Golf's declaration of Independence

The Independent Golfer is a tabloid produced by Independent Newspapers with a minimum of 8 pages. The insert will appear every Tuesday for an initial season of 13 weeks. The launch date was planned to coincide with the arrival of the 'high season' of international golf tournaments in the form of the US Masters, first of the 2005 Majors.

Editor of The Mercury, Dave Canning said, "We're publishing The Independent Golfer as a service to our readers because we've seen a growing interest in golf, both from a spectator and player perspective and of course it ties in with The Mercury's positioning at the top, aspirational end of the market in KwaZulu-Natal." Independent did their homework, analysing AMPS readership profiles for The Mercury to uncover the substantial percentage of readers who play or follow golf, or who are members of a golf club. Thus encouraged, The Independent Golfer was born.

Editorial content will focus on all golf matters of interest to South Africans. This naturally includes detailed coverage of most key international tournaments, given the strong presence of SA players, including Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Trevor Immelman, as well as KZ-N's own Tim Clarke and Rory Sabatini and others campaigning successfully abroad. The local scene will be supported strongly, including The Mercury Million Golf Challenge, and other amateur and professional events, both in KZ-N and in wider South Africa. The launch issue covered the US Masters as well as the KwaZulu-Natal Open events.

Amongst the regular features and also appearing weekly, will be a coaching tips column authored by Pat Lowth, leading PGA teaching and tournament pro. The interactive column will invite and respond to readers' queries on rules and playing problems.

In line with the editor's emphasis on reader service, Brian Porter, advertising director for Independent KZ-N, notes that the main target of the new innovation is to increase circulation, rather than simply maximizing advertising revenue. His sales team is focusing on securing sponsors to support the supplement after the initial 13-week period, but, as he puts it, "we're not going to turn away those advertisers selling upmarket services and products who need to reach an affluent market with plenty of disposable income." Indeed, Porter claims already to have had a number of unsolicited calls from advertisers keen to use the new product. "The current sponsor is Pentravel. They seem very pleased with their investment so far", said Porter. Pentravel will concentrate on golf tour offers in The Independent Golfer, the first being an attractive tour package to Mauritius. Both international and local tours will be offered in coming weeks.

The Mercury, the leading morning daily in the province, was founded in1852 and is one of the oldest newspapers still being published in South Africa. Carrier of Business Report, SA's biggest daily business newspaper, The Mercury has a circulation of 39 343 and readership of 213 000 according to AMPS 2004. Nearly two thirds, almost 141 000 readers, fall into the affluent 8 to 10 LSM groupings.

For further information or to advertise, contact Brian Porter at 031-308 2911.