NEWSPAPER GOLF RESULTS

This copy of a 'Sports Roundup' page from the Sunday Times newspaper dated June 24, 1984 includes the Saturday golf competition results for Melville Glades in the bottom left hand corner.

This represented a typical process for members to catch up with the previous day’s golfing results.

The results are shown for both AM and PM fields, nearest the pins for holes 9 and 17 AM and PM, and the best gross score for the whole day. The donor of this item, Kerry Regan, obviously had a vested interest in this page with his name listed as runner up on a countback for the PM field.

Publishing golf results in the daily newspapers had been a feature of MGGC since play commenced in 1969. Although there was a presentation announcement made to players after the competition has concluded, those present often only represented a small proportion of the daily field. In those earlier years most households purchased the daily newspaper. Thus, there was great interest for members to quickly turn to the sports pages to read these reports. Some would be looking for their own name, or simply have an interest in knowing who had won on the day.

As technology improved the availability of golf results became available digitally via the club's website and other sources. This made the results available to households with internet access. The purchase of the daily newspaper also diminished due to similar digital pressures, so the need to report results in newspapers similarly declined. Also impacting the process was the need for newspapers to optimise the available space available to print these results as well as the system used to transmit and publish so many different results from a myriad of sporting clubs. Often, even though the club provided results to the newspaper, these were frequently not published.

It is likely that these hardcopy sports results will disappear entirely as time passes.