Andy Griffin began working with Strokeaverage.com early in 2007 having edited regional golf magazine Fairway to Green for six years. He provides most of StrokeAverage.com’s coverage of the European Tour and US PGA Tour, as well as the leading stories from other professional golf tours and the amateur game.

He has worked as a newspaper journalist since 1984 and was editor-in-chief at three free newspapers groups over a 13-year period before switching to the golf magazine industry.

As well as writing as a freelance for a number of publications, the “newspaper hack” worked in the press office at the 2007 London Golf Show, and organised a media day when Tiger Woods’ first coach Rudy Duran visited the UK in September 2007.

He first contacted Strokeaverage.com co-founder Chris Sells early in 2001. Surrey County Golf Union secretary Mike Ashton suggested he might be worth talking to for a feature on how golf stats were an important part of the game for golfers like Zane Scotland, who was then the outstanding English amateur prospect in Fairway to Green’s distribution area.

That was the beginning of a long-standing professional and personal relationship for the pair.

Griffin, who has covered professional and non-league football as well as cricket, rugby and golf during his newspaper career, said: “My knowledge about golf was confined to nearly 20 years of watching golf on TV and covering a few Tour events and players”.

“But from the moment I started talking to Chris, listening to him talking about his theories derived from his stats work - and his vast knowledge about what are the key factors in golf at the highest levels of the amateur and professional game - I became a much more knowledgeable and informed golf journalist”.

“We met up at tournaments regularly – we watched Zane Scotland hole the most outrageous shot I have ever seen from off the back of the green in a fierce gale at the famous short hole at Vale de Lobo, after he qualified for the Algarve Open as the Portuguese Amateur Champion. Sadly the TV tower had been shut because it was that dangerous, so Sky have no footage of it”.

Griffin, who covered amateur golfers – both male and female, junior and senior – across the Home Counties for six years in far greater depth than any other golf magazine, has watched the current generation of young Tour stars gain their cards.

He was the first to publish an in-depth profile of Paul Casey after he turned pro in late 2000, and gave him his first cover shot in August 2001 following his victory at Gleneagles.

Fairway to Green covered the rise of James Heath and Ross Fisher from Surrey County Golf Union Colts to English champions and amateur internationals, and their graduation to the European Challenge Tour.

Under Griffin’s guidance, they also reported on existing and future StrokeAverage.com clients such as David Griffiths, Danielle Masters and Oliver Fisher as they came up through the amateur ranks - the latter two playing Curtis and Walker Cups before turning pro.

Griffin added: “Over the years I have written plenty of features and columns where the insight I have acquired from working with Chris, and his StrokeAverage.com partner John Franks, has been the inspiration”.

“When the chance came to team up with StrokeAverage.com last year, it was a logical conclusion after all the time we have spent collaborating over the previous five years”.

“StrokeAverage.com has come too late to save my game, but it has still helped me become a better player”, said the 18-handicapper. “I just wish I had taken the game up as a child instead of when I was almost 30”.

“And when you see the talent that most good club juniors have these days, let alone the elite players representing their county and country, if they start recording and studying their stats correctly at the appropriate time, you have to wonder how good our players could be in 10 years’ time”.

The London University graduate became a keen TV golf watcher after seeing Texan Bill Rodgers win the Open at Sandwich in 1981, when he was stranded at his digs while working on a summer job during his university days.

“My lift failed to turn up so I spent the Sunday afternoon watching the Open on a portable black and white telly”.

“After that I would always watch the Open religiously, and became an avid armchair spectator of the Masters and the other majors when Seve, Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam were dominating the game”.

“The Ryder Cup just made golf even more exciting for me. I saw some of the Walton Heath match in 1981, but once Europe beat the Americans at The Belfry in 1985, I would try and watch every shot on all three days”.

Then in 1987, unknown Hertfordshire club pro Mark Litton came through the European Tour Qualifying School unexpectedly, and planted the seed that would transform his journalism career.

Griffin said: “I read about Mark in our rival paper”. They gave him four paragraphs out of five pages of sport.

“We had the back page for our sport coverage, but when I realised he was going to be playing with the likes of Faldo, who was my sporting hero then, Woosnam, Lyle and Ballesteros, I did a big feature on him the following month when all our football and rugby was rained off and we had nothing else to write about”.

“I promised Mark I would write about him every week he played, and I would often get a quick report on the Sunday evening, either from him or his parents, depending on whether he had made the cut, or was flying off to another tournament”.

“There was no email or mobiles in those days so it was a bit hit or miss, but even though he failed to keep his card, he took me to Woburn to watch the 1988 British Masters shoot-out between Lyle and Faldo”.

“It changed my outlook about golf completely and I finally started playing the following year. I went to Wentworth to see Woosnam and Faldo go head-to-head for the 1989 World Matchplay”.

“Nick gave his winnings away on the 18th green to a kids’ charity and I have loved going back to cover that event and the PGA Championships over the past seven years”.

“I have played the West Course once and a few times at Woburn - they are two of my favourite places”.

“I have been lucky to play at quite a few of the top courses across Europe thanks to my job, but those two hold some great memories for me”.

“And I know that some of the players I have covered from their early teenage years, and even more importantly for me now, who are StrokeAverage.com clients, are going to have some of the best days of their Tour careers at such places”.