The Pilot’s extraordinary coverage of the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open

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Fore please! As the elite players of women’s golf descend on Southern Pines there is great work being done by The Pilot to cover the action. Publisher David Woronoff highlights the work that has been undertaken to cover the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. As you’ll see there is no lack of coverage and a great example of the work being done by the LOCAL community newspaper. The top professionals may feel like they are stranded in a desert navigating the waste bunkers of Pine Needles, but there are certainly no news deserts in Moore county!

Woronoff reports this is the seventh version of the Open Daily product, a pop-up daily newspaper and associated digital assets. The Pilot created a printed Open Daily for the 1999, 2005 and 2014 U.S. Opens as well as the 2001, 2007, 2014 and now 2022 U.S. Women’s Opens that were all contested in the Sandhills.

Just after the ’99 Open, Woronoff promised Ms. Peggy Kirk Bell — the late owner of Pine Needles Resort — that they would cover her 2001 Women’s Open with the same gusto as they did the recently completed championship at Pinehurst. Twenty years later, they are still driven to keep that promise.

So, here’s what The Pilot is producing this week in addition to the regular twice weekly newspaper, website, streaming audio channel and three email products (The Briefing, The Sway and Help Wanted):

1. Open Daily 32-page tab in print Sunday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday/Wednesday
2. Two editions per day of our Open Daily email newsletter - a local edition to 21,000 emails to our local community in addition to our regular email products and a statewide edition to 43,000 emails to readers who are subscribed to our four other magazines across North Carolina.
3. Created a 10-page broadsheet called Images for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of The Pilot. This special section is filled with pictures from the course.
4. Developed a separate web site, thepilot.com/opendaily, which is updated throughout the day and evening with Women’s Open content and news features from Pine Needles.
5. Launched a streaming digital radio station called Golf Rock www.golfrock.com

To accomplish all of this, The Pilot recruited a free-lance roster of seven nationally renown golf writers and photographers in addition to their regular staff writers. They also entered into a collaboration with the Global Golf Post to share each other’s content.

No other media property in America covers the Opens with the same depth and passion as The Pilot. This work showcases the power of a committed, locally owned community newspaper. We hope you share that belief.

Best of luck to all the participants of the 2022 Women’s US Open and thanks to The Pilot golf fans will be right there to follow every drive, pitch and putt.