Peter Stone – A fond but sad circumstance farewell to golf reporting after 50 years.

Good friend and long-time colleague, Peter Stone is retiring after close to 50 respected years reporting golf.

‘Stoney’, as he’s more affectionately known, is leaving and under circumstances I am only too familiar.  It’s a very sad reflection the manner in which reporting golf has turned.

Far too many so-called golf reporters now sit at home covering golf tournaments from the TV or the internet, and the various Tour’s have also to take much of the blame for this not just the newspapers whose budgets continue to dwindle.

It’s a dicussion that seems to surface each and every week of the 33 weeks I am out on the Tour.

I have been looking forward for some time in catching up with ‘Stoney’ at next fortnight’s Emirates Australian Open but that will now take on more significance now.

But here in ‘Stoney’s’ own words is his reason for quitting as Chief Golf Correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald.

“January 23 would have marked my 50 years in the newspaper industry, but sadly I will not reach that milestone. If you count the six months I spent as a cadet journalist with Radio 3BO Bendigo – where the Golden Tonsils started his airwaves career – before heading back to school to get my Matriculation Certificate, I have reached the half-century in the media.

I would like all my friends in the golf industry to know that I have quit as golf writer of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.

It is not a decision I have taken lightly, nor is it a fit of pique, and it comes from a growing frustration with the budgetary constraints now in place at Fairfax – and every print newspaper around the world – that have greatly diminished my physical presence at our few major tournaments.

To many of the younger players I am a name only, a voice on the telephone, and that is not the sports writing, with more than 40 years primarily focussing on golf, that I knew and loved.

Golf writing is built around respect, trust and indeed friendship with the players, player managers and officials  – and I feel I achieved that.

Now that personal contact has virtually been removed.  Too often in the modern media age, young people come into the industry and rely so heavily on the various search engines available on the Internet to create their stories.

I am a dinosaur plus an elephant whose memory of events through decades remains intact, despite an affinity with VB, and personal filing system that has enabled me to put current events in an historical sense if necessary.

I could have continued on writing for Fairfax but in all truth my heart and soul would not have been on the job. Mediocrity is a quality I have never desired to achieve. I’m stuck with that when it comes to the way I play the game I love.

And so I bid farewell to newspapers. I would like to thank all those in the golf industry with whom I’ve dealt for their co-operation, support, friendship and the occasional wink, wink, nod, nod “have I got a story for you” and to single out individuals would be to do an injustice to many others.

I leave the Herald after 18 years, one year longer than my first newspaper job with The Age, with stints in between with Reuters in Fleet St, the old Sporting Globe, the old Melbourne Herald afternoon paper where, for a time I was sports editor, and also the offspring of the union between the Melbourne Herald and the Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne that is the Herald Sun.

I wasn’t paid a fortune to write golf for the SMH, but I felt privileged to do so. I leave with great memories, but even sadder thoughts.

I’ll see everyone around the traps.”