Golfer’s Monthly Is Housewife’s Idea

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 2

Golfer’s Monthly Is Housewife’s Idea

(By

JULIA BASTIAN)

A housewife with a passion for golf is the editor of a pocket-sized monthly magazine for women golfers, Mrs Marion Ackroyd Jones conceived the idea of a golfing journal early last year and after study and hard work the first issue of “Pin-High” appeared on May Day, 1966.

“The main reason for launching such a magazine is that I felt there was a real need for it,” Mrs Jones said.

For years she had noticed that women golfers wanted their own magazine, written for women golfers by .women golfers. When her only daughter went off to South Africa, Mrs Jones realised that she would need a new and absorbing interest

“Pin-High” filled her days. Before publication she wrote to the 1600 golf clubs in Britain and Ireland and to the secretaries of the Ladies’ Golf Unions in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, and spent many winter evenings reading the laws of publishing. At her home in Darlington, County Durham, she was kept busy commissioning articles, planning the lay-out and correcting proofs. Apart from a Yorkshire publisher, Martin Black, who handles the advertising, she is the only permanent staff.

Many of the leading golf correspondents who were in-

vited to contribute greeted the venture with enthusiasm and soon Mrs Jessie Valentine, Miss Enid Wilson and Lewine Guermont, among other outstanding players, were sending in articles of interest. Mrs Joan Rice, of St Albans, well known for her talks on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s “Woman’s Hour,” introduced Mrs Jones to other writers and to the Women’s Press Club of London, where she was soon meeting journalists on their own ground. In the first month 3500 copies of her magazine were sold. The print order has since risen to 5000, satisfying a need for information in most of the golf elubs in Britain and a fair number of clubs overseas.

The policy of the magazine is to give a broad picture of the world of golf to

women, and at the same time to give them a voice on topics of a controversial nature.

There are lively articles, team reports, competitions, cartoons. There is instruction in cookery as well as in golf. There are the more important fixture lists, a fashion page and a bridge article. Among the outspoken letters to the editor are some expressing new ideas on the running of golf tournaments, and plenty giving advice to beginners. In the current edition the Ladies’ Golf Union begins a series of articles setting out some useful guidelines for those who bear office.