It may not be appreciated quite how strong the tradition of women writing about golf in national newspapers has been in the United Kingdom.
Liz Kahn was the forerunner on the The Daily Telegraph in the 1960s, when she covered men’s professional golf because there was no women’s professional golf. Enid Wilson, who won the British Women’s Amateur championship three times in a row from 1931, wrote about women’s golf on the same paper. Patricia Davies, who was married to the late Dai Davies of The Guardian, wrote for The Times, mainly about women’s golf. Elspeth Burnside was an ever-present freelance contributor at golf events in the days when newspapers printed more golf than they do now. Lauren St John, now an author of popular children’s books, covered golf for The Sunday Times for a decade towards the end of the last millennium.
But the most eminent name and female voice on golf matters in the United Kingdom for years has been that of Lewine Mair, my Global Golf Post colleague who has just been named the 2025 recipient of the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, the third GGP contributor to be so honoured after this writer in 2013 and Ron Green Jr. in 2023. Mair is the only woman to have been appointed golf correspondent – not women’s golf correspondent – of a British national newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.
“Lewine, Patricia and I travelled together in the States a little,” Kahn said. “We were quite a threesome. She was a joy to work with, very helpful, very chatty. She has a very nice way of expressing herself. She is amazing at finding stories. Patricia was very interested in clothing and Lewine was very good at assisting her. I was very interested in minerals and the other two helped me with that.”
Davies said: “Lewine was always encouraging me to spend my money on expensive clothes in expensive shops in places like Palm Springs, but I got my own back on her when she had grandchildren and I would find expensive clothes for her to buy for them.”
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