Though he concealed it beneath a gruff exterior and quite liked to be described as a curmudgeon, Dai Davies, the golf writer for The Guardian for 22 years, was a man who cared deeply about a number of subjects. Whether it was barbershop quartet singing, the performances of Wales’s rugby teams, slow play in golf, red wine, links golf courses or the affairs of Crewe Alexandra, Davies championed them with considerable vigour.

He was born in England but regarded himself as a Welshman. A colleague remembers telling him the score of a Wales v England game in the Five Nations Championship. “It was 10-9 to Wales. It was not a very good game.” Davies could not reply quickly enough. “There are no bad victories over England,” he said firmly.

David John Davies came from a well-known journalistic family in Birmingham. Rod Davies, his father, wrote about golf and football in the Birmingham Evening Mail. Dai was the golf correspondent of The Birmingham Post from 1965 until 1982 when he joined The Guardian. He remained there until retirement in 2004.

As well as writing about golf in the Post he enthusiastically embraced the duties of travel correspondent and each April demonstrated a remarkable inventiveness for finding a trip to the US from which he could make a detour for a visit to the Masters. After he had joined The Guardian these trips to Augusta National were highlighted by conversations with the veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke whom Davies admired as a writer.

Davies was burly of build. He was the sort of man you wanted alongside you in the dark recesses of a rugby scrum as well as the trenchant voice you wanted on your side in a tight argument.

He held that Jack Nicklaus was the best golfer he saw over most of his writing career, though Tiger Woods was closing fast. Among the players whom Davies championed was anyone from the circulation area of The Birmingham Post, who included Sandy Lyle, the Open and Masters champion, who grew up in Shropshire, and Ian Woosnam, who won the Masters in 1991 and whose home golf course in Oswestry had 17 holes in England and one in Wales. Davies also formed a particular friendship with José Maria Olazábal, the Spaniard who won the Masters in 1994 and 1999.

Davies often said that if he had one golf course on which to play his last round it would be Royal West Norfolk. Sadly, that came to be true. His round with some fellow golf journalists at Brancaster in November 2007 was his last. Soon afterwards, cancer of the oesophagus was diagnosed. He leaves a wife, Patricia.

Dai Davies, journalist, was born on October 22, 1938. He died on May 19, 2008, aged 69