Colin Mark Wilson (Born July 13 1927: Died April 27 2018)
Joined AGW 1964; AGW Chairman 1982 – 1984
JACK NICKLAUS – AGW Vice-President
PATRICIA DAVIES
So sorry to hear that Mark has died. He was a lovely man and a wonderful raconteur and kept his sense of humour until the end. My love and sympathy to his wife Joan and the family.
BRIAN MORGAN
He was always nice to me and indeed everyone and will be remembered fondly.
BRYAN POTTER
So sad to learn of Mark Wilson’s passing today. He was extremely helpful, encouraging and supportive when I joined the Tour as press officer for the Seniors. Earlier I had respected his work with the Daily Express and always found him very witty, personable and great company. The thoughts of my wife Shirley and I are with his family.
JOHN WHITBREAD
Really sad to hear the news about Mark Wilson’s passing. He was a fine writer, a very good golfer, excellent company, and most important a really true friend and mentor.
Mark, along with Mike McDonnell, Mitchell Platts and Ronnie Wills, was incredibly helpful to me when I first started covering events and I joined the AGW.
He was also most tolerant and understanding when we were foursome partners at one of the memorable Brancaster weekends and when he somehow carried me to victory in a match against Dunlop at The Berkshire.
In later years I have continued to value the same sense of warmth and camaraderie in telephone calls, emails and Christmas cards from Mark and Joan.
Mark Wilson shaking Arnold Palmer’s hand with Peter Ryde, John Baker and Ron Moseley looking on.
JEREMY CHAPMAN
Dear old Mark – charming man, excellent journalist, stylish golfer, good companion.
He has a lot to answer for as he proposed me for AGW membership in 1975 in the days when I used to cover 10 tournaments a year. Ma rk was a very entertaining after-dinner speaker. They don’t make them like Mark anymore.
ART SPANDER
Mark Wilson working away in the press tent.
Mark was one of the first writers I met when coming to Britain to cover golf. A real gentleman.
JOCK MACVICAR
Really sorry to hear that Mark Wilson has passed away.
I worked quite close to Mark in the old days when he was with the Evening Standard and I covered the golf for all of the Express for two years.
He was a fantastic newspaper man, and great to work alongside. He and Renton and myself travelled together to a few events on the continent and I remember the three of us once catching a ferry from Dover, our car charging up the ramp on to the ship almost with the ship moving! Or so it seemed. It was typical Mark.
He was a very keen and very good golfer, and was a great friend of the late Michael Williams, another fine man.
Mark’s sense of humour was never far away, some of it quite ‘wicked’ at times.
He will be much missed by so many people who knew him, and I convey my sympathy to his wife Joan. They were a marvellous couple.
Seve Ballesteros. puts his arm around Mark Wilson.
LIZ KAHN
Sad to hear that Mark died. Good memories of him over a long period of time. A different but happy era in so many ways. Such an exciting time of professional golfer talent and great characters. And the golf writers were on more personal terms with them.
Mark Wilson shared in all of that and gave it his personal touch.
LEWINE MAIR (AGW CHAIRMAN 2007 – 2010)
The first time I met Mark, I was playing in a British Girls’ championship at Alnmouth and he was covering the event for the Evening Standard. (At least, that’s who I think he was with at that stage of his working life.) I was struck by the thought that I had seldom seen anyone enjoy his job more. He loved a good story, mischievous or otherwise, and he was endlessly conscientious. Of course, the work was rather more fun than it is today.
All the writers of Mark’s day had time to chat and, would you believe, to go out and watch the golf, often from start to finish.
He was in the right career at the right time and all those who knew him will look back with fond memories of a man who not only wrote wonderfully well but added to the entire scene.
BILL ELLIOTT ( AGW CHAIRMAN 2010-2013 )
THE death of Colin Mark Wilson at 90 years of age means another big slice of the AGW’s own ‘Golden Generation’ has been lost along with the likes of, among others, Michael Williams ( Daily Telegraph ), Ron Wills ( Daily Mirror ), Ron Moseley ( Press Association ), Micky Britten (ExTel, Reuters, Agence France Press and much else) and Peter Ryde ( The Times ).
Many of you will not have known Mark as a golf writer, some will never have met him while others will only have known him as Ken Schofield’s Media Consultant on the European Tour. But those of us fortunate enough to have shared a Press Tent (forget Media Centres ) with Mark will all recall him with a smile on our faces.
Mark was a terrific journalist but, more importantly, he was a terrific bloke. And funny. He tended to career through life bumping into obstacles, encountering dramas on a daily basis and always, always, laughing at the idiocy and farce that is life. He was in many ways our own Tommy Cooper except that Mark was tall, dark and handsome.
He was born in Portsmouth in 1927, the latest in a long line of Wilsons who all served in the Royal Navy. Mark, too, seemed likely to set sail until he found out that just bobbing out of the harbour turned him green with seasickness. Instead he opted for the air and tried to join the Royal Air Force. He was turned down on medical grounds – no explanation – a decision that mystified him when he was called to do National Service in the Army soon after and was passed A1 fit. This early farce set the scene for a life filled with pratfalls and triumphs.
Before soldiering, however, he applied for and secured a job as a trainee reporter on the Salisbury Times, opening wage 10 shillings a week ( 50p ) but rising to 25 shillings by the third year of his indentures there. From Salisbury he joined the Evening Standard as a reporter – dropping his first name Colin in favour of Mark as there was another byline journalist called Colin Wilson – before becoming a foreign correspondent and spending three years in Cyprus covering the EOKA uprising.
When a close friend there was shot dead Mark had had enough and returned to London and the Standard office where he admits he felt “a bit of a spare part”. So spare in fact that in 1957 he was sent as a newsman to supply stories from the Ryder Cup at Lindrick. He didn’t play golf, wasn’t interested in golf but his week in Yorkshire ignited a flame for the sport.
So, he started learning to play the game while at the same time he was promoted to Deputy News Editor of the Standard. He joined Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club but, being Mark, this membership wasn’t straightforward. Instead, the secretary for some unfathomable reason thought he was Australian and so offered favourable membership terms.
When the Golf Correspondent’s job became vacant on his paper he told the editor he’d like to have the post. Reluctantly, the editor – who had him scheduled to become News Editor in the near future – agreed in the belief that he’d soon tire of such a ‘trivial’ job.
Mark never did tire and, as his sparkly personality continued to shine, he built up enviable relationships with the stars of the day like Tony Jacklin and Bernard Hunt. A series of exclusives followed and his name in golf was secured. When the Daily Express golf job came up for grabs he was the man they wanted.
Which is when I first met him. As a football reporter on the Express in Manchester I was sent here and there in the summer months to cover other sports and so it was that I was sent to The Open at Lytham as Mark’s third, maybe fourth, spare part. He was, of course, helpful and friendly from the start.
So began a friendship. When I was shifted on to the newly created Daily Star in the late seventies – my ‘sweetener’ the chance to cover golf as well as football – I really began to get to know this charming man who became AGW Chairman in 1982 and bringing his own wisdom as well as sense of mischief to the role.
One wee personal story…in the early 1980s the European Tour decided to start its season with the Italian Open in Rome during the week immediately after the Masters. It was too good a chance to miss and so we hatched a plan to travel to Rome from the USA via London. “Breakfast in Augusta, lunch in Brighton, dinner in Rome. Let’s do it, “ he said.
And we did, lunch being served up to us by his wonderful wife Joan at their home in his beloved Brighton. Dinner in Rome was rather more chaotic and a date that ended with us dancing with each other at midnight in a nightclub just off the Via Veneto. By then we were both so jet-lagged we had no idea where we were. Happy, happy days with a lovely man.
Mark is survived by Joan and his daughters Jacqueline and Lisa. Val and I offer our condolences to them and all other family members.
PS: A much fuller biography of Mark and his extraordinary life is in my book ‘This Sporting Life – Golf’. First published in 1998 it is long since remaindered but you can still get it on Amazon for a few pennies.
JOHN HOPKINS (AGW CHAIRMAN 1998 – 2007)
My memories of Mark Wilson are of a man with a good sense of humour, one that was often directed at himself, one who sometimes found himself in a bit of a jam – glasses, keys, cheque book, contacts book, pen, notebook, tape recorder, oh God! – and one who had a riproaring relationship with Renton Laidlaw. I sat in front of them at one Open back in the dark ages and the bickering and banter that went on between them was riveting, distracting and funny.
I think Mark used to begin many of his sentences “I mean to say…” though I stand to be corrected.
I also think that before he turned to golf he did time as a foreign correspondent. Was it in Cyrus? Was it the time of EOKA and Archbishop Makarios? Wasn’t he quite good at it and wasn’t he uncharacteristically quiet about what had happened there, as people who have been through difficult times often are. I know this because my son is a Royal Marine and getting him to talk about the time he spent in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq, doing his duty for his country, is very hard. He just clams up.
My favourite story of Mark is one he told me himself and I am sure he overegged it slightly because he was a good storyteller and the relationship between the precise detail and the version he was peddling were sometimes some way apart.
On this occasion he was feeling very pleased with himself having just spent a day Christmas shopping. I believe Joan had sent him, probably because he was irritating her and she wanted to get rid of him for a day. So he caught the train up to London, whizzed around gathering up all the presents for children, grandchildren etc (checking off each one from a list given to him, certainly, by Joan), and raced to the station to catch the train home.
“I’ve done well” he thought to himself. “Joan is going to be pleased with me.”
He settled back into his seat, looked out of the window contentedly – and then realised that he had left all the presents behind in London. The story is that when he told Joan she sent him straight back to get them all over again but that may be apocryphal.
Another story of his was that he and Joan were attending a stiff South coast cocktail party at which sherry was served.
A rather starchy lady asked Mark and Joan where they lived? “We live in Brighton” Mark replied. “We love it.”
A look of horror spread over her rather tired, lined face and her eyebrows shot up. “Not all the year round, surely” was her reply.
Mark welcomed me into the AGW in a way that did a lot to dismiss the reputation the AGW had at the time of being cliquey and treating newcomers with caution.
He was a good man, a good colleague, and a good journalist; a good man with whom to be stuck at a bus stop waiting for a bus that was invariably very late.
You couldn’t help but warm to him.
MARK GARROD (AGW SECRETARY 1995 – 2002)
Mark took over from Michael McDonnell as chairman of the AGW in 1982, the year I joined the association, and as a relative newcomer on the scene he could not have been more helpful or welcoming. Ron Moseley was the PA golf correspondent at the time, so I did not spend that many weeks a year covering the same events as Mark at first, but whenever I did.
Mark with European Tour CEOs George O’Grady and Ken Scholfield in 2013 and honournig Mark Garrod’s retirement.
I saw what a great professional he was and what a popular figure he was with colleagues and players alike. A firm friendship was formed with him and his wife Joan and I remember the delight he took in telling the story of the time Joan came back from the supermarket in Sunningdale laden with shopping and sweating buckets after walking back up the hill to home, only to be gently informed by Mark that she could have saved herself the effort because she went there in the car.
I have particularly happy memories of winning the Henry Cotton Trophy wiith him and Bill Elliott at Penina in the late 1990s and I am sure I am right in saying that Mark’s other triumphs included at least one at Sunningdale Ladies Golf Club, which caused great amusement.
He will be sorely missed.
MICHAEL MCDONNEL (AGW President 1998 – 2004; AGW Chairman 1978 – 1982 & 1992 – 1995)
I have known Mark for over fifty years. We witnessed the remarkable transformation of European golf into a global force with a succession of major champions and although we were notional rivals there always existed a bond of camaraderie between us.
For us it involved a worldwide pilgrimage anywhere from the United States to Australia and all points in between, adapting and accepting whatever conditions and attitudes, wherever the game was played (like the German official who demanded a young pro give him his name, rank and number. Clearly an echo from past days).
Arnold Palmer with (LtoR) Norman Mair, Mark Wilson, Ron Wills, Jack Statter and Michael McDonnell.
Throughout it all he remained positive and upbeat but more importantly he enjoyed the friendship of all players whether superstars or not and that was a remarkable achievement in the frenetic world of pop journalism.
He was a born leader, a safe pair of hands and a gifted raconteur. As the distinguished American writer observed: “That guy can hold you spellbound with a mediocre story.”
Mark’s contribution to golf journalism ranks alongside that of Longhurst, Darwin and Dobereiner. We shall not see his like again
MITCHELL PLATTS
Colin Mark Wilson (Born July 13 1927: Died April 27 2018)
Mark Wilson, who has died, aged 90, after a long battle with illness, was a much respected and revered golf writer on London’s Evening Standard and then the Daily Express. He counted Seve Ballesteros, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and European Ryder Cup captains Tony Jacklin and Bernard Gallacher as good friends.
Mark was given the opportunity to become a golf writer when those who wrote about the game and those who played it enjoyed a strong rapport but he never disappointed his readers, or his employers, by allowing his friendships with the legends of the game to dilute his judgement. His writing was always authoritative, forthright and honest.
Mark Wilson (third from right) at a Mitchell Platts luncheon in 2013 with members of the European Tour. (L-R) Scott Kelly, Neil Coles, George O’Grady, Mark, Ken Schofield, and Angel Gallardo. (EuropeanTour)
He enjoyed the enduring friendship and trust of tournament stars throughout his golf writing career and it was a measure of his esteem and even-handed judgement that even when he criticised it was always with good reason and accepted as such.
Jacklin, who won The Open Championship in 1969 and the US Open eleven months later, said: “I was saddened to hear of Mark Wilson’s passing. It was during his time with the Evening Standard and the Daily Express that I was on top of my game. I spent many good times with Mark and found him to be a straight shooter – he was always fair and balanced with his comments about me. I’ll miss knowing he’s not around. Astrid joins me in sending our best wishes to his wife and family.”
Futhermore, Wilson was a brilliant raconteur and the distinguished American writer Oscar Fraley said of him: “That guy can hold you spellbound with a mediocre story.”
Sometimes even Mark was lost for words. He was commissioned to write an instruction book with a chapter each on how the best players executed certain shots. One player confounded Mark on the technique of bunker play – “I just open the club face and give it a dig.” Not quite the treatise he had in mind.
Gallacher recalled: “Mark and I wrote a book together and he was the driving force. It was called ‘Teach Yourself Golf’ – part of the Teach Yourself series – and it was printed for many years. Mark was terrific to work with; always cheery and he made my job easy. I knew him by whole golfing life when he worked at the London Standard then the Daily Express. He was a trusted journalist. He was persuaded to join the European Tour and he was an important confidant to Ken Schofield.”
Mark was born in Gosport. His father, Henry, was in the Royal Navy and his mother, Beatrice, was a nurse. His father died when he was only six and, when he was 11, and due to start Grammar School, war broke out and he was evacuated to stay with the Post Master in Salisbury. Mark’s mother had remarried and he was separated from her, his younger brother Malcolm, his step-father Alex and step-brother Michael.
Sent to Salisbury with 1/6d in his pocket “for emergencies”, Mark spent the money on a model plane which he flew in the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral -considered a serious offence. The Post Master had to negotiate his freedom from the local police.
He ran away twice to Gosport in his first two months as an evacuee, triggering his mother to move the whole family to Salisbury where Mark attended Bishops Wadsworth School. It was there, aged 15, he met a local girl, Joan Edwards. They became ballroom partners and nine years later they married.
Mark first worked in a munitions factory before starting a two-year apprenticeship as a trainee report with the Salisbury Times. That, however, came to an end after just one year when he was commissioned into the Army, serving both in Cyprus and Northern Ireland.
He had a robust, if sometimes wild sense of humour, and while serving in Cyprus he would later admit he “crossed the line.” He and his colleagues were reminded that, with terrorists around, they must be extra cautious in case a grenade was thrown into the open transport they used to travel round the island. The occupants should at all times remain calm and leave the lorry in an orderly fashion. Mark tested this by throwing a dummy grenade into a packed lorry and in the chaos that followed some of his colleagues were injured. They were waiting for him when he returned to base later that night.
On another occasion Mark and a couple of other soldiers were in France and in charge of a German prisoner of war. They learned it was the German’s birthday so they dressed him in an English uniform and took him into town for the evening to the cinema. Then they promptly returned him to jail!
Three years after being commissioned he returned to complete his apprenticeship in Salisbury before joining the Manchester Evening News and then the Birmingham Gazette.
London beckoned and he moved to the Evening Standard where he quickly became one of proprietor Lord Beaverbrook’s brightest young reporters. Mark was looking for action but one assignment rather bored him. At the time of the war between France and Algeria, Beaverbrook was certain the Algerians would attack France coming ashore at Marseilles. He sent Mark to the south of France for several weeks to keep a look out. Mark sat on the beach and diligently reported daily that he had nothing to report!
Later he became night news editor at the Standard before becoming the newspaper’s war correspondent. It was during the Suez crisis that he had his biggest scoop. He learned that the British troops were going in to protect the Suez Canal the following day, but could not file his story because of a telephone black-out in the area.
The ever-innovative Wilson noticed, however, that there was a British Naval ship lying just off Alexandria. He hired a rowing boat, made it to the ship and was able to make his call from there. Later editions of the Standard carried his exclusive which most certainly surprised the military chiefs.
Wilson’s lifetime love of the game was ignited when, against his will, he was sent to help the coverage of the Ryder Cup at Lindrick in 1957. Soon he landed his dream job as Golf Correspondent of the Standard where he stayed until 1973 when he was appointed Golf Correspondent of its sister paper, the Daily Express.
During his time at the Standard at the 1963 World Cup of Golf in St Nom de la Breteche, near Paris, the late Christy O’Connor arrived on the first tee slightly the worse for wear from the night before. He asked Mark to take a cup of black coffee to a place in the woods some 265 yards down the fairway. Mark duly obliged and minutes later Christy’s ball landed nearby. The spectators did not realise they had witnessed one of the greatest precision shots in the history of the game. O’Connor arrived, uttered not one word to Mark, drowned his caffeine and finished three under par.
That same year Mark was having breakfast with New Zealander Bob Charles (later Sir Bob) during The Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes when Charles asked “Would you unscrew this sauce bottle for me. I don’t want to strain my fingers in case it affects my putting.” Mark was duly proud of the part he played in Charles winning The Open that year; and, indeed, the contribution he played to Charles, and many others, over the years remains today as part of the game’s history.
Wilson was a superb story-teller who could captivate all those who were lucky enough to be in his company and a good few who were within earshot. His stories were always told with great pathos and emotion. Yet despite his journalistic abilities he often had difficulty when sitting at the typewriter on how best to start the story, frequently putting in sheet after sheet of paper with only the words Mark Wilson written on them before crunching them into the wastepaper bin. Yet as the editorial deadline neared he would pick up the phone and was a master ad-libber.
He was always ready to laugh at himself. When he and his wife Joan decided to join Sunningdale Ladies Golf Club he was amused to learn that they both survived the membership interview because one member of the committee felt that Mark would be a good man at the bar. He had in fact been a teetotaler for many years.
Mark was an accomplished golfer himself. A member at Sunningdale, The Berkshire, Royal Mid-Surrey and Pyecombe, near Brighton, he considered it his good fortune, when travelling the world, to play many of the finest courses including Augusta National, Pebble Beach and Penina to where he returned year after year with his wife Joan and enjoyed the company of three times Open Champion and Penina-designer Sir Henry Cotton and his wife Toots.
He captured many titles of his own – he was proud to receive one trophy from Arnold Palmer – and he won the Association of Golf Writers Championship in 1964, 1966 and 1985 and was chairman of the Association from 1982 – 1984.
Golf was Mark’s passion so when the time came for him to step down as Golf Correspondent of the Daily Express he was delighted to accept an offer in 1986 to become Head of Communications for the European Tour working from their Wentworth Headquarters in Surrey with first Chief Executive Ken Schofield and then George O’Grady.
Schofield said: “When Mark accepted the Tour’s offer to join the fast expanding senior management team at Wentworth HQ he had, of course, already established his reputation as one of the country’s and the game of golf’s finest writers. If one thought that perhaps he would then slow down and be content, as would those of us delighted to welcome his wise counsel, then everyone was mistaken!
“From the first moment of his arrival, Mark threw himself into action, devising and developing the Tour’s first full-time, highly professional media department and generally bringing fresh impetus to our entire operation with his unique enthusiasm and unrivalled experience.
“In short, Mark Wilson was a phenomenon. We were all privileged to call him our colleague, friend and confidant. Today’s European Tour – and the entire game – owes him our gratitude. To Joan, Jacqueline and Lisa, and all the family our love and fond memories.”
O’Grady said: “Mark Wilson became the first Head of Communications for The European Tour following his successful career as a distinguished journalist, author, raconteur and editor of numerous golf publications. His unique ability, his professionalism, his personality, the relationships he formed throughout the world and the respect in which he was held contributed enormously to the growth and success of The European Tour.”
During his last years in Brighton in a care home, where he was much loved, Mark remain entwined with the game and, indeed, in 2017 he won the Association of Golf Writers ‘Pick Your Pro’ competition which involved nominating the winners of global tournaments week by week.
Mark will always be remembered for the enjoyment he provided his colleagues and his loyalty to them and the publications for whom he worked. When his successor at the London Evening Standard arrived in Fleet Street from Scotland he typically offered him his contacts book of telephone numbers saying: “Everybody you want to speak to is in there”.
It was a magnanimous gesture from a man who loved Fleet Street and golf. Always the journalist to the end, and when very ill, he still asked “Who won the Masters?”
NB: Renton Laidlaw (AGW President 2004 -2015; AGW Chairman 1995 – 1998; AGW Secretary 1963 – 1978), Michael McDonnell (AGW President 1998 – 2004; AGW Chairman 1978 – 1982 & 1992 – 1995), and Valerie Steele hugely contributed to this obituary.
DONALD STEEL (AGW President 1993 -1998; AGW Treasurer 1977 – 1990)
Mark Wilson was always the same, his trademark an infectious cheerfulness. He was one who helped convince everybody else that the AGW weren’t such a bad bunch after all.
ANDY FARRELL (AGW Secretary 2002 – 2009)
Sad news. Although I only got to know Mark later in life I always enjoyed his storytelling skills at events like the Brancaster weekend. Throughout my time as AGW secretary he was always very supportive, sent effusive notes of thanks on behalf of himself and Joan for the Christmas hamper, and keen to update the status of his ferocious rivalry with Chris Plumridge on PYP!
- Mark is survived by his wife, Joan and his daughters Jacqueline and Lisa.
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