Message from John’s wife, Sally On Monday, 3rd April, (14:26) advising of John’s passing:
Dear AGW members,
I am very sorry to have to tell you that John died on Saturday 1st April. He was his usual sparky, humorous self until he just stopped talking about 4 in the morning and we kept vigil until he slipped away about 8am with Alice sitting next to the bed and James, myself and David coming into the room. He planned it perfectly, in his own bed at home with all of us together.
He was diagnosed with dementia and his body started to let him down but we’re very fortunate that he was still interested in everything and everyone and very jokey and fun to be with. He hated being confined to his bed but never complained.
With kindest regards to you and his fellow golf writers
From Sally and Family
MEMBER TRIBUTES TO JOHN
Malcolm Campbell
Until his death at the beginning of April John Ingham was the longest living member of the AGW.
John died on April 1, only ten days short of his 91 st birthday and had been a member of the Association for more than 65 years. He was perhaps the last link with the early, pioneering days of the AGW. He cut his teeth as a golf writer with the Evening Standard when Leonard Crawley and Henry Longhurst were the gold standard and the shadow of Bernard Darwin still loomed large.
He was in his heyday when print was still king and an upright Underwood was the latest technology. John was “old school” and delighted in the fact. Never afraid to voice an opinion his long-running column for Golf Monthly under the editorship of Percy Huggins, and then a decade during my time in that chair, was never one that bowed to orthodoxy. He wrote with a light touch and a wry sense of humour and always as he saw.
His expressed view that golf writers deferred too much to the golfers they wrote about, an option endorsed by Leonard Crawley who made it a policy never to go in search of them for information, was very much a reflection of the changing world of golf writing through John Ingham’s long association with the game.
John is remembered for his sterling work as tournament press officer with Alfred Dunhill where he ended a long and distinguished career. But it was his genial company and inherent goodness that all who knew him will miss.
He was a gentle man in an ever less gentlemanly world. We are all a little poorer for his passing.
Jeremy Chapman
Very sorry to read that John has gone. He was the editor of the first golf publication I worked for, the original Golf Weekly when it was in newspaper format and printed by Seymour Press. This was after he lost the Evening Standard job.
I only worked there a couple of days a week in the late 1960s on the way to my full-time job as a sports sub on the Daily Sketch. As my Sketch shift often started at 5.30pm, there was scope to bump up my wages with a bit of moonlighting.
He looked boyish and eternally young every time we met, even into his late 60s when I last saw him. He got me an interview with Mark McCormack for a full-time job in golf but the money offered didn’t match what I was earning in Fleet Street so I stayed at the dear old Sketch until it closed in 1971.
He was very much one of the old school, very well spoken, always immaculate and a very good golfer. Royal Wimbledon was his home club but I was never invited!
For a time he used to write a wryly humorous column centred on golf club gossip for one of the magazines, Golf Monthly I think.
Spencer Robinson
I was fortunate to spend time with John during his days as Press Officer for the Alfred Dunhill Cup Qualifying Tournament.
It was during the late 1980s and early 1990s that the Alfred Dunhill Cup Qualifier established itself as one of the most eagerly-anticipated weeks on the annual Asian golfing calendar.
Not only did the Asian-based qualifier offer a rare chance to see top-level team golf, but also the opportunity for an Asian team to win through to the Alfred Dunhill Cup at St Andrews.
Alongside Renton Laidlaw and IMG Tournament Director Peter German, John was a permanent fixture at all Alfred Dunhill Cup events, held at prime Asian venues such as Hong Kong Golf Club, Royal Selangor Golf Club, Singapore Island Country Club and Sunrise Golf & Country Club in Taipei.
In those days there were only a handful of golf writers sent to cover the events with media centres far more modest than we’re now accustomed to. Standing up in a quiet corner of a clubhouse, I remember John conducting informal – and often eccentric interviews – with the likes of Ernie Els and Frank Nobilo.
The main topics often centred around jet-lag, the challenges of playing in Asia’s heat and humidity – and John’s beloved Royal Wimbledon Golf Club.
For me, the fondest memories of those times were bus rides to and from the venues and evening meals when John (and Renton) would regale us with tall tales of their travels and wonderful anecdotes of their first-hand interactions with golfing legends, Palmer, Player and Nicklaus. For a young sports writer (as I was then), simply being in their company was memorable.
Norman Dabell
Sad to hear of the passing of John. I knew him when he was with Alfred Dunhill and he was a great friend to the press pack, always cheerful and helpful. He never looked his age and he kept up with all the modern press needs. John had a great sense of humour and I always looked forward to meeting up with him. The tournament week used to be that much more easy-going than some at that time.
Patricia Davies
No matter how hard I try, does this blog get done and dusted before Thursday evening or, more usually, Friday morning early hours, the sort of time we used to stagger home in our younger days? Does it buggery.
I’ve known for ages that the Spurs v Man Utd game was at the supremely inconvenient time of 2015 on a Thursday – it’s also Draw Night at the golf club, so I’m praying I don’t win; a sum that would pay for my season ticket, more or less. Despite our (their) indefensible defensive debacle at Newcastle on Sunday, I drove to Milton Keynes, squeezed into the one remaining parking space (the place’ll be empty by the time I get back) and am writing this as our Arsenal-supporting driver (not a happy Gunner but a lot happier than the three Tottenham tragics who got on his minibus at MK) ploughs southwards through the rain.
We usually have a proper coach (unlike Spurs – cheap crack, come on Ryan) but there are only eleven of us (wonder if we could get a game?) on the list tonight. Four got on at Bedford, two at Shefford and two at Hitchin. Was it Robert Louis Stevenson who said, “Tis better to travel hopefully than arrive?”
Ah well, United aren’t really that much better than we are (famous last words) though they have won a trophy already this season, are in the FA Cup final and do have a man in charge now who seems to have a plan and has a suitably scary death stare. Everything points to another close contest…*
If you’re not an eejit with a Grand Canyon-sized streak of optimism and resilience, don’t support a football team.
Talk of deadlines and death stares is probably not the most tasteful lead in to tributes to three friends who have died recently but two were journalists, members of the AGW and the third, an artist and Manchester United fan, also had a way with words; they were all well into their 80s, so not much would surprise or shock them.
I’ll start with Peter Haslam to whom I’ll be forever grateful for giving me my start at Golf World, as the editorial assistant. There were only four of us in the editorial department – Peter, the editor, not long arrived from the Kidderminster Times; Neil Elsey, the deputy editor, who knew a lot more about golf and the magazine business than Peter did and was to die far too young; and Dave Oswald, the art editor, a talented, Chelsea-supporting Scot with whom I shared an office and from whom I learned language that still gets me into trouble 40-odd years later. [NB Francesca Elsey, please DO get in touch with Dave, who knew your Dad as well as anybody.]
The office was in Bermondsey, so I stayed in St Margaret’s (between Richmond and Twickenham) with my cousin and her husband, the visitor who arrived for two weeks and stayed two years! Peter revelled in the job, relishing the golf, the players and particularly the travelling. As I remember, he wasn’t an always-in-the-office editor, he ruled with a light touch. Hawaii was one of his favourite trips and he made friends and contacts wherever he went.
Whatever the reason, Peter didn’t bat an eyelash let alone an eye when I, also very new, suggested that I should cover the World Amateur Team Championships in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Maureen was on the GB and I Espirito Santo team, with Mary McKenna and Belle Robertson, though Mc had back trouble and had to be subbed by Jane Connachan. Maire O’Donnell, of Murvagh, was the captain and I slept on the sofa bed in the team’s apartment.
I also stayed on for the Eisenhower Trophy, staying in Pine Needles Lodge and Country Club courtesy of Peggy Kirk Bell, a friend of her fellow legend Maureen Garrett, one of GB and I’s great cheerleaders. I met Dai that second week, so Peter has a lot to answer for and I can’t thank him enough.
John Ingham was on Maureen’s and my list of people to chat to for the blog but sadly we never made it down to Wimbledon to be entertained and enthralled for hours by his tales, tall and otherwise. I put him on a par with the likes of Mark Wilson, Michael Williams, Mike McDonnell, Peter Dobereiner and Renton Laidlaw, to name just a few, old-school newspapermen who brought golf to life and could spin a yarn with the best of them.
John was press officer all over Asia and Africa and had a wonderful story about employing a local witch doctor to make sure that the monsoon, or whatever, held off long enough for the tournament to go ahead as planned. Sorry to be so vague on the details but it was a bit of a miracle and the event got acres of coverage back home. It was hard to stop smiling when John was in full flow.
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