You should be concerned about the decline of golf journalism

I was deeply saddened to learn that Sports Illustrated, the respected American publication, has got rid of its entire golf team.

I know none of these journalists personally but this is just the latest in a wave of redundancies that has swept through an industry that gave me everything I have and that I was proud to be a part of.

So why should this be a concern for the rest of us? Why should anybody care?

I appreciate the sales of newspapers and magazines have plummeted and that advertising revenues have fallen off a cliff. This means redundancies in the sector have been inevitable. It also means many of the very best sports journalists have been tossed on the scrap-heap.

In recent years I have seen a marked deterioration in journalistic standards and it makes me despair. 

Accuracy was everything for me and the people I worked with - it is obvious that those standards have gone.

I would challenge you to pick up the sports pages of any national newspaper or magazine and not find it to be full of both factual and grammatical mistakes.

I grew up reading the likes of Henry Longhurst and Hugh McIlvanney. They were masters of their craft and total perfectionists. 

I ended up working with McIlvanney at The Sunday Times and in all the years I edited his copy I only ever found one mistake, and he was absolutely mortified when I told him.

His golf writing was second to none, and everything was meticulously researched. I would often read his articles and think to myself: "I wish that I had written that." 

Nowadays I look at newspaper websites and am appalled by not just the mistakes but the volume of them. Nothing is checked. Everything is taken at face value and accepted as fact.

And please don’t get me started on the quality of the golf content served up on social media. Names are routinely spelt incorrectly, facts bear little relation to reality - and for reasons that I fail to understand, much of it is blatantly untrue.

Take this from the worst offender of the lot, Golf Swing Elite: "I probably will never compete again if things continue like this…Eric Cole caused a stir in the golf world when he unexpectedly expressed his extreme disappointment after his defeat to Russell Henley, the champion of the Charles Schwab Challenge. In a tense press conference, 

"Cole hinted that unfair factors had influenced the result and declared he would soon reveal the full truth. However, what stunned the golf media even more was Russell Henley's cold response of just 14 words. That brief but meaningful statement left the entire room speechless, as no one expected the American champion to say such things…"

All of the above is completely untrue. You may not always agree with what I have to say but you can be assured that it is accurate and I would never dream of making something up to attract readers. It is anathema to me.

Moving forward, I am deeply concerned about the impact and part AI will play in golf content. For me, it means there will be no soul, no colour, no feeling.

In my view, storytelling as practised by the likes of McIlvanney and Longhurst and many others is the greatest asset we have to drive engagement and fan interest. If there are fewer reporters at the events and fans have to rely on questions from tour employees, media who are financially linked to the tour they cover, or media who are represented by the same agencies as the players, then output is inevitably going to be biased.