Golf magazines and me. It's been emotional.

The late 1980's, long before the internet and social media, were a golden period for the magazine business. 

Desk top computers were taking over from the traditional publishing arts of typesetting and composition and new printing technologies meant that magazines could for the first time be printed cheaply and in full colour throughout. 

Ten years before the launch of Loaded and FHM, the UK golf magazine business was dominated by two monthlies, Reed's long standing publication Golf Monthly and Golf Digest, published in the UK as a subsidiary of the New York Times. 

To my eye, both were relics of a bygone age. 

Virtually identical in format, the magazines had the stuffiness of a men only golf clubhouse, with long articles about the history of the Open, long interview with the players that revealed little if anything about the psyche of the subject and astonishingly virtually no information about equipment. 

Each had low sales and high readership, most of which came from them being available to read in those clubhouses I mentioned earlier. How many hours were spent on that Lee Trevino at fifty article I wonder...

It seemed to me that as golf was growing, with new pay to play courses springing up all over and a greater range of equipment appearing in the pro shop (this, lest we forget was the era of the golf ball with hexagonal dimples) the magazines seemed to,me to be out of touch with the regular golfer. 

Well me to be precise. 

My original idea for a new magazine was called golf answers. "Answers" magazines were much in vogue at the time. Golf Answers would feature a mix of content more aimed at the golfer like me. Hints and tips on how to play better, lots of equipment and course reviews and stuff about pro golfers that people would not know from watching TV. 

However we learnt very early on that the title was a mistake. "You can't learn golf from a magazine" we were told. A subtle shift of editorial focus and Todays Golfer was born. 

One of the key insights in developing the magazine that anyone interested in articles about the pros would already have watched every shot of the British Open on TV so a piece of reportage telling the reader that Faldo hit a six iron to the eighteenth was both something they already knew and had most likely already been covered by the same expert writers in their daily newspaper articles. 

What we discovered through research is that all of our likely readers knew that they would never hit the ball like Faldo, Seve et al. They had little if any interest in the technical aspects of the pro game. But what they did what to want to know was what we quickly christened the "inside the ropes" stuff. What ball did they play with, how much they pay their caddy, what football teams they support, that kind of thing. In fact what they most wanted to know is what happened before they get onto the first tee on the last day of a Major. Breakfast? Practice? Meditation?

One of my favourite true stories from the publishing of today's golfer is that on the morning of his last round at Muirfield Nick Faldo whiled away the long hours before his 2.30 tee time over breakfast with one of Britain's best loved comics Ronnie Corbett at his home by the side of the first fairway before walking through the garden onto the golf course. 

20 years on, I'm wondering if that story was true.  Hope so. 

The other things that we learned the public wanted were really simple ideas for improving their game. So much so, that launch editor Bill Robertson's popular Tee to Green series quickly became a unique and big selling point of the magazine. It must have been good, as our rivals tried in vain to invoke some PGA rule about amateurs giving lessons to golfers. 

The unique mix of courses to play, a dedicated equipment section and easy to follow instruction soon saw Today's Golfer overtake the established monthlies to become the UK's biggest seller. So much so, that a few years later, emap purchased Golf World and Golf Illustrated to become the UK's leading golf publisher. 

The magazine industry continued to grow in the early 1990's and as Today's Golfer quickly became the number one title! a gap started to emerge for a magazine for younger golfers. Emap were publishers of FHM, a magazine success story that rewrote all the rules on men's magazines with regular UK sales of over 1/2 a million copies. 

Inspired by the success of FHM, the idea for a new launch magazine for a new generation of UK golfers inspired by fashion and with more money to spend than any generation of golfers the world had ever seen, I developed FORE!, an entirely new magazine idea which focused entirely on the idea of getting more from the game. 

FORE! Was an overnight success, selling 165,000 copies of its first issue, setting new records for the category. It was truly, as the excellent advertising campaign put it, "a golf magazine worth shouting about". 

It remains a regret of mine that having left the magazine in my successors hands, it closed not long after, a shadow of its former self. You just can't trust some people. 

I also regret that in moving to God's country I left my magazines behind. Thanks to all the people on Ebay who were listing these for sale. Hope you dont mind me using the pics. Hey! Most of the IP is mine anyway!