By BILL BROTHERTON
Editor Bill Brotherton
We think so.
After a three-year hiatus, Essex Media Group, publisher of The Daily Item, Lynnfield Weekly News, Peabody Weekly News and 01907 and ONE magazines, is reviving the popular golf magazine. We’re warming up this off-season with a digital-only edition featured on our website – northshoregolfmagazine.com. The quarterly publication will soon return, in full glossy print form and will be delivered to clubs throughout the region.
And visit our website and Facebook page, which will be updated regularly and serve as your go-to place for all things North Shore golf and living the country club lifestyle.
In this issue, we look back at the gender discrimination lawsuit filed by women at Haverhill Country Club 20 years ago and how it changed the way clubs do business. We look ahead to the U.S. Senior Open, which Salem Country Club will host in June 2017. Groundskeepers talk about the summer-long drought and how it impacted their courses and what it means for this winter and next spring. We remember the late Arnold Palmer , who was a great friend of Massachusetts golf. And we take a stab at selecting the area’s five top 19th holes; let us know if we’re off-base.
North Shore Golf is fortunate to have some of New England’s finest writers on board.
Anne Marie Tobin, associate editor, is a member of the Massachusetts Golf Hall of Fame. A Lynnfield resident, Anne Marie won the Women’s Golf Association of Massachusetts amateur a record seven times and was the WGAM Player of the Year three times. An attorney who served as general counsel for the NEPGA, Anne Marie is also sports editor of the Lynnfield and Peabody Weekly News.
Gary Larrabee, the Danvers High graduate who was a member of The Salem News sports staff and served as its golf editor for 25 years, will bring his expertise and local knowledge to each issue. His column will be must-reading. Gary is the recipient of the NEPGA’s 2016 George S. Wemyss Award, given to an individual who has made a contribution to the game of golf and has performed a distinctive service to the NEPGA to meet its goals or enhance its image.
Bob Green, the head golf professional for 36 years at Tedesco Country Club in Marblehead, will serve as consultant. Few members of the PGA are more respected than Bob, who got his start at Happy Valley Golf Course in Lynn and through the years has won numerous New England tournaments. Bob’s greatest accomplishment, however, might be that he survived a brutal round of golf in a five-hour driving rainstorm with your humble editor during a pro-press tournament at Ferncroft CC back in about nineteen-aught-six.
The credentials of my partners in this enterprise far surpass mine, but we all share a lifelong passion for golf.
For me, the love affair started during my junior high school years, when I started caddying at Myopia Hunt Club when John Thoren Sr. was the pro and the irascible Robert Bromberg was caddie master. “Brom” wouldn’t give me doubles, so the next summer I journeyed over to Essex County Club. There I stayed, advancing to working in the pro shop for Alex Urban and David Marad, until I graduated from college. I was awarded a Ouimet scholarship, thanks to the sponsorship and friendship of Dennett W. Goodrich, a member who overtipped me outrageously and took pity on me when he learned I aspired to a career in the high-paying field of journalism. He even gave me his old set of Top Flite irons – or maybe I stole them, it was so long ago I can’t remember – some of which I still use to this day.
I played golf at “The Shoe,” Beverly Golf & Tennis Club, where I once got my handicap down to 7.
I wrote about golf for the Beverly Times and Daily Item of Lynn, until I switched my focus to Features writing, especially popular music and theater. After 18 years at the Boston Herald I am back on the North Shore, serving as Features Editor at the Item and editing the golf magazine that awaits on your computer screen.
We hope you enjoy the new North Shore Golf magazine. Let us know what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see in future editions and how we can improve. When issue No. 2 comes out in winter, the ground will probably be frozen and covered with snow. … but spring won’t be far behind.
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