Legendary golf writer Dermot Gilleece has announced that he is officially retiring following a distinguished 65-year career in journalism.
Dermot’s working life began in 1958 as a copy boy in the Irish Press Group. He ventured to London in 1965 and worked with Hayters from where he joined the Daily Mail that year.
He then represented the Mail in Dublin for 14 years before being made redundant in 1979, ahead of working for the Irish Independent for 15 months. In 1981, Dermot was offered the golf correspondent’s job with the Irish Times.
Twenty-one years later in 2002 he retired from the Irish Times ahead of joining the Sunday Independent, where he has stayed ever since, and from where he will be stepping down from the role as chief golf correspondent at the end of this month.
Dermot, who covered The Open Championship for more than 40 years, has written several books on golf, including Touching Greatness, a collection of stories and anecdotes recounting the many golf legends and players that he met during his career, including Seve Ballesteros, Gene Sarazen, Christy O’Connor Snr, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods to name but a few.
A longstanding member of the Association of Golf Writers and the Irish Golf Writers Association, he was honoured in 2019 with the inaugural PGA in Ireland Service to Golf/Lifetime Achievement Award.
At the time of the award, Paul Kelly, president of the IGWA, said: “In a career that has spanned numerous Majors and Ryder Cups, Dermot has been greenside to record some of the most remarkable moments in golfing history. From the glory years of O’Connor, Carr and Bradshaw, to the more recent Irish successes of Harrington, McIlroy and Lowry, he has seen it all and retains an encyclopaedic knowledge of names, dates, facts and figures, even as he approaches his 80th birthday.”
