V.P. Business Development, UK/Europe

George Peper was for 25 years the Editor-in-Chief of Golf Magazine. Under his leadership the magazine became the most widely read publication in the game (over 7 million readers) and was nominated for four National Magazine Awards.

Today Peper is Editor-at-Large of Links Magazine (USA) where his column appears in each issue. He is also a consultant to Workman Publishing, a partner in Grey Town Golf, LLC, which works with golf clubs to improve pace of play, and a partner in GOLF Magazine China Consulting, which matches golf architects with development projects in China.

Peper is the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books, including the best-selling “Golf Courses of the PGA Tour,” “Shark Attack,” in collaboration with Greg Norman, and “Cinderella Story,” in collaboration with actor Bill Murray. Collectively, his books have sold over a million copies.

For 20 years Peper wrote and produced the Masters Annual, the official chronicle of the Masters Tournament. He has written the scripts for over a dozen videos and TV specials including two in cooperation with Jack Nicklaus. His 1999 script for “The Story of Golf,” a two-hour documentary for PBS, earned him an Emmy nomination.

Peper earned a B.A. from Princeton and studied toward a PhD in comparative literature at Yale before joining GOLF Magazine. A six-handicap golfer, he is a member of Sleepy Hollow Country Club (NY), Ballybunion in Ireland, and five clubs in Scotland, including the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews where he is the first American to become a member of the Club Committee.

Among his contributions to the game are “Pace Ratings” which establish playing times for golf courses and “The Need System” which was adopted by the USGA as the recommended method for allocating handicap strokes across 18 holes.

In 2003, when the younger of their two sons headed off to college, Peper and his wife Libby sold their home in New York and moved to an apartment they’d bought 20 years earlier, on the 18th hole of the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. They now live there fulltime. In May of 2006 Simon & Schuster (NY) will publish “Two Years in St. Andrews,” Peper’s account of his experiences there.