW members in their endeavours) and Catriona Matthew the Outstanding Services to Golf Award (in honour of her 2024 successful captaincy of the GB&I Curtis Cup coming on top of an exceptional playing career which included triumph in the 2009 Women’s British Open and long term quality in the Solheim Cup, plus unprecedented victories home and away as captain of the European Solheim Cup). Both players have responded to the news with thanks and say they are “honoured” to receive the awards.
Lewine Mair’s Lifetime Achievement Award
A reminder that our President Lewine Mair received the PGA of America Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award in a ceremony before the Masters. Well done Lewine, hopefully you’re over the jetlag after such a brief visit to Georgia.
The film which celebrated her career can be viewed here – https://vimeo.com/1073614981
Treasurer
We’re still on the look out for a new treasurer so if you fancy throwing our hat into the ring, please do so. Peter Higgs has been doing a superb job for a long while now and deserves the chance to pass on the role to someone else.
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Peter McEvoy and Graham Otway
As previous emails have reported, Peter and Graham have recently passed away. The losses have prompted many memories from AGW members.
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Dermot Gilleece
I’m deeply saddened to learn that Graham Otway has passed from us. He was a fine journalist and a very helpful colleague. As occasion that stands out for me was when I asked him if he could help me with a column piece coming up to Christmas. On the basis of his reply, I wrote this piece:
It was Christmas on the other side of the world, and the 90-degree temperatures made a small group of Britons all the more nostalgic for home. So it was that with the St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day) start of the fourth test in the 1982-83 Ashes series still a few days away, Alec Bedser phoned Royal Melbourne Golf Club.
Certainly, he and his colleagues could play on Christmas Day, but the course and clubhouse would be closed. “We considered this to be quite a gesture from the snootiest club in Australia,” sportswriter Graham Otway, recalled in a chat we had last week.
“The golfers comprised Bedser, then chairman of the English selectors, who played off six; Otway, a seven-handicapper and cricket correspondent of the Press Association at the time; John Thicknesse of the Standard (12) and Johnny Woodcock of The Times and editor of Wisden, who played a modest game off 20.
“Having arrived by taxi with our clubs, we proceeded to climb over the boundary fence like a group of urchins,” Otway went on. “As you know, Royal Melbourne has two courses, but with no maps, no cards and not a flag in sight, we played for three and a half hours without the foggiest idea what holes we were on. But I can remember feeling a rather special glow as we headed back to our hotel, where Christmas dinner never tasted so good.”
I will always remember Graham and that Christmas tale with fondness. As for Peter McEvoy: he was invariably a source of great knowledge about golf and I found myself quoting liberally from his wisdom over the years. Like a professional sports person’s primary function is to entertain, he asserted. He often said that the reason he didn’t turn professional was that he couldn’t imagine himself competing at the highest level as a pro. On which point he clearly sold himself short.
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Norman Dabell
So saddened to hear about the passing of ‘Otters’, a good friend and one of the real characters on the European Tour travelling press circus for many years. He came to golf writing after a long career as a much-respected cricket writer and soon made his mark with his own style of reporting. While he had the ‘line’ on what was the story of the day, juggling his words for several publications a night, he went above and beyond on many occasions. When we of the press pack were enjoying an evening meal, Otters was out having a couple of beers, hoping to come across a player who’d give him a story. Invariably he got a yarn all of his own, giving him a head start when it came to the difficult early deadlines of Saturday. He was a very good golfer in his own right – and a stickler for the rules. At the European Masters in Crans-sur-Sierre, 2002 I think it was, the Chinese media, invited by the sponsors, took part in the annual Masters Press tournament played next door to the course. Their scores were far and away the best and looked to be scooping the prize pool. When Otters came in he was having none of it. He’d spotted several Chinese ‘mulligans’ being taken and the perpetrators were disqualified. Glad to have know you Otters. You were a one-off.’
Picture of the press pack taken at the 2011 French Open: Rear: Bernie McGuire, Peter Dixon. Front: Otters, Jock MacVicar, Norman Dabell. (Mark Garrod missed the pic because he was busy filing a report and scores for the PA.)
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Peter Higgs
Otters was a one-off. I spent many hours with him in press centres, on golf courses and in one or two bars around the world and life was rarely dull in his company. Otters always had a scheme or a story on the go. He knew lots of stuff and lots of people and wasn’t shy in telling you about them and passing on his opinions. I worked with him on the Mail on Sunday and towards the end of both our careers on the much -lamented Golf Paper, for whom Graham was the Editor at Large. In a sport which attracts plenty of writers but not too many news gatherers Otters was one of the best at digging out a tale, coming up with an exclusive. That was his role on The Golf Paper as week after week he would find stories for the front page and other juicy items of gossip. He worked hard at building up a network of contacts, particularly among the caddies who shared his delight in downing the occasional glass of amber nectar. When we were allocated digs at a pub in Broughty Ferry during The Open Otters’ excitement was unconfined when he discovered they served Timothy Taylor’s, his favourite tipple. Whenever I see that particular brew on sale I always think of Otters. Those of you who knew him will probably agree that tact was not his greatest quality. His determination to let you know what he knew and what he thought could sometimes land him in trouble.
During the 2002 Open Championship Graham and I were working for the Mail on Sunday when the home of TV celebrity Bruce Forsyth was raided on the Wentworth Estate, a housekeeper attacked and money and jewellery stolen. Forsyth was attending The Open and had rushed back to be with his terrorised wife and son. The MOS news desk started to get wind of the story around midday on Saturday and rang up for any information we could supply from our end. Otters answered their call and promptly informed the News Desk: ‘Oh, I knew about this four hours ago.’ ‘What?’ The outcome was a mighty bollocking for the Sports Editor for his staff’s failure to get the story moving sooner and an instruction from the Sports Editor to me: ‘Don’t let Otters answer the phone!’ RIP, Graham. We’ll miss you.
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Mark Garrod
Graham Otway – “Otters” – nearly cost me my marriage. I’d been wed for only a year or two when wives and partners were invited to the PA Sports Desk Christmas dinner at a French restaurant close to our HQ at 85 Fleet Street. Bizarrely few of the staff spoke English, but we muddled through somehow and reached our creme caramel desserts. A fair amount had been drunk by this stage and Otters challenged me to eat mine without cutlery. Lowering my head onto the plate and slurping as hard as I could it soon disappeared, but when my head came back up my dear lady looked at me with total disgust and talked about leaving – not just the restaurant, but me. We’re still together nearly 50 years later and I still laugh at the memory, even if she still doesn’t. Although primarily a golf and rugby writer at the time I was asked to cover the England tour of the West Indies in 1986 through a combination of circumstances – Warwick Jordan had been fired for leaving a late-arriving sub a bogus story about Dave Sexton being sacked as Manchester United manager (it went out on the wires before the sub found out it wasn’t true), John Oakley had discovered in a routine company medical that he urgently needed a triple heart by-pass and Otters had departed for the newly-launched Today newspaper. Word came back to us that at his interview he had said he wouldn’t join or a penny less than X thousand pounds (can’t recall the exact figure) when they were planning to offer him far more. He was a diligent news-getter, but also someone who made you cringe sometimes. At the end of a press conference at Lord’s Peter May, chairman of the England selectors and a pillar of the establishment, asked for questions from the media and Otters, never shy in coming forward, began his: “Peter, tell me this – and tell me truthfully”. On an evening out during a tour of India he apparently asked a waiter for his name because the service had not been up to scratch. On getting the answer he then said: “Well I’m Graham Otway of the Press Association – consider yourself ruined”. There was never a dull moment with him and I’ll forever be grateful for the help he gave me on that West Indies tour, although I can’t get out of my head the story he told about the night out he spent with Henry Blofeld, Helena Bonham Carter and her mother. We played a lot of rounds together and on his day he was a fine player as well as a good friend. Very sad to hear of his passing. Rest in peace.
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Bernie McGuire
Firstly, it’s terribly sad news to learn of the passing of Graham Otway.
In recent years Otters became quiet and you just didn’t hear from him while the AGWs Treasurer Peter Higgs and myself as Secretary reached out to him on occasions, so news of his passing comes also as a surprise.
I recall he did feature in a 2018 Daily Mail article after undergoing successful key-hole surgery for prostate cancer just shy of his then 65th birthday though that was really the last I had heard from Otters.
Otters was a good friend and I enjoyed so much travelling, working and getting into mischief with him though it’s an understatement for me to remark Otters was a real character, as he was the definition of ‘character’.
He and I each joined the AGW in 2002, so we forever had that in common while in those days Otters also worked as a freelancer though what impressed me about Graham was he enjoyed such a great relationship with the players he needed to speak with.
It was a relationship, and being a freelancer, that was key to your working survival.
We’d travel the length and breadth of Europe but it was really when the European Tour began hosting and co-sanctioning events in the Middle East, Australia, South Africa and Asia that I spent so much quality time in Otter’s company.
I guess it was more to do with the fact there were so few of us out there and good company was important.
Of course, Graham was also a cricket writer and I recall my first visit in 2000 to South Africa for a tournament in Joburg. He had arranged a game of golf at the Centurion Club and no sooner had we walked into the clubhouse and Otters bumped into cricketing legend Graeme Pollock and with Otters embracing Pollock ahead of introducing me to cricket’s then second-highest runs-getter.
Otters also travelled often to Australia and at times he’d reside with me in Sydney.
We also played golf in Sydney including a round on the Long Reef course, a stunning links-like layout overlooking one of Sydney’s northern beaches. We were halfway into our round when a chap asked if he could join us for the last nine holes.
One question led to another and with Otters asking what the chap did for a living. “I’m a Dermatologist” was the reply. Seconds later as here was the sight of the two of them standing in the middle of the fairway and with our ‘guest’ closely inspecting a spot on Graham’s neck (Your writer smiling).
Though it was our visits to the early Qatar Masters tournaments that were some of the best as we resided with an English couple Dave and June who were members of the Doha Golf Club. We’d arrange for them to have VIP guest passes while they were also delighted in attending the Pro-Am dinner etc just as much as we enjoyed residing in their house for the week.
However, in those days there was a strict restriction as you could only buy alcohol unless you were an official Qatar resident and then to ‘stock up’ you had to visit an unmarked and ultra-secure building showing your id etc.
Though this was no bother to Otters as Dave had a fully-equipped bar in the house with bar stools etc … the real thing.
Dave and June would take us to the Doha Rugby Club for dinner and a few pints and where Otters also was in his element, taking over the karaoke for song after song in between rolling himself yet another cigarette that he enjoyed just as much as a pint.
We’d also play golf early in the mornings of the tournament on the adjoining 9-hole Academy course and, if time allowed, play the tournament course on the Monday afternoon following the event, including this one Monday morning when members of the Manchester United team were visiting Doha and also out on the course enjoying themselves, and with Otters in his element chatting with team members.
In phoning June to advise her of Otters passing, she shared with me a story that Otters had once tried to chat-up one of her friends when they were down in Spain. Otters had obtained guest tickets for the girls to attend a tournament and where also he introduced them to Jose Maria Olazabal.
Yes, one of life’s real characters.
RIP Otters.
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Colin Harding
Peter McEvoy was a regular visitor to the L’Ancresse Golf Club in Guernsey in the 1990s. He wanted to show support for the annual golf Open on the island where former Walker Cup teammate Bobby Eggo was a member.
Peter was a fantastic ambassador for the game. As one example, he gave his time freely for a wide-ranging feature I spent months compiling on the ‘standard of golf’ for Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Channel Islands golf magazine.
“Why didn’t you turn professional?” was one obvious question. There were two specific reasons. First, he said he was not good enough to succeed at the highest level as a professional (others might disagree!).
Second, he said the weekly grind as a golf Tour professional in 72-hole events would be boring. He pointed to potentially teeing off among the first players on the Thursday, then having to wait until mid-afternoon on the Friday for round two. Too much time in between – constant long days and nights in hotels was not for him.
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Patricia Davies
He was an extraordinarily good golfer, one of the best amateurs ever to represent Britain and Ireland, capped goodness knows how many times for England (despite his Scottish heritage) and winner of the highest honours: the Amateur Championship in 1977 and 1978, leading amateur in the Open twice, the first British amateur to make the cut at the Masters, member of numerous Walker Cup teams and non-playing captain of two winning teams, at home at Nairn in 1999 and then in 2001 away at Ocean Forest on Sea Island in Georgia. His list of achievements runs much longer but those are the highlights.
More importantly, he was Dai’s and my best man and gave the eulogy at Dai’s funeral. Peter, who played for Copt Heath and Warwickshire, was one of Dai’s Birmingham Post parishioners and they became good friends. There’s nothing better than having a star to write about (and the Post had a few, not least Sandy Lyle and Ian Woosnam) but a star with opinions that they’re happy to share, well, that is beyond price.
McE, who qualified as a solicitor, had more than his fair share of opinions, often backed up with impressive statistics, many of which he’d made up off the top of his head. Dai and he enjoyed many a full and frank discussion (translation: argument), as Peter explained in the piece he wrote for The Guardian’s special, unpublished front page produced to mark Dai’s retirement as golf correspondent. It’s a great, entertaining read.
In his book For Love or Money, written with Mark Reason and published in 2006, Peter talks about his love of the game but admits that if he’d had his success twenty or so years later he would almost certainly have turned professional. “Agents would have been splashing so much cash in my face that it would have been almost impossible to say no. I was 25, not much more than a year older than Luke Donald when he turned pro.
“Nowadays I could expect a plump signing-on fee, various clothing and equipment contracts and exemptions to a number of tournaments. I could have expected to pick up something in the region of half a million pounds…But the only thing that you were guaranteed in the Seventies was a dodgy haircut.”
The book’s a cracking read, funny, insightful and a wonderful look at golf at the highest level. Re-reading it is a joy and I’m just sorry I can’t tell Peter that. Maureen and I send our love and condolences to Helen, Peter’s wife and all their family and friends.
To finish, I just can’t resist using this joke from The Essential Dave Allen, edited by Graham McCann. It’s called Heaven and Hell and it’s easy for those of us old enough and lucky enough to have seen a lot of the inimitable Irish comedian to hear him weaving his magic with this gem.
“Many people think that Heaven and Hell are on different levels. They’re not. They are side by side, separated by a fence. A wooden fence. One day, God was walking around the area and he started to inspect the fence. It was falling down. All bits and pieces had fallen off it. So he calls out to the Devil over the fence: ‘Excuse me. Mr Mephistopheles? Hey, NICK!’
The Devil yells: ‘Whaddyerwant?’
God says: ‘The fence. Look at it. It’s falling down, it needs repairing. And the posts are on your side. This fence is your responsibility. When are you going to fix it?’
The Devil says: ‘Ah, screw you!’
God says: ‘Now, listen: if you do not do something about this fence very soon, you are going to hear from my solicitor!’
The Devil says: ‘Where are YOU going to find a solicitor?’”
Well, we know where: on the golf course. And God would have the Devil’s own job getting them off it.
RIP dearest P McE.
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Patricia Davies
I used to bump in to Graham Otway quite often at tournaments here and there and always enjoyed his cricketing tales. Memories a bit fuzzy, probably because of the amount of alcohol consumed and not sure many of them suitable for a family audience! He adored his boys and my condolences and best wishes to them and all the family.
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John Hopkins
How appropriate it was that news of the death of Peter McEvoy, Britain’s greatest amateur golfer who later captained GB&I to unprecedented successive victories in the Walker Cup and later still became a golf course designer and chairman of the Walker Cup selection committee, among numerous other accomplishments, should have come at the start of the 89th Masters. McEvoy was 72.
He was an amateur from the top of his head to the soles of his feet and much of what Augusta National stands for in golf would be what he stood for as well. The title of a book he wrote is revealing – ‘For Love or Money’ – and if any confirmation is needed, it comes at the book’s end. The last words are “For Love or Money… For love.”
Peter loved golf, loved amateur golf, loved links golf. He told a story once of two men who had played a round of golf on a well-known British links in summer when, naturally enough, the weather was wretched. At the end, one turned to the other and, with rain dripping from his nose, his hair blown askew by the wind and his feet in puddles of water inside his golf shoes, said with a smile: “Aren’t we lucky to be able to play here instead of in 100 degrees in Spain?”
Over dinner one night in the early 1980s, I asked him why he hadn’t turned pro because he had clearly been good enough to do so. This was after he had become the first British amateur to play all four rounds at the Masters, finishing 53rd in 1978, after he had won the 1977 and 1978 Amateur Championships, and was leading amateur in the 1978 Open (tied 39th) and 1979 Open (tied 17th). And it was when he was in the middle of a run of successful appearances for England that may never be matched in which he won 111 points in his 153 matches.
His answer was revealing and quick in coming. He had a restless mind and was unafraid to be iconoclastic. What else would you expect from a man whose middle name was Aloysius? “I think I would have been bored,” he replied. “Warm up before a round, play 18, hit more balls – then what do you do for the rest of the day? Sit in the clubhouse reading golf magazines?”
Instead he played amateur golf and used his inventive mind to pursue other interests such as designing golf courses and inventing a shortened team event. He played in five Walker Cup teams starting in 1977 including the 1989 match at Peachtree GC, Atlanta, Georgia, where the visiting side won an historic victory, and he represented Great Britain and Ireland five times in the Eisenhower Trophy. GB&I won the team event in 1988 and McEvoy the individual event. “That might have been his crowning achievement,” Peter Dawson, recently retired chief executive of the R&A and a long-time friend and golfing partner of McEvoy’s, said.
After his playing career ended he turned to another strength of his – captaining and then selecting teams. He led the 1999 Walker Cup side that triumphed at Nairn, Scotland, and the 2001 team that won at Ocean Forest, Sea Island, Georgia, two years later. It was the first time GB&I retained the trophy. Just as he was shrewd in conversation so he was very shrewd as a captain though he was helped considerably in these matches by having players such as Luke Donald and Paul Casey in his teams. “If I had to choose between a scrapper and a swinger I would always go for the scrapper,” he said once when talking about his selection policy.
“He understood what motivated each player,” Dawson said. “He invested a lot of time in getting to know each player. He was not a captain who appeared [to his players] to be from another era and of course this inspired confidence in him from his players.”
“When Peter [McEvoy] spoke, others listened,” Rhys Davies, who made his debut in the 2005 Walker Cup at Chicago Golf Club, said. “He was always calm under pressure and had a clear vision of what the day ahead would look like. Instructions he gave me the night before my first ever match about the environment I would face were entirely true, right down to the emotions I would feel and the atmosphere I would play under. This made it easier to deal in real time as he had highlighted it in such a calm yet exact way.”
Dawson knew McEvoy well having played hundreds of times with him, at weekends in friendly games and sometimes in county matches for Warwickshire. “One year he holed a 40-foot putt to tie me in the Warwickshire Open and then hammered me in the 18-hole playoff later,” Dawson said. “He kept it [his ball] in play. His distance control was excellent. I’ve seen better ball strikers but he was a very good putter.”
“Peter was one of the most thoughtful men in golf, whose balance of tradition and evolution was an art,” Davies said. “[He was] constantly looking for opportunities to gain an upper hand over his opponents while maintaining the spirit and respect of the game.”
Dawson, speaking from Augusta National Golf Club, said: “It [his death] is very sad. He was one of my oldest friends. It was a privilege to have known him.”
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