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Editor’s Letter
We debut new elements to update a classic culture.
by max adler
f you’re receiving this issue much later than the first week of the New Year, blame your postal worker (gently). In most zip codes, golf season is in a lull, which makes the arrival of reading material about the game feel less urgent but also somehow more essential. On the spine of this magazine, you’ll notice we’ve abandoned a 70-year-old tradition of naming issues by their month and are simply calling this Issue 1—in part to spare our collective psyche the reminder it’s January, but the motives lie deeper. Jerry Tarde, the greatest boss ever, although he deflects the term, has been writing the Editor’s Letter of this magazine since taking the job in 1984—a record run in all of publishing that’s as safe as Nicklaus’ majors if Jack were still playing. In what might prove the least wise decision
I
2 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
of an otherwise lifetimeachievement career, Tarde relinquished this column to me while he focuses on strategy and content for Discovery Golf, our parent company. But not to worry. You can still read Tarde in his new home on the back page. As if that wasn’t enough to mark a tide, you’ll notice several other new elements that speak to the naming of Issue 1. Staff Writer Joel Beall debuts the Undercover Caddie, Senior Writer Matthew Rudy becomes our resident golf ethicist, and Associate Editor Coleman Bentley imports the wit he used to build the winning sports and entertainment website, The Loop. And to help you get better in a more holistic way, our instruction and equipment editors have collaborated more closely than ever. During the production of this particularly hardworking issue, the staff did take a Friday to play the annual company match. The Seitz Cup, founded by Tarde to honor his predecessor as editor, Nick Seitz, pits half of the staff against the other, and this year was contested in classic conditions: 35 degrees and gusty. Many are surprised
▶ weathering the weather Staffers took on a cold, windy day and each other in the Seitz Cup.
Finchem administration. Yes, politically correct or not, we divide ourselves by age at Golf Digest, and the current line of demarcation is a recordlow 33 years. My position on Team Old is officially firm, but more important is how this indicates the youth movement going on at our magazine. Among many notable new hires is 24-year-old Staff Writer Daniel Rapaport, who is as talented a player as he is an interviewer. Dan worked with Tiger Woods on Tiger’s first
bylined instruction article for us in a dozen years. Oh, yeah, did I mention Woods is back as a Golf Digest Playing Editor? To protect his back, he skipped the Seitz Cup this year. Less sexy, but another reason for getting rid of the month names is a slightly adjusted publishing schedule that better matches the recent shift of golf’s major championships to the front half of the calendar. We’ll still publish the same number of issues, but you’ll essentially get an extra magazine in the spring when golf matters more. (That’s when you might want to thank your postman.) So welcome to the new Golf Digest. If for nostalgia you want to skip straight to Tarde now before reading the rest, I understand.
christian iooss
It’s All in the Timing Welcome to Issue 1 of the new Golf Digest
to learn that both of Golf Digest’s staff events (our other being The Editor’s Putter, which is individual stroke play) always take place in early winter in a not-so-formal rota of venues around New York City. This unlikely scheduling, however, is a window—albeit frosted—into Tarde’s genius at cultivating the right workplace culture over four decades. “Cold weather is an equalizer. The rawness, the adversity brings everybody together,” Jerry says. “It’s the same feeling you have playing links golf on a windy day. There’s also an element of silliness and survival, which my game evokes more of these days. And we’re all looking ahead to the same end—a bowl of chili and a pint of beer.” Though we do keep score. Let it be known that in the most recent playing, Team Old bested Team Young by a score of 16-11 to retain the Seitz Cup, whose pewter top is dented from a stillunresolved incident that occurred sometime during the
Tee Sheet
â–ś caribbean paradise The 611-yard par-5 second at Punta Espada (T-35 on the World 100) in the Dominican Republic. 72
Issue/1
how to play. what to play. where to play.
2 Editor’s Letter Don’t call it a monthly. by max adler
Play
36 David Leadbetter Data tells us exactly how the hips ought to move in the downswing.
Features cover story
38 The Loop On the campaign trail with your future club president. by coleman bentley
40 Golf Digest Schools Three winter full-swing drills. by sean hogan
42 Tour Technique If it’s a slow round, at least get some more practice in. by paula creamer
10 Tiger Talks Here’s what I do every time I get an iron in my hand.
44 Collecting A photographer finds beauty in vintage golf balls.
56 Learning Curve Jon Rahm refines the rough edges and looks to take the next step: winning a major. by brian wacker
by guy yocom
by tiger woods
62 Birdie Machine Get a glimpse of the tour-pro workout Scott Stallings used to get shredded, then find a trainer from our ranking of the 50 Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America.
16 The Ethicist Is a real-estate agent accountable for a golfhome sale gone bad? by matthew rudy
18 Equipment Lab Why it might be time to loft down with a new driver.
by ron kaspriske
70 Drain-O My putting routine eliminates second-guessing.
by mike stachura
24 Undercover Caddie Do PGA Tour players cheat? with joel beall
26 Butch Harmon Try my method for a tough pitch. 28 Golfers We Like Actress Carly Chaikin. by peter finch
by tommy fleetwood
46 Michael Breed What to do when your swing gets quick, how to get a junior psyched to play, and why towel-technique matters. 49 Marine for Life Bob Parsons continues golf’s connection to the Corps.
evan Schiller
by tom callahan
Cover photograph by Peter Yang
30 Gimme One Thing If you’re in a fairway bunker, remember to do what Tiger does. by adam kolloff
52 What’s in My Bag J.T. Poston
32 Journeys PGA Tour rookie Harry Higgs.
54 Jim Nantz Secrets of my back-yard hole.
with keely levins
with guy yocom
72 World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses Guess who tops our ranking? by ron whitten
84 Tee Time at 13,943 Feet A wild trip to Nepal for the world’s highest golf tournament. by oliver horovitz
with keely levins
92 Hometown Hero Hanging with U.S. Amateur champ Andy Ogletree in his return to Union, Miss. by ryan herrington
34 Unearthing History Golf Digest celebrates 70 years.
100 Last Shot The lost letters of the 2019 golf season, found.
by john strege
by jerry tarde
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
5
COME CELEBRATE WITH US! WE’RE NOW OPEN AT THE PEBBLE BEACH RESORTS
JIM NANTZ BY VINEYARD VINES STORE JUST OFF THE PUTTING GREEN AT THE LODGE AT PEBBLE BEACH™
Pebble Beach ® and its respective underlying distinctive images and hole designs are trademarks, service marks and trade dress of Pebble Beach Company. Used by permission.
edited by claire rogers
YOUR GUIDE TO WHAT WE’RE DOING BEYOND THE PAGES
courses Take a Full Tour Our “Every Hole at . . . ” video series offers stunning drone flyovers of some of golf’s greatest courses, like Cabot Cliffs (left), No. 11 on our new World 100 list. Next up: Cypress Point. Visit video .golfdigest.com.
fitness
FROM TOP: DOM FURORE • ERic Ryan anDERsOn • TaVis cOBURn
Get Golf Strong Scott Stallings transformed his body, and you can, too. See the threetime PGA Tour winner’s workout regimen in his Golf Digest Schools video series at golfdigest.com/ story/all-access.
future of golf The Next Decade From a new generation of stars to drama-filled team events to Tiger winning his 15th major, it has been a wild decade in golf. Go to golfdigest.com for our predictions for the 2020s.
We chopper up 14,000 feet for a single hole of golf. see page 84
golf digest editor-in- chief Jerry Tarde gener al manager Chris Reynolds
d i s c ov e ry g o l f president & gener al manager Alex Kaplan global head of str ategy & content Jerry Tarde senior vice president & gener al manager, golf digest Chris Reynolds
c r e at i v e editorial director Max Adler editorial director, digital Sam Weinman executive editors Peter Morrice, Michael O’Malley design director Ken DeLago executive producer Christian Iooss managing editors Alan P. Pittman, Ryan Herrington (News) senior editors Ron Kaspriske (Instruction), Mike Stachura (Equipment), Ron Whitten (Architecture) equipment editor E. Michael Johnson senior photogr apher / videogr apher Dom Furore senior writers Alex Myers, Matthew Rudy, Guy Yocom staff writers Joel Beall, Daniel Rapaport art director Chloe Galkin visuals editor Ben Walton supervising producer Michael Sneeden producers Gregory Gottfried (Web), Mason Leverington, Greg Snedeker associate editors Stephen Hennessey, Keely Levins, Coleman Bentley (The Loop) associate producer Will Fullerton assistant editors Madeline MacClurg, Christopher Powers, Brittany Romano contributors editor-at-l arge Nick Seitz photogr apher-at-l arge Walter Iooss Jr. columnist Jim Nantz chief digital instructor Michael Breed contributing editors John Barton, Tom Callahan, Bob Carney, David Fay, Peter Finch, John Feinstein, Marty Hackel, John Huggan, Dean Knuth, David Owen, Steve Rushin, Roger Schiffman, Cliff Schrock, Dave Shedloski, John Strege, Brian Wacker contributing photogr apher J.D. Cuban chief pl aying editor Tiger Woods pl aying editors Phil Mickelson, Francesco Molinari, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson teaching professionals Rob Akins, Todd Anderson, Chuck Cook, Hank Haney, Butch Harmon, David Leadbetter, Cameron McCormick, Jim McLean, Renee Powell, Dean Reinmuth, Randy Smith, Rick Smith, Dave Stockton, Josh Zander professional advisors Amy Alcott, Bill Mallon, Gary McCord, Randy Myers, Nick Price, Judy Rankin, Lucius Riccio, Bob Rotella, Ben Shear, Ralph Simpson, Frank Thomas technical panel Martin Brouillette, Tom Mase, John McPhee, David Lee, Dick Rugge, George Springer e d i t o r i a l o p e r at i o n s executive director, finance Chris Petruccelli director, marketing Meredith Bausback director, business development & partnerships Greg Chatzinoff director, social media & digital content Jamie Kennedy senior product manager Amy Hartford senior project manager James Alarcon production manager Byrute Johnson product manager, mobile Jason Stoll senior product designer Lauren Occhipinti senior producer, digital content Hally Leadbetter social media manager, golf digest Nicole Rae social media coordinator Claire Rogers manager, crm Jonathan Jacobino executive assistant to the editor-in- chief Jeanmarie Ferullo executive assistant Daria Delfino
8 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
senior vice president & gener al manager, golft v Jeff Geels senior vice president, product & technology Eugene Huang senior vice president, legal Suzanne Underwald senior vice president, communications Fiona McLachlan senior vice president, human resources Kit Herrera vice president, business development & partnerships Agatha Yerbury vice president & editorial director Max Adler vice president & editorial director, digital Sam Weinman vice president & executive editor Peter Morrice vice president, studio & video content Stina Sternberg vice president, product Vishal Parikh sales & m arketing vice president, commercial Jonny Haworth senior vice president, business development Dan Robertson vice president, marketing Joshua Stern senior sales director Terry Katz director, ad revenue & partnerships Rob Lutin br and partnerships director Katerina Tomari sales director, golft v Charlie Buck sales manager, golf digest Pete Nelson digital sales pl anner Allison Kelly sales executive, golf digest Rick Hall sales executive, golf digest Alex Dobson sales coordinator Grace Wayne director, creative services Lance Hertzbach art director Bill Specht senior manager, marketing Nicole Riccardi senior manager, marketing Carley Strauss executive assistant to the president Lauren Fauci executive assistant Caraline Gonzalez g o l f d i g e s t i n t e r n at i o n a l international editor Ju Kuang Tan editors-in- chief Hernán SimÓ, Jorge R. Arias (Argentina), Brad Clifton (Australia), Rodrigo Soto (Chile), Echo Ma (China), Rishi Narain (India), Irwan Hermawan (Indonesia), Linton Walsh (Ireland), Eun Jeong Sohn (Korea), Patrick Ho (Malaysia), Rafa Quiroz (Mexico), Kent Gray (Middle East), João Morais Leitão (Portugal), Fedor Gogoley (Russia), Stuart McLean (South Africa), Óscar Maqueda (Spain), Eric Franzén (Sweden), Jennifer Wei (Taiwan), Chumphol Na Takuathung (Thailand) licensees GolfMagazin (Germany), Il Mondo del Golf (Italy), Golf & Country (Switzerland) digital licensees Daisuke Miyake, Golf Digest Online (Japan), Singapore Press Holdings Newspapers (Singapore) p u b l i s h e d b y d i s c ov e ry i n c . president & chief executive officer David Zaslav ceo, global direct-to - consumer Peter Faricy chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels president & ceo, discovery net works international Jean-Briac Perrette chief development, distribution & legal officer Bruce Campbell chief people & culture officer Adria Alpert Romm chief corpor ate oper ations & communications officer David C. Leavy chief u.s. advertising sales officer Jon Steinlauf gener al counsel Savalle Sims president, affiliate distribution Eric Phillips chief technology officer, direct-to - consumer Avi Saxena discovery inc. is a global leader in real-life entertainment, serving a passionate audience of superfans around the world with content that inspires, informs and entertains. discovery golf is a division of Discovery Inc. that includes golf digest and golft v powered by the pga tour. customer service 1-800-PAR-GOLF or golfdigest.com printed in the u.s.a . Golf Digest is a member of the National Golf Foundation
Tiger Talks
by tiger woods
▜ Tiger has never finished worse than sixth in the strokes gained/ approach stat when he has played enough rounds to be eligible (he wasn’t last year) . He led the category five straight times.
2017-18 2013 2012 2009 2007 2006 2005 2004
3rd 1st 1st 1st 1st 1st 4th 6th
not eligible in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016
issue 1. 2020 | golf digest
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“Keep your shoulders, hips and knees stacked.” as told to daniel rapaport
y swing and my game have evolved over the years, but one thing has remained consistent: I’m always confident with an iron in my hand. ▶ I’m not one of the longest hitters on tour anymore— I can’t hit a wedge 150-plus yards like some guys do—so
M
my iron game is absolutely critical to my success at this stage. It sounds simple, but the best way to make birdies is to hit your approaches close. To do that, you need to have distance control, which is possible only with consistent contact. For example, I hit my irons so pure last year at Augusta, and because of that, I had a ton of good looks at birdie. Two specific shots from
Sunday’s final round come to mind: On 7, when I needed a birdie to jump-start the round, I hit my trusted low, trapping fade to tap-in range. Then on 16, I hit a high-draw 8-iron that plopped down in the perfect spot, took the slope and finished about three feet from the cup. That birdie gave me a two-shot lead and firm control of the tournament. Note that one of those shots
▶ compact for control “I put less strain on my body when I swing than I used to. I don’t load as much.”
Photographs by J.D. Cuban
was a low fade and the other a high draw. I’ve always taken pride in my ability to vary trajectory and shape the ball both ways. Very few of my iron shots look exactly the same. Still, there are a few basics I try to apply to every iron shot, and they’re principles you can use for your game. The first thing I do is take a good look at the lie. Is it anything out of the ordinary?
TW
Play
HIS LATEST IRONS
▶ picking vs. digging “I usually sweep the ball off the turf with my irons. My divots aren’t that deep.”
Is it above or below my feet? Is it in a divot? If it’s in the rough, is it a flyer? Once I assess the lie, I shift my focus to the green complex. I like to let the course dictate what type of shot I’m trying to hit. Where is the exact spot I want the ball to land? Generally, I tend to hit more draws to left pins and
fades to right pins, but there are exceptions. For example, sometimes it’s more important to have the ball working away from a hazard than toward the flag. Amateurs don’t think enough about things like that before they start their pre-shot routine. As far as my setup, because of all my back issues, I’ve
tried to avoid side bend in my swing, and that all starts with how I stand to the ball. I like to find a balanced and athletic posture that’s free of any tension in my arms or shoulders. A good thought for me, and one that should help you make solid contact, is to keep your shoulders, hips and
▶ Tiger Woods has used the same iron specs (save for small lie-angle alterations) since he was a teen. His current TaylorMade P7TW muscle-back blades mirror previous sets, including True Temper Dynamic Gold X-100 shafts and Golf Pride Tour Velvet cord grips. But they do utilize a couple of manufacturing twists: (1) The use of tungsten to produce, in Woods’ words, “a deeper feel.” (2) Narrower grooves, resulting in more grooves on the face than typical. They also have a slightly flatter sole radius with additional bounce on some irons. Instead of standard forging that requires a fair amount of handwork, the soles of the P7TW are milled by a computer to remove any inconsistencies. That’s different from the days when Woods went through eight or nine sets of irons to pick the ones with the center of gravity and sole configurations he desired. —e. michael johnson
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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Play TW
knees stacked on the same vertical plane throughout the motion. My baseline is to be as neutral as possible at address, with everything square to the target—then I’ll make adjustments to my stance and clubface for a draw or a fade, or for a low shot or a high shot. I play the ball a bit farther forward in my stance than the average tour pro—it’s just my preference—and as a result I tend to sweep my irons more than dig. I’ll move the ball one ball forward in my stance if I’m trying to hoist one up, and I’ll play one ball back of normal if I’m trying to flight it down. When I swing, my thoughts are pretty simple and more feel-oriented than technical. I don’t watch my swing on video too often. I prefer to feel things with my hands, then confirm with my buddy Rob McNamara that he sees what I’m feeling. My backswing has changed quite a bit throughout the years. I used to load up much more on my right side and try to create as much width as possible. As a result, my weight would move to my right leg, and my head would slide laterally away from the target. That’s how a young man swings the club. Now, to put less strain on my body, I try to keep my head and chest more stable and turn more around my right side. To a large extent, my backswing is a function of my setup. At certain times in my career, I’ve had my hands lower or higher at address. For me, lower hands resulted in an earlier wrist set, and higher hands resulted in a later one. Now I feel like I’m quite neutral with my setup, which leads to a wrist set that happens around rib height. Once I’ve completed my
14 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
▶ distance control “My main thought is to push down into the ground and clear my hips.”
backswing—which almost always stops short of parallel because I’m concerned with hitting the ball the right distance, not the farthest distance—my main thought is to push down into the ground and clear my hips. That’s one reason my latest knee scope was so important. Toward the end of the summer, pain in my left knee prevented me from pushing hard. I was sliding a bit, which made it nearly impossible to get the hip rotation I needed to hit my cut. My other thought is to not let my hands get stuck behind me, which leads to having to save the swing and manipulate
the face with my hands—that’s no good. The best way to avoid getting stuck is to not let the lower body out-race the hands on the downswing. My thought is to have everything synced when I reach impact. I like to think that my followthrough determines how high the ball is going to launch. In reality, my follow-through is a result of my angle of attack. When I’m steeper and trying to flight it down, I feel like
I cut off the swing shortly after impact. If I shallow it out to launch the ball really high, I throw my hands way up over my head and let them finish over my left shoulder. Again, I’m a shotmaker at heart, and one of my favorite parts of playing golf is carving iron shots. I wouldn’t recommend amateurs try to work it as much as I do, but the basics I’ve laid out here will help you make better contact, which will allow you to hit the ball the right distance—and hopefully give yourself some tap-in birdies like I had at last year’s Masters.
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Play The Ethicist
Buyer Beware New golfhome owners got a rude surprise by matthew rudy
J
16 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
ask golf digest
deposition, adding that she became physically ill from the stress surrounding the situation. Complicating the matter was the fact that the DuBassos signed due-diligence documents before the sale acknowledging that membership wasn’t under the sellers’ control and was independent of the home sale. Plus, the agent said she routinely included contingency language in contracts for other homes in the development—stipulating that the sale wouldn’t go through until the prospective buyers knew they were in the club—if the buyers requested it. An extra poke in the eye? The market value of the property declined $200,000 by July 2017, when the DuBassos filed suit. Seems like an open-and-shut case of tough luck, but after the DuBassos’ lawsuit was thrown out because of the signed disclosure documents, the California Court of Appeals ruled in September that the case could be revived because the disclosure the DuBassos signed wasn’t enough of a warning that the couple could in fact be prevented from joining the club, and that the club itself hadn’t made that clear during the DuBassos’ tour. Regardless of how it plays out—the DuBassos still own the property, and they’re still not in the club—the moral of this story
down to the words Ronald Reagan famously used about Russia’s nuclear program: Trust, but verify. “Something like a club membership is just one element of the due diligence you should be doing if you’re buying in,” says Rob Harris, a real-estate attorney and mediation specialist who runs GolfDisputeResolution.com. “Beyond understanding how to get in—and out—of a club, what happens if the course closes? Will it stay green space or get turned into more houses? You have to closely evaluate all of the homeowners’ association, zoning and planning rules and ask lots of questions to stress test your understanding.” Even if the DuBassos “win” the appeal (or, more likely, negotiate a settlement), it will just reinforce two lessons we all should have learned in middle school: People who are around only because of what you have, where you live or what you wear aren’t your real friends. And make sure you check your work before you turn it in. are you or someone you know involved in a tricky, amusing or just plain strange golf situation? ▶ Tell us about it, and the Golf Digest Ethicist might write about it in an upcoming column. To submit, describe your issue or send a news link to GolfDigest_Ethicist@discovery.com.
Q A course I play has stopped using red, white and blue flags to indicate hole locations. Don’t we need to know front, middle and back? bradley rotholz avalon, calif. A Different-colored flags and pin sheets seem to be on the way out, as many courses assume golfers use range finders or GPS. We’re not in favor of this trend. Physical markers might be oldfashioned, but they help speed play and, unlike certain gadgets, never run out of power or say they’re “buffering” as you wait for a distance.
▶ submit your questions here: ask@GolfDigest .com or on Twitter @GolfDigest using the hashtag #AskGolfDigest
Illustration by QuickHoney
frame: Katsumi murouchi/getty images • fl ags: ronald barrett
oining a club has never been a terribly transparent, straightforward and unemotional process. Mix in multimillion-dollar real-estate deals, and what could possibly go wrong? To that, a California couple says, Hold my beer. Michael and Jenny DuBasso were contemplating buying a $2 million La Quinta retirement home within Tradition Golf Club’s gated community where Arnold Palmer not only designed the championship course but owned a vacation home and was a club member. That cachet—and a guided tour of the facility by the club’s membership director—sold the couple on the home and what they presumed would be rubberstamped approval for a social membership. But after closing the deal in January 2016, the DuBassos submitted their application (and $27,500 initiation fee) only to learn that they had been denied membership for reasons the club wouldn’t disclose. In a lawsuit they filed against the real-estate company that sold them the property and the agent who represented them in the transaction, the DuBassos said they never would have purchased the home if they knew that they wouldn’t get in the club— which is the social center of the neighborhood. “We felt like social
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Equipment Lab
Play
Rethink Your Driver Loft Less could be the key to distance, our research shows by mike stachura
in-young ko, the No. 1-ranked player on the LPGA Tour, swings the driver nearly 30 miles per hour slower than Brooks Koepka, the No. 1 male player in the world. Yet Ko uses a driver with 9 degrees of loft—1.5 degrees less than Koepka. What gives? Aren’t golfers with slower swing speeds supposed to use drivers with more loft? That’s not necessarily the case anymore. Sixteen years ago, Golf Digest presented compelling evidence that average golfers needed to use drivers with more loft to maximize distance—sometimes as much as 12, 14 or 16 degrees. But because of changing driver designs and changing swings, the opposite might be true today. In an exclusive Golf Digest study done in conjunction with Club Champion, the leading national clubfitting chain, players with swing speeds of 80 to 100 miles per hour consistently hit the driver farther when it had a lower loft, not a higher one. (The average male-golfer swing speed is in the mid-90s.) Participants in our tests achieved more distance when they used drivers with less than 10 degrees of loft. ▶
J
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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▶ longest drives by degrees of loft
8° 35% 9° 40% 10.5° 20% 12° 5% source: golf digest / club champion
In fact, swings often got the most distance with driver lofts at 9 degrees or less. (It’s still true that golfers who swing less than 80 mph would likely benefit from using drivers with 11 degrees of loft or higher.) Lower lofts can provide more energy transfer at impact because there’s less of an oblique angle. It’s why your 7-iron flies farther than your 8-iron. In our test, drivers with less loft consistently produced more ball speed, even for lowswing-speed golfers (3.2 mph more compared to the 10.5and 12-degree drivers). What’s changing? One big reason is the concept of attack angle, or the way the clubhead approaches the ball as it moves toward impact. With a slightly upward angle of attack—rather than downward—a lowerlofted driver can produce better results. Ko’s upward angle of attack is typical of the LPGA Tour. According to TrackMan data, the average attack angle on the LPGA Tour is distinctly upward at +3 degrees. On the PGA Tour, it’s relatively downward at -1.3. This is why some LPGA players could benefit from the lower-lofted drivers used by PGA Tour players swinging 20 or even 30 mph faster. A recent study by TrackMan revealed that by changing the attack angle on your driver swing from downward to significantly upward, you can boost distance by 23 yards— and that’s not for a tour-level swing; that’s at a relatively average speed of 90 mph. It’s the modern secret to distance, says Nick Sherburne, founder of Club Champion. “Even though you should
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20 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
Photograph by Victor Prado
Equipment Lab
Play
“The rookie mistake? Trying to launch a drive with your hands.” Flight School Launch a drive with your swing, not your hands by kirk oguri ▶ With all the talk about launching it, a lot of players think you should do anything you can to swing up on the ball with your driver. That often translates into hanging back and using the hands and wrists to artificially add loft through impact, like I’m doing (below). When you do that, your swing might feel faster and more powerful, but you actually cost yourself clubhead speed and the massive energy transfer that comes from good contact. Worse, you produce a ton of distance-robbing backspin.
aim high ▶ If you miss the sweet spot, it’s still OK to catch the ball higher on the face (green dot). Up there, you’ll get a higher launch and less backspin.
To launch it the right way, start with the ball off the big toe of your lead foot, and make your weight shift in the downswing more toward the ball instead of the target (above). Swinging into the ball on a path more from inside the target line helps you avoid the severe downward strike that produces a ton of spin. It also promotes contact in the center of the driver’s face or slightly higher. That’s where you get more help from all that technology built into the latest clubheads. Trust me. Even with a 9- or 10-degree driver, you’ll be able to launch it. —with matthew rudy kirk oguri, a Golf Digest Best-in-State teacher, is based at Pete’s Golf Shop in Mineola, N.Y.
Illustration by Jameson Simpson
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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▶ percent of drivers sold by club champion in 2019 / by loft
8.5°< 4% 9° 42% 10.5° 42% 12°> 12% source: golf digest / club champion
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Less Loft + Upward Angle of Attack = More Distance
▶ Our test with Club Champion featured 20 players with four swing speeds testing four lofts. Yes, those who swing 100 miles per hour or faster saw more distance with lower lofts, but the sub-100-mph swingers also got the most distance with lower lofts. Low lofts saw more roll after landing than higher lofts, too—six yards more. But these weren’t low bullets. The lower lofts yielded the same or longer carry distances because of the group’s upward angles of attack.
arno ghelfi
always get fit, don’t assume if you’re an average golfer that lofting up is always better,” he says. “Golf balls and the center of gravity on drivers have changed so much since 2003 that playing a higher loft isn’t needed anymore to create the ideal distance recipe of high launch and low spin. With the advent of launch monitors, players are learning to hit up on the ball to maximize distance. Almost every group in the test had a positive attack angle. Twenty years ago, even 10, we never saw so many positive attack angles.” With an upward angle of attack, a player creates more dynamic loft at impact, or the way the loft measures at impact compared to its static measurement. With less measured loft, an upward angle of attack and more dynamic loft, you’re creating the opportunity for high launch and less spin, a key metric for longer drives that hit the ground on a flatter angle, leading to more rollout. A high-swing-speed tour player like Koepka might not be optimizing distance with his downward angle of attack, but he probably doesn’t need to hit it farther to compete on the PGA Tour. But plenty of long-drive competitors swing a lot faster than Koepka with upward angles of attack. They use very low-lofted drivers and hit it a football field farther than Koepka. Average golfers should think more like long drivers and get every last bit of distance they can find. “It might make sense for tour players to focus on the carry distance with a driver, but for many average golfers, it’s where the ball ends up after it stops rolling,” says Tom Olsavsky, vice president of research and development at Cobra Puma Golf. “That’s sometimes why less loft produces better results.” More dynamic loft isn’t always the sign of a good swing (see sidebar, page 21), but less loft can still provide help.
Equipment Lab
Play
The “flip” is commonly fixed with a lower-lofted driver.
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6
8
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“Poll a hundred fitters, and 90 of them will tell you the most common thing they see is the flip, causing high dynamic loft and leading to launch or spin issues,” Sherburne says. “That’s commonly fixed today with lower lofts.” What’s also helping is more forgiving driver designs that locate the center of gravity back and low. This naturally creates more dynamic loft and is why a lower-loft angle could benefit a lot of golfers. To be clear, less loft isn’t the answer for everyone, especially players who don’t have a positive angle of attack. But that’s the benefit of going through a quality driver fitting with an experienced fitter and a launch monitor. The cause and effect of a change in loft can be clear. Also, with an adjustable driver, you can play around with those changes as your swing changes, too. “We now have so much more instant access to data,” Olsavsky says. “You can get tested on a launch monitor and really pinpoint what works for your swing.” Which is how Ko ended up with a 9-degree driver. She said she spent a lot of time testing which launch conditions were best. Her problem was launching the ball too high. “I wanted a little bit lower trajectory, and especially with these courses being really firm, less loft was better to get the ball running,” she says. It clearly worked. Ko averages 2.75 yards per mph of swing speed. Not only is her number better than Koepka’s, it’s better than every player on the PGA Tour.
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Photograph by Victor Prado
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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Play On Tour
Undercover Caddie Do these guys cheat? Here’s your answer t’s something we’re asked on a weekly basis, in some iteration, fueled by curiosity and a thirst for gossip: “Do these guys cheat?” Despite its frequency, the question can make even the biggest blabbermouths bashful, most clinging to the time-honored, somewhat misguided omerta that surrounds the subject. Which I don’t understand. I’m happy to answer, and do every time. In my eyes, is cheating a problem on the PGA Tour? Not really. Yes, we all have stories. Hard not to after nearly a decade out here. But it’s not as prevalent or excessive as some might believe. Even the players who carry less-than-stellar reputations, or have been dinged before, are not as bad as they’re portrayed. In my estimation, and talking with other caddies, these guys often make unintentional mistakes that rarely happen twice. Well, save for one international guy. Just an absolute nightmare when it comes to law-breaking.
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Whatever trick you can imagine— fudging coins, liberal drops, patting behind the ball for a better lie—he does it, and does so without remorse. His big tell is carrying a driver or fairway wood from the tee to his position in the rough. Takes out more grass than a weed whacker. But, honestly, he’s the exception. Now, there is one problem area, and that comes to hazards. It’s not an epidemic, but more and more, players are incorrectly dropping. It can be hard to be precise—how can you really be sure where a ball enters when you’re 300 yards away? Just recently at a fall event, a number of players hit it into the water on one hole and dropped farther up than they should have, mostly because where the ball crossed would have left a third shot where you couldn’t reach the green. If you’re looking for a future controversy, this will be the subject. I’ve been asked a lot lately, because of the LPGA Q-Series incident, about soliciting advice on club selection. One of the women involved said
ask golf digest Q I find the best ball washer is my dishwasher. Does this hurt the ball? stu mintz scottsdale A It’s probably not a great move. Short-term exposure to water shouldn’t hurt the ball, but the power of the dishwasher jets could, says Derek Ladd, senior project manager for Titleist golf ball R&D. Chemicals can negatively affect the coating, and water above 150 degrees could compromise performance, says Dave Bartels, Callaway’s senior director of golf-ball R&D. They didn’t even mention the best reason not to put them in there: A dozen balls banging around would be hell on the dishes.
it happens all the time in professional golf. To which I say, “Eh.” In most instances, a caddie will walk over and look to see what’s missing in the bag. If we’re in a featured group, we’ll flash a number to a cameraman or reporter; for those seeking guidance, there’s your sign. I’ve seen caddies, occasionally, pass along this info. But after Christina Kim sounded the alarm, no chance you’ll see it happen again. Other than that, it’s pretty clean out here. There’s a pride among players, and caddies, that we play a fair game. The other week, Russell Henley called a penalty on himself for accidentally violating the one-ball rule (using the same model), something no one would have possibly known but him. He’s the rule, not the exception. That goes for the mini-tours as well. You would think the temptation is greater, given what’s at stake. The lack of cameras and media coverage make it easier, too. But in my experience, the conduct is the same. Cheating rarely happens. What bugs me is when fans and media accuse players of cheating with “hot” drivers. Please. Manufacturers let players know the clubs are conforming; that’s the extent of the conversation. The CT machines are so fickle that it’s embarrassing we use them. At the Safeway Open, it was reported that five drivers failed the USGA’s test. It was actually closer to eight (trust me). One of those drivers that failed was put on another machine and passed. What a joke. By the way, the advantage of those nonconforming clubs is maybe an extra yard. No one is risking their reputation for that. Same goes for performanceenhancing drugs. I understand the skepticism, especially when the few players who have been popped are not exactly household names. Yet, from what I gather, stricter drug testing would be welcome because there’s nothing to hide. As for protocol, when I have seen funny business, I tell my man—and my man only—and let him decide what to do. I’m definitely not running to a rules official, but a headsup from my player might invite more scrutiny down the road. After all, I’m just the guy carrying the bag. —with joel beall
photograph: fredrik broden • illustration: ronald barrett
It’s not really a problem on the PGA Tour . . . save for one international guy.
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Play Tee to Green by Butch Harmon
Photograph by J.D. Cuban
“Don’t baby it! Limit your backswing, and give it a firm strike.”
Make This Tough Pitch Easy 3 keys for solid contact and control hirty yards out. Over a bunker. Tight lie. You might think this shot is a nightmare, but you can beat the stress with a few simple keys. For starters, commit to the hit. Don’t make the common mistake of taking a long backswing so you have to decel at impact. Limit your swing so you can accelerate through the ball for better contact. The next thing is letting the loft of the club do the work. I tell my players “Return the loft,” meaning whatever loft you set on the clubface at address, return it at impact. Too many players try to add loft by flipping their wrists on the downswing. Finally, let your body release toward the target. I know you’re nervous and want to lock yourself in place, but you’ll hit a lot of fats and thins that way. Let your body naturally turn through the shot (left). The more you get your arms and body working together, the better you’ll do.
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hogan/harmon: augusta national/getty images
—with peter morrice butch harmon is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional.
dad and mr. hogan My father, Claude Harmon, won the 1948 Masters, and he learned the strategy of the game from his friend Ben Hogan. Their regular bet was $10 for missing a fairway or green. On short par 4s, Dad would hit driver off the tee to leave himself an easy wedge, but Hogan would hit 4-wood, 8-iron. After they played one particular hole this way several times, Dad asked Hogan why he went with the 4-wood. ‘Because you can’t hit the fairway with driver, and I can hit the green with an 8-iron. I’ve already won $40 on this one tee shot.’ A lesson Dad said he never forgot.”
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â&#x2013;ś different strokes Carly Chaikin in her home studio.
Photograph by Ramona Rosales
Golfers We Like
Play
Not A Hacker, Actually ‘Mr. Robot’ star Carly Chaikin has the golf bug hen she was a little kid, Carly Chaikin’s dad signed her up for summer golf camp at his Southern California club. “I. Just. Hated. It,” the actress says. “I would get so frustrated and throw my clubs. I’d show up in sweatpants and black nail polish, like a rebel.” Those days are distant memories now as Chaikin, who most recently played the computer hacker Darlene on the USA Network series “Mr. Robot,” is fully committed to the game. Unless she’s on set or working on her other passion, painting, she tries to play at least twice a week and takes a lesson or practices weekly. Even her upcoming wedding weekend will include a golf tournament. Golf began to click for Chaikin, 29, after she and her fiance, Ryan Bunnell, started teeing it up with their fathers a couple of years ago. As she noticed “glimpses” of her potential, her competitive instinct—honed by gymnastics and high school volleyball—kicked in. She recently beat her fiance for the first time, shooting 86 (her best round) at the par-67 Westlake Golf Course outside Los Angeles. How did she celebrate? “I told everyone I know,” she says with a laugh. Shooting the fourth and final season of “Mr. Robot” in wintry New York made it difficult to play, though she and her dad, Michael, did get in 18 holes at Liberty National one day. Her driver broke en route from L.A., so the pro lent her a new TaylorMade M6, “and I was launching it.” It has become her favorite club. How does Chaikin imagine her devious “Mr. Robot” character Darlene would fare as a golfer? “I think she would probably bring her own golf balls that she had preprogrammed to do what she wants,” she says. But even that might not be enough to hold Darlene’s interest for long. Says Chaikin: “She wouldn’t like the golf outfits enough to play. She’d be a lot like me in my younger days. She’d probably sit in the golf cart and chain-smoke.” —peter finch
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issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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Play Gimme One Thing
“Feel a little stretch at the elbows? You’re doing it right.”
ask golf digest Q I witnessed four aces this season. Is this a record? jim marco rochester, n.y.
by adam kolloff
30 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
efore i explain why you always seem to hit fairway bunker shots fat and what to do about it, let me take you back to the turn of the century. If you’ve got your phone or laptop handy, search “Tiger Woods bunker shot, 2000 RBC Canadian Open.” When I think about the all-time greatest shots, his 6-iron over water from 218 yards on the last hole—which stopped 18 feet from the flag and clinched his victory—is burned into my memory. If you watch it, take a moment to marvel, but also notice how he addresses the ball. He was gripping way down on the club, and that’s a key to fixing your problem. In the future, grip down on the
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club enough that your arms feel slightly more extended at address, while the clubhead still hovers just above the sand. And when you swing, maintain that feeling. Your trail arm will bend some, but the feeling of extension will help keep width in your swing, so you can return the club to the ball before it hits the sand. Just be careful that when you grip down, you don’t stand closer to the ball. That hurts your ability to preserve width. Your swing thought: Keep my arms extended. —with ron kaspriske adam kolloff is one of Golf Digest’s Best Young Teachers. He operates Pure Drive Golf in Woburn, Mass.
Illustration by Mark Ulrikson
ronald barrett
Taking Too Much Sand Avoid fatting fairwaybunker shots at setup
A We’ve come across odd holein-one records over the years (people hitting from their knees, for example), but witnessing aces is a new one for us. A few years ago, Ron Hirsch of Billings, Mont., got a newspaper writeup after witnessing four in a season. We’ll say you and Ron are tied for the most until we hear otherwise.
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harry higgs pga tour
age 28 lives dallas
Journeys Play
“I was back playing mini-tour events. I thought about quitting” Harry Higgs The one round that changed my life verybody gives me a hard time about the “where I’m from” section of my online tour bio. I have Camden, N.J., listed as my birthplace and Dallas as my residence, but I was only born in Camden. I grew up in Kansas City, Kan. That’s where I’m really from. We had a Korn Ferry Tour event in Kansas City last year, and I asked the starter to introduce me as being from Kansas City. “All my friends will kill me if they hear Dallas,” I said. Another time I played in a proam, and my whole group was from New Jersey. They were so excited to play with me, but I was like, “Sorry. I’m not actually a Jersey guy.”
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my dad taught my younger brother and me how to play golf. We mimicked him hitting Wiffle balls in the back yard. We’d draw golf courses on the kids’ paper tablecloths at restaurants. Our parents realized we were obsessed, so they got us junior sets. ●●●
it was competitive between my brother and me almost immediately. We pushed each other and tried our best to beat each other. We lived on a golf course, so I could ride my bike to the golf shop. I remember playing in summers, sunup to sundown. ●●●
i didn’t have a lesson until my freshman year of high school. i preferred to work on my game alone. I was the king of being out there 10 hours a day, but I soon realized there was only an hour in which I was really focused. This changed when I went to SMU. They had great teachers and a ton of information available. Others were using the swing coaches, all of the data from TrackMan, and they were beating me, so I realized I needed to use it, too.
traveling on pga tour latinoamérica was a mix between a circus and a fraternity. We all had just graduated college, got status and went to South America. My Spanish was OK, but it was more important to know golf Spanish because you had to converse with your caddies, who were locals. Corta means short, so we’d say, “Corta es mejor” (Short is better). It was never perfect. If I was between 7-iron and 8-iron, there was only so much my caddie could do to help. If I pulled 8, it was my responsibility to hit it where it was supposed to go. It made me take more ownership of my game. ●●●
the caddies sometimes took buses at 3 a.m. to come caddie. when you’re focused on playing golf, you forget that there’s a whole other world out there. These guys are lugging my clubs for $50 a day, feeding their families off of that—I always paid more when I played well—yet they were so excited to be there. It was humbling. ●●●
in 2017, i had no status anywhere. I was back playing mini-tour events. I thought about quitting. Photograph by Jensen Larson
at a q-school qualifier in st. george, utah, that year, i remember being one or two shots inside the number. Walking to the range, I thought, If I don’t get through this stage of Q school—here, now—I’m going to be out of money. It’s more pressure than being in contention in a PGA Tour event where if you don’t have your best day, you’re still going to make a lot of money. If I didn’t have my best stuff in Utah that day, I was looking for a different job. ●●●
i shot 63. I did it when I needed to, and did it super clean. It’s a round I still think about. ●●●
there’s a lot of nongolf factors that go into making it. Asking people for money and getting told no, for example, is hard. I remember getting dressed up and having a business plan for my first meeting and being told, “I don’t do charity.” I must have asked 60 people my first year. I printed the “No” emails and hung them in my room as motivation.
i get it. They say boxers, restaurants and golfers are all terrible investments. But for some people, it’s a way to live their dream through me. My first year, seven people pitched in to give me a total of $45,000. ●●●
in 2019, i had friends from trinity forest and benchmark bank in dallas help me for the year with my expenses. That was the first time I felt I could play freely without the worry of money, and obviously that worked out. I finished fifth in the Korn Ferry season standings to earn my PGA Tour card. ●●●
i was paired with adam scott for one of my first weeks on the pga tour. The crowds following him were huge and loud, but they didn’t notice me. We both made a nice run of birdies on the back nine. There were a few holes where we both birdied, and I’m walking off the green, and no one says anything, and Adam walks off the green, and everyone’s like, “Come on, Adam! One more!” I say, “Hey, I made birdie, too!” I thought it was funny, and the crowd did, too.
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i want to win the fedex cup. I think it’s good to throw out ridiculously aggressive goals, because that way you’re never satisfied. I want to feel like what I do is good enough, and that I belong.
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i hate losing, but i don’t give it much power. I’ve always been an optimist. Even if I miss a cut, I only think about the good shots. Trust me, I’ve hit some terrible shots. But luckily what fills my mind is more of the good. I took a roundabout way of getting here, but that mentality is what got me through. —with keely levins
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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Play The Archive
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golf digest
Unearthing History Celebrating 70 years of Golf Digest
it’s not known what Bing Crosby is saying in this 1958 photograph, taken during the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am by a Golf Digest founding editor, though Bing might be recalling the ace he made a decade earlier on this, the renowned par-3 16th hole at Cypress Point Club. As Golf Digest celebrates its 70th year in 2020 by culling interesting photos from its archives, the Crosby, now known as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (Feb. 6-9), is a good place to start. Crosby established the pro-am format in 1937 in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. With the United States entering World War II, it was canceled after the 1942 event, but Bing restarted it in 1947, initially at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Cypress Point and Monterey Peninsula Country Club. Pebble Beach is still the anchor, with Spyglass Hill and Monterey Peninsula in the rota. The Crosby name was dropped from the title when AT&T began its sponsorship in 1986. But Bing’s name still surfaces, notably when the weather is inclement. Crosby weather, as it’s called, has been part of the tournament since it moved to Pebble Beach. —john strege
34 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
▶ the bing show Crosby on Cypress Point Club’s par-3 16th.
Play BioGolf by David Leadbetter
Photographs by Dom Furore
“Use your pelvis to sling the club through impact.” The Key to Speed It’s the hips—but not the way you might think ho doesn’t love Rory McIlroy’s golf swing, especially the way he can fire his hips on the way down and power through the ball. But if you’re trying to rotate your hips even half as well as Rory to hit the ball farther, you should know that his hips are actually slowing down as the club approaches the ball. My friend J.J. Rivet, a French biomechanist who works with the European Tour, has studied hip rotation in elite-level golfers and has measured the speed in which their hips are moving in the downswing. The average is about 600 degrees per second in the initial phase, but the hips rapidly slow down as the club approaches the ball, to an average of 200 degrees per second. Why? J.J. calls it the catapult effect, and I’ll explain it in layman’s terms. Imagine you’re driving a car at a decent speed. If you apply the breaks quickly, your body lurches forward
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(hopefully against a seat belt). In the golf swing, if your hips decelerate quickly in the downswing, the club lurches forward, speeding up as it approaches the ball. The catapult’s arm comes to a halt, but the sling keeps moving. That’s power. Now for the hips to decelerate properly, you need your lower body to be stable. That’s why you see me standing on alignment rods (below). When you practice your full swing, standing on the rods reminds you to keep your feet grounded, which allows you to accelerate and decelerate the hips correctly. Whenever you see a golfer “spin out” as they swing the club through, that means they didn’t have good lower-body stability. If you anchor your swing, you’ll catapult the club into the ball—like Rory.
Do top players
Precision is
—with ron kaspriske david leadbetter is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional.
▶ anchor your swing Standing on alignment rods gives your feet feedback about stability. issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
37
Play The Loop
“Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child.” —John Updike
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presidential (golf) style through the years dwight d.
john f. kennedy
ronald reagan
barack obama
• General Augusta
• Ask not
• Trickledown swing-onomics
• Suave
38 golfdigest.com | issue 1 . 2020
Make
Getty imaGes: Fowler: robert l aberGe, eisenhower: Central Press/strinGer, kennedy: bettmann, reaGan: tony korody, obama: robert Perry/strinGer, trumP: aFP/strinGer, PenCils: biitli
MATH WE DON’T HATE
woods: ben jared, deChambeau: niChol as kamm, miCkelson: andrew redinGton, matsuyama: ChunG sunG-jun • bar: riChard bradbury • doGs: Paul windle • Club President: Gluekit/Getty imaGes
@GOTOTHELOOP secret admirers of the pga tour
on the campaign trail with your future club president 5:30 a.m. Rise and grind 7 a.m. Photo op with maintenance 9 a.m. Send monogrammed Pro V1s to various greens-committee members noon Deliver keynote campaign speech. Remember to . . . • Unveil campaign slogan: “The future is a drivable par 4!” • Distance self from previous administration’s disastrous cartpath-only policy • Promise to build fence along border with nearby public course; announce the public course will pay for it
“tiger, you have me seeing sunday red.” —a humble patron
puppy bowl: golf edition name: scotty owner: max homa known for: best twitter in the pfl
name: wilson owner: padraig harrington claim to fame: pga rookie pup of the year
name: leia owner: jimmy walker hero: barky sanders
name: lola and gatsby owner: michelle wie position: wide retrievers “bryson, you raise the barometric pressure in my heart.” —a fellow science lover
2 p.m. Release attack ad accusing opponent of improper drop at last year’s member-guest
“phil, let’s share a phireside together.” —a calf enthusiast
▶ Rewrite the Rules of Golf in ▶ Send apology letters
▶ Build TPC Sawgrass
“hideki, my heart skips a beat when you pause at the top.” —a quick transitioner
Play Your Best GD Schools
ou could stash your clubs for a few months and forget about golf until the weather improves, but I have a better idea: Use this time, when scores don’t really matter and your handicap might be frozen, to work on a few things that can have a meaningful impact on your game next spring. What things? Two are as simple as rehearsing better body motions in front of a mirror. The other is a drill you can do indoors or out. Pro tip: You might want to use foam golf balls for spousal harmony. —with ron kaspriske
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sean hogan is director of instruction for the Leadbetter Golf Academy in ChampionsGate, Fla.
40 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
lead arm moving back short of parallel with the ground. Hold this position (above) for a couple of seconds, noting a hinge of the wrists and a fold of your trail arm. You’re now in an ideal pre-impact position with the club trailing the hands. From there, swing down and through into a low, abbreviated finish. This will give you a great feel for how to compress the ball with a square clubface and a forward-leaning shaft.
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perfect your pivot ▶ Now’s the perfect time to groove how the body should rotate during the swing. With your hands positioned on the side of your thighs, get into a good address posture hinging forward from your hips. Now simulate a clubless backswing, letting your arms move up and down your legs as you pivot away from the target (above). Then simulate a through-swing (left). This is the look and feel of a good pivot, and you can practice it anywhere. Keep doing this all winter, and your swing will look and feel much more efficient and in control.
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sync your swing ▶ This drill helps sync your arm swing with your body rotation. It’s also a great isometric stretch as you warm-up. Get in your address posture, and hook the back of your trail hand (right for righties) under the back of your lead hand. Now pretend you’re making a backswing, feeling like your lead arm stays connected to your upper body as your torso rotates (left). Then simulate a downswing maintaining this connection. Remember how this feels when you hit the course next spring. Photographs by Dom Furore
Play Your Best Tour Technique
On-Course Education Practicing while you play works (and it saves time) by paula creamer
’ve changed literally everything about my game over the past few years—how I putt, how I chip, what I do in bunkers, my full swing. It’s not just placing band-aids on things, these are real changes. And it’s been a lot of work. Because this is my job, I can afford to spend a lot of time on the range and in the short-game area. But I realize you probably don’t have that luxury. So what can you do? Try practicing while you play. It’s a great way to get the reps in when you don’t have any other time for practice, and another benefit is that the things you work on are still fresh in your mind when it’s time to swing for real. I’m doing a lot more on-course practice (drills and swing thoughts), too, and I’d like to pass some of those ideas on to you. Save your practice-range money. — with Keely levins
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pause your driver when you’re feeling pressure to drive the ball into the fairway, it’s natural to feel anxious or excited. When that happens to me, I have a tendency to get a little quick with my transition from backswing to downswing. It’s a pretty common reaction and usually happens when you want to hit it harder. But rushing will screw up your timing. To help keep that from happening, I’ll make some practice swings where I purposely pause at the top for two seconds (above) before starting the downswing. It helps override my anxiousness, and it doesn’t make my downswing any slower. It just helps ensure I finish the backswing, so everything stays in sync.
“Instead of standing there while you wait to hit, work on something.” widen your iron swing an on-course drill that I love when my iron play is off is to have my caddie stand safely behind my ball on the target line. When I start the takeaway, I swing the clubhead toward him while keeping the clubface looking at the ball for as long as I can (right). I have a tendency to get the club too far behind me on the way back, which can lead to all sorts of challenges on the way down. This drill helps me square the face easier at impact. It adds more width, too, which will help you get more distance. You can do this drill as much as you want during the round. Just remember that when it’s time to take your stance to hit the ball, your caddie can’t be behind you on your target line (Rule 10.2). Some pros have been dinged two shots for that in the past year.
chips: set the handle my go-to thought when chipping is, Check the handle. If it’s not set for the type of shot I want to hit, my contact might be poor. For example, lowering your hands (left) adds loft to the shot. And raising the shaft so it’s more vertical is going to help you hit a bump-and-run type of chip. I find that higher-shaft technique more forgiving and needs less practice. The club just glides along the ground. Try a few while you’re waiting to tee off to get a feel for it. paula creamer has won 10 LPGA Tour events including the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open.
Photographs by Dom Furore
Play
Collecting
A collector finds art in his passion
44 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
“They’re a connection to a different time in golf and life.”
here was a time when Jeremy Freeman, a photographer and avid golfer from Atlanta, was no more enthralled by vintage golf balls than the rest of us. Then, in 2017, while rummaging through his father’s attic, he found his late grandfather’s golf bag. It contained a sleeve of Top-Flites from the 1970s, still fresh in the cellophane, their curious dimple pattern, slick texture, old-school typography and unusual paint pronouncing themselves as works of art. This is how the collecting bug takes hold. Freeman, 37, began scouring eBay for the coolest balls, always seeking examples in excellent condition, with a special eye for ones bearing unique stamps and logos. Later he bought them by the crate at Play It Again Sports and spent hours sorting through them. More important, he began photographing them, lighting each carefully and retouching the images to remove glare. The highlights of his passion are on his Instagram (@golfballgallery), where followers have joined him in his search, mailing him wonderful old models he never knew existed. Rare golf balls can yield spectacular prices at auction. But that’s not what appeals to Freeman. “It’s the look and feel of them, the almost crude originality of some of the logos,” he says. “They’re a connection to a different time in golf and life.”
T
—guy yocom Photographs by Jeremy Freeman
Play The Leading Edge by Michael Breed
“The hidden benefit of a big turn: better tempo.”
▶ If you’re like a lot of golfers, you carry a towel to clean your clubs and wipe your hands and face. Great, but to avoid spreading dirt all over your mug, divide your towel in half. Wet one end for cleaning grooves, and use the rest of that half for your grips. Keep the other side clean for your face. And wash your towel often—don’t be superstitious. A dirty towel had nothing to do with your career round back in June.
Get Your Driving Back How one easy tweak can turn things around f you’re struggling with the driver, focus on making more body turn during the backswing. Why? Because the stress you’re feeling is probably causing you to make a shorter, tighter swing. Adding more turn will put you back to where you normally are, which can reverse the issues you’re having. A good swing thought for more rotation is this: Feel like you’re turning into the heel of your trail foot while lightening the pressure on your lead foot. Make sure you don’t just slide
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46 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
your hips back; it has to be a weight shift caused by the rotation of your upper body and pelvis (above). To promote this, another good feel is the lead hip turning farther back. This fuller backswing motion will help you regain your natural tempo and minimize the need to save shots with hand action on the downswing. More turn means more consistency—and finding your mojo again off the tee. michael breed is Golf Digest’s Chief Digital Instructor.
getting a kid into golf ▶ A few things to keep in mind with kids. First, make it fun. Tee off with tennis balls, have contests—and definitely avoid technical advice. Second, applaud the good stuff. Even simple things like getting it airborne. Last, keep the ride home positive. Save your “Golf is a tough game” speech for the teenage years.
Photograph by J.D. Cuban
illustration: nishant choksi • Woods: rob carr/getty images
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Profile
Play
“The Marine Corps owes me nothing. I owe the Marine Corps everything.”
A Marine for Life Bob Parsons continues golf’s connection to the Corps by tom callahan
Photograph by John Loomis
ast veterans day weekend, on the 244th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, a bullet-headed lance corporal, Bob Parsons, became only the second enlisted man to be named A Marine for Life. It’s an awesome title (even though every Marine is a Marine for life), though Parsons wore it modestly on the deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid, berthed in New York City within sight of Sully Sullenberger’s heroic landing on the Hudson River. “The Marine Corps owes me nothing,” Parsons said. “I owe the Marine Corps everything.” Part of a billion-dollar business empire he built from ingenuity, and dedicated to philanthropy, involved golf, starting with his Scottsdale National Golf Club and his equipment company, PXG (Parsons Xtreme Golf). So, for just a day, golf was back in the Corps. ▶
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issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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Play Profile
Once, the sport was studded with Marines. Dresser drawers burst with photographs of young men—unbelievably young—in dress-blue uniforms, like Jay Hebert, Tony Lema, Jackie Burke Jr. and Lee Trevino. Hebert, famous for joining Lionel in the only brother combination among PGA Championship winners, should be known for Iwo Jima as well. For the shrapnel that tore a fist out of one of his legs. For the sniper who zinged him in the helmet. For the four wounded comrades he carried out of the fight, one at a time, back to the beach. Jay kept that blooddrenched island and the Purple Heart he won there in a wood box he never opened. The year Hebert died, 1997, a third winner of the PGA, Dave Marr, said, “I can’t tell you how many lessons and lectures Jay gave me over the years. By taking care of me, he was paying my dad back for a sand wedge he gave him. Jay wasn’t just a champion golfer, he was a champion man. Handsome; liked to dance. The wives on tour lined up to take a spin with him. They all loved Jay. But he loved only Barbara, his wife. He was an unfailingly true man. He was a Marine.” Burke, a Masters champion, was a stalwart on Ryder Cup teams and the captain of perhaps the best U.S. side of all time. His fellow Marines put Jackie in mind of players like Ted Kroll (an Army man with three Purple Hearts), who on their own might be considered average or even ordinary golfers, but who were transformed when they played on a team. “I’ll take a unit man over a headliner every time,” Burke said. A unit man is someone who shouts “Oo-rah,” meaning “farewell,” or “until then,” whenever his unit is mentioned. During the dinner on the Intrepid, at every reference
50 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
to different sections of corps, “Oo-rahs” rang out here and there around the room. Some 500 Marines of every stripe, including the present commandant, Gen. David H. Berger, and a past one, Gen. James Amos (retired), cut the 244th birthday cake with a silver sword and sang the Marine hymn as though they were still standing at their racks in San Diego, Parris Island, Camp Lejeune or Quantico. From the Halls of Montezuma . . . Parsons sang the loudest. He grew up in Baltimore, not without difficulty. The year Bob turned 8, 25-year-old quarterback Johnny Unitas
burger joint (“Everybody goes to Gino’s!”) and began a march to entrepreneurial riches. In Vietnam, Parsons’ ambition was small: to make it to mail call the next day. He stayed a bit of a rebel, perversely proud, for instance, of the Good Conduct Medal he didn’t win. But he came to terms with authority. He accepted discipline. Bob made it home with his own Purple Heart to encounter the shouted insults of the era. He made several trips to artist Maya Lin’s black gash of a monument in Washington, always around midnight, so he had the grounds to himself and no one could see his tears.
▶ honored Parsons with Gen. James Amos (retired) on the Corps’ birthday.
led the Colts to a suddendeath-overtime victory for the NFL championship, winning the entire town. The team’s ultimate leader, defensive end Gino Marchetti, fought in the Battle of the Bulge before he went to college. Tight end Jim Mutscheller, who caught the last pass in the big game, was a Marine in Korea. Defensive tackle Art Donovan was a Marine on Guam. Parsons confesses to having failed fifth grade: parochial school. Also, he was asked to leave Polytechnic High. Bob wonders if he finished high school then at Patterson mostly on the strength of the Marine enlistment papers he showed his teachers. But before Bob left for boot camp he noticed Marchetti had opened a single 15-cent ham-
More than 58,000 men and women welcomed him home. On the GI Bill, Parsons went to the University of Baltimore, this time graduating magna cum laude. Teaching himself how to write computer programs in a basement, he created a succession of nervy businesses that ended up being the pioneering domain GoDaddy. As he went, he made a lot of money and gave a lot of it away, particularly to the causes of the Corps. “As long as I have a dime,” he said on the Intrepid, “the Marine Corps has a nickel.” It’s a little sad that Trevino will probably be the last great golfer to come out of the Marines. “The Marine Corps was the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” Lee says. “Back
when I went in, they tested to see if you were tough enough to be a Marine, and to stay there. I got hit in the jaw the first 15 minutes. Knocked me down. I got back up and just stood there, at attention. It wasn’t going to discourage me. I’d been hit harder than that at home.” Trevino had dropped out of school in the eighth grade, because he had nobody to make him go to school. “I was pretty smart,” he said, “but I had no supporting cast. Nothing at home and nothing at school. Everybody was from a farm, and if you didn’t come to school, nobody gave a damn.” The Marines did. “The thing is, I was actually looking for discipline,” he says. “A lot of kids today who end up getting in trouble and going to jail, they want discipline. You see, discipline is attention. You know what I’m saying? That’s what I lacked.” Attention. The military hardly seems to be an option anymore, but the spirit behind it is. Tiger Woods’ father, Earl, was an Army lieutenant colonel who served two 13-month tours in Vietnam. When the Escalade hit the fire hydrant, starting Tiger’s 10-year slide into the wilderness, I emailed him, asking (only half-kiddingly), “How close did you come to enlisting?” He emailed back, “For nearly my entire life, I’ve wondered what it would be like to be in the military. One of the questions I hear most at my Foundation is what would you be if you weren’t a pro golfer? I answer the same way every time. I’d be in Special Ops. Maybe Green Beret like Pop. I know some people that are Army Special Forces, and I’m amazed at what they do. I’m proud to call them my friends.” Hebert, Burke, Trevino and Parsons could have told him, this was a good note on which to base a renewal. Oo-rah.
Courtesy of PXG
“As long as I have a dime, the Marine Corps has a nickel.”
MARCH 10-15
T P C SAWG R ASS PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL T IC K ETS AN D TR AV EL I NFOR MAT IO N AVA IL ABL E AT TH EPL AY ER S.COM /TRAV EL
Play Equipment
driver
story Won the 2019 Wyndham Championship without making a bogey. He’s the first tour winner to do so since 1974. winning shot I made birdie on 15 after a 3-iron from 260—a high fade that landed softly. To hit a shot that difficult when I needed to, it’s the best of my career. off the course I grew up hunting and fishing. It taught me patience. Sometimes you have a lot of chances; sometimes you don’t. It’s a lot like golf.
specs Titleist TS3 (9.5º, A-1 SureFit setting), Mitsubishi Diamana BF60 TX shaft, 44.75”, D-4 swingweight. All grips Golf Pride Tour Velvet. ▶ I put this driver in play the first week I hit it. Usually I take more time to make a change, but this looked good to me, so I trusted it right away. That comfort can translate into more swing speed.
fairway wood/hybrid specs Fairway wood: Titleist TS2 (15º, A-1 setting), Mitsubishi Diamana BF70 TX, 42.75”, D-3.5 swingweight; Titleist TS3 hybrid (21º), Mitsubishi Kuro Kage B TiNi 90 shaft. ▶ I carry a hybrid or a 3-iron depending on the course. If there are short par 5s, I’ll put the hybrid in so I can hit that higher, softer shot. I play the 3-iron more. I like it off the tee. It’s a great alternative when I just need to get something in play.
irons specs 4-, 5-iron: Titleist U500, D-3 swingweight; 6- through 9-iron: Titleist 718 AP2 irons, 1.5º flat lie angle, D-4 swingweight. All shafts True Temper Project X 6.5, +½” over standard.
—with keely levins
club
yards*
▶ My rookie year, I had never seen greens as firm as tour greens. I realized I needed to hit my long irons higher to hold them, so we put in the utility irons with weaker lofts. It’s been huge. My ranking in proximity from 225 to 250 yards in 2017 was 182nd. In 2019, it was 36th.
driver
290
3-wood
260
hybrid
230
4-iron
220
5-iron
208
6-iron
192
7-iron
177
8-iron
165
▶ I took out my pitching wedge and put in the 46-degree Vokey. I like the control. It was easier to hit softer shots with it.
9-iron
150
putter
46˚
135
50˚
125
specs Titleist Scotty Cameron GoLo 5 putter (with two 10-gram weights), 3 degrees of loft.
54˚
107
60˚
90
* carry distance
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the postman ▶ My mom had this yardage-book cover made for me with my nickname, “Postman” on it. On the inside, it says “Open on Sundays.”
classic marks ▶ I like the soft feel of the 2017 Pro V1x, so I play that instead of the 2019 version. I started marking my ball like this (always in black) when I was young and haven’t changed it.
wedges specs Titleist Vokey Design SM7: 46º (F grind), 50º (F grind), 54º (bent to 55º, F grind); and 60º (L grind). All with True Temper Dynamic Gold shafts, +½”.
▶ I used a blade putter for 12 years and switched to a mallet last spring. I was inconsistent inside 10 feet. A line on top instead of a dot might seem like a small thing, but I could see a difference right away. I was more comfortable, more confident.
old school ▶ I got this divot tool as a kid. The spring doesn’t even work anymore. It’s the only good luck kind of thing I carry. It’s always in my left pocket when I’m playing.
Photographs by Jensen Larson
poston: streeter Lecka/pGa of america/Getty imaGes
age 26 lives Hickory, N.C.
Play The View from Pebble Beach
Jim Nantz Revealing some secrets of my back-yard par 3 ’m asked periodically what career path I would have pursued had my broadcasting gig not panned out. It’s a hard question, because I’ve been working in television since I was a 20-yearold junior at the University of Houston. But I do know that my “other” dream job as a kid growing up in Colts Neck, N.J., involved golf course architecture. That passion behind my alternate career choice was reinforced in the summer of 2014, when I gazed out at my somewhat ordinary back yard and imagined a golf hole there. Not just any hole, but a replica of the famed par-3 seventh hole at Pebble Beach, which we admire every day from our house. The fact it was the seventh hole at Pebble played no small role in pulling it off. In 2012, my wife, Courtney, and I were married on the tee there. It was one of the great moments of our lives, and what better anniversary gift could I present to her than a replica of our wedding chapel? And these days our little ones, Finley and Jameson, use the putting surface as their outdoor playground. It was an eight-month build-out, working with a talented local crew that mercifully adjusted to my chaotic schedule. We inched along gradually, with the goal of getting the hole precisely 50 percent to scale. Sculpting the bunkers was key and turned out to be more challenging than anticipated. The shaping of the green also had to be faithful to the real deal. Pebble Beach’s gifted superintendent, Chris Dalhamer, provided a topography blueprint, accurate to the inch, that enabled us to duplicate every ridge, nose and shoulder of the original. Friends Sir Nick Faldo and Doug Mackenzie consulted on some of the nuances that made it match up visually. Even the tee is pretty authentic, with a two-level teeing ground separated by a stone wall. The finished product plays 53 yards to the center of the green, exactly half the distance from the tips at Pebble, with a vertical drop that is in keeping with the original. The final touch was a sound system that plays almost subliminally in the background. The featured song being—what else?—Dave Loggins’ “Augusta,” which
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▶ The replica of Pebble’s No. 7 is built 50 percent to scale; acers are featured on the Rock of Fame.
visitors instantly recognize as the soothing piano undercurrent I narrate over during Masters broadcasts. The hole debuted on Feb. 1, 2015, only days before the AT&T Pebble Beach ProAm. On Saturday of tournament week, Brandt and Mandy Snedeker joined us for dinner. Brandt was playing well, and he predicted he not only would win the “Crosby” for the second time but that he would mark the occasion by making a celebratory ace on my back-yard hole. Brandt indeed won the event the next day with a final-round 67 and wasted no time coming over to the house to celebrate. On about his 10th attempt, he jarred one—a tour victory followed by the first ace ever made on the historic “new” seventh. That is one of 16 aces on the little gem. Each player has his name memorialized on a plaque mounted on what I call the Rock of Fame. The homeowner—and occasional ace-maker—has left his name off the rock. At the outset, I wanted to avoid the hole becoming public, for fear of it seeming a little over the top. But a few years ago, Sir Nick
raked a reduced-compression ball in front of him with floodlights blaring and a clutch of guests urging him on. Nick knocked the shot in, and after raising his arms in that triumphant way of his, instantly posted the video on social media before I could intervene. The “secret,” such as it was, was out. So many cool moments have followed. Phil Mickelson made an ace the week before last summer’s U.S. Open, generating over one million views. It seldom happens on the first try, of course, but Mark Immelman made it on swing No. 1. So did a young man from the LSU golf team, Blake Caldwell. David Feherty made an ace with comedic, deadpan ease. So did my NFL broadcast partner, Tony Romo, after a small bucket. Billy Horschel dunked one to win a competition against some other pros. Ian Poulter missed the cut last June, but before he left town, he stopped by to take a few swings. His last shot of an otherwise dreary week was a hole-in-one. I’m proud to say that many of the game’s most iconic players have taken their best shots. Names you know: Couples, Irwin, Love, Wadkins, O’Meara, Woodland, Rahm, Furyk, Kuchar, DeChambeau, Pepper, just to name a few. Their names are not etched on the Rock of Fame. Nor is that of Jack Nicklaus, who has hit balls on several occasions. Each time I’ve stood by, pulling for a hole-out by Jack. It hasn’t happened yet. And then there’s Arnold Palmer. The King took two swings during a visit to the house in the final year of his life. The second one settled less than two feet from the cup, and the wink and smile on Arnold‘s face is an image I’ll carry with me forever. It turned out to be the last golf shot he ever struck at Pebble Beach. Photographs by Amanda Reamer
I USED TO THINK THAT GOLF IS MY LIFE, THAT IT’S WHO I AM. . . . IT’S NOT.
GD INTERVIEW
LEARN â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ING CURVE JON RAHM
REFINES THE ROUGH EDGES & LOOKS TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP : WINNING A MAJOR issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
57
BY BRIAN WACKER
at just 25 years old, Jon Rahm is on a steady progression. He was the No. 1 amateur in the world in 2015, and after turning professional the next year, it took him only 61 weeks to crack the top five in the World Golf Ranking. (Only Tiger Woods, who did it in 33 weeks, accomplished the feat faster.) And it took Rahm less than two years to reach No. 2 in the world. He has won 10 times around the world, including three times on the PGA Tour and another six on the European Tour, amassing more than $25 million in career earnings. With three finishes among the top four in his eight most recent majors, the only question seems to be when heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll win his first. Photographs by Peter Yang
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, I USED TO GET IN FIGHTS IN CLASS. I WAS VERY EASY TO PICK ON.
I never told her that. So she came away impressed . . . and maybe a little mad for a day or two. I had a pretty good forehand and decent backhand, and she taught me how to serve. She was someone who thought golfers aren’t athletes, so she assumed I couldn’t do anything else, really. But I had played so many sports when I was a kid before I decided to focus on golf. ●●●
what kind of pelota player were you?
I was good. I was in the back creating the strategy and dictating the pace. I always liked that, being in control. The guy in the front wins all the points, but it’s all set up by whoever is playing in the back. ●●●
you also were a goalkeeper in soccer, along with your older brother, and you did kung fu. how’d you get into the latter? My mom did tai chi with an instruc-
tor, and I was always hanging around before or after her lessons and was just drawn to it. I haven’t done it in a while, but I love it. ●●●
military box on wheels—Rahm still has the look of a college kid. There’s a softness to him. He’s polite, carries his clubs, and is on time. In his eyes, there’s a glint of the intensity below the surface but also a thoughtfulness as he sits down to discuss getting married, getting control of his emotions, getting the best of Tiger Woods and more. ●●●
as we speak you’re about to get married [one ceremony in spain in december, and another in san diego in february], to kelley cahill, whom you met while you were both at arizona state. do you remember the first date?
I had no money. I was living on a couple hundred bucks a month at most, so I had a budget. We used to go to this place called Zendejas because she loved their margaritas and we both loved food, and it wasn’t expensive. But we have some disagreement about this—we don’t know if that was our first official date, or if it was at a football game. Rahm’s rise hasn’t been without blemishes—most notably a number of tantrums, including a series of meltdowns during the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills during which, among other misdeeds, he slammed and kicked his wedge and punched a sign on a tee box. Yet, those who know Rahm best say that his personality outside the ropes is nothing like that. He is affable—competitive but easygoing—and in his first Ryder Cup in 2018 outside Paris, he proved a smooth fit with teammates in the locker room. When he rolls into an eclectic and artsy section of Phoenix on a sun-splashed morning in his shiny Arizona State-maroon Mercedes AMG G 63—essentially a $200,000
●●●
she was on the track and field team and threw the javelin at asu. have you ever tried throwing one? Oh, God no.
It’s such a weird motion. You have to rely on overhand strength, and as a golfer that’s not something I have. She has a lot more overhand strength than I do. And I didn’t want to injure myself. ●●●
she introduced you to tennis, though. how’d that go? I’ve actually always been
into tennis but only watched it. But I did play a lot of sports with rackets and paddles growing up, like pelota [a Basque game that’s a cross between jai-alai and racketball]. But
any parallels to golf? Respect to one
another. When I was younger, I used to get in fights in class. I was very easy to pick on. That’s another reason my mom got me involved in it, to defend myself and to learn. Fighting is a last resort. Learning kung fu helped, and from that I learned all the aspects of martial arts. But mostly it’s about trying to be respectful to people, and that carries over to golf. I might get mad at myself, but I try to be respectful to my playing partners and gracious in victory or defeat. Every time someone beats me, I’ll try to say something kind to them, because that’s how it should be. If they beat me, they beat me. ●●●
you’ve been known to show your anger on the course. does that spill over to other sports as well, or do you have fewer expectations when it’s not your profession? I was always the same way in
everything, no matter what sport it was. I have always, always hated to lose, and I love to win. So I’m very demanding, and with that the emotion just comes out of me. But a lot of it was immaturity, too. I’m becoming more aware of that and realizing sometimes that I look stupid acting that way. I’m not happy about it. I’m not proud of some of the tantrums I’ve thrown. At the same time, they were in the moment—I was so focused, and whatever I’m doing matters so much to me that I’d forget there were cameras on me and all the people watching. I consider myself mature for my age, but my golf game, in that way, hasn’t matured yet. I don’t like it, but we also can’t pretend we’re perfect. I don’t know why it comes out like that—the whining and being so petty. ▶ issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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what i’m working on with my g ame for 2020
does it help to get mad sometimes?
It does, but it’s how you get it out. There’s nothing wrong with getting mad. Everyone gets mad. Tom Brady, one of the greatest athletes of this generation, gets mad on the field. Michael Jordan got mad. Tiger gets mad. Messi gets mad. Even in a normal job when you mess up, people get mad. But it’s how you project that, and that’s what I’ve had to work on. There’s a fine line between bottling your emotions and working through them.
▶ winning moves Rahm and Kelley Cahill celebrate after his $5 million payday in Dubai.
●●●
bio kim recently got suspended for a year [by the korea pga] for flipping off a fan who snapped a picture during his backswing. have you ever come close or wanted to do that? [Smiles.] ●●●
your mental coach, joseba del carmen, is a former bomb-disposal expert. what have you been able to learn from him? He’s a lot more than a bomb-disposal
expert. He played college basketball in Spain, he’s a golf instructor. I don’t ask him any bomb-disposal stories, though—I’d rather not know. Most of what we work on is real-life stuff, things that are outside of golf, and then it translates over to my golf game. That’s the goal, anyway. ●●●
what’s the best piece of advice he has given you? I used to think that golf is
my life, that it’s who I am. He was the first person to make me realize that it’s not, and that golf and life are very similar. The happier I am in life, the better I’m going to play. But I’m much more interested in raising a family and being a good husband and father than I am in golf. Don’t get me wrong—I want to be the best golfer I can be. If I had a gun to my head and had to choose between having only one or the other, I wouldn’t pick golf. I hope people don’t take that as me thinking I’d quit, but I’d choose family every time.
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as we sit here , you’re fifth in the world ranking, behind brooks koepka, rory mcilroy, dustin johnson and justin thomas, and you’re just ahead of tiger woods. what do they have in their games that you envy? It’d be easy
to pick a couple of things from Tiger. I would love to have his iron play. He is, by far, the best with his irons that I have ever seen. Brooks and Dustin, I’d love to have their length. I can hit it far, sure, but they’re on another level. And they both have a calmness to them. I don’t have that. [Laughs.] It’d be nice to have more of it. ●●●
what about your game do you think they would envy? Maybe my accuracy off
the tee. I think I know what Brooks would say, though: absolutely nothing. He has it all. Tiger would probably say he loves the fact that I don’t think too much about a shot. He’s told me that before, actually. Dustin and I are similar in that sense. Dustin has also told me before that he forgets about a shot once he hits it. I remember everything, but I don’t think about the shot once it’s gone. Most of the time. ●●●
so you consider yourself more of a feel pl ayer , or are you really into technique? One hundred percent a feel
player. But I’m a curious guy. I used to watch hours of YouTube clips of Seve Ballesteros.
It would drive [Kelley] crazy. Now, I know about technique, but I’m not technical in my thought process. I have to feel it; I have to see the shot in my mind. But when I was growing up—and this happened many times— somebody would try to give me a lesson, and I would start thinking about technique and trying to replicate whatever movement they wanted me to make. I couldn’t do it. If I don’t feel it, I can’t hit the ball. It’s part of the reason I see my coach [Eduardo Celles] back in Spain only a few times a year. Even then, it’s usually just for a checkup.
Swing: J.D. Cuban • Dubai: RoSS KinnaiRD/getty imageS
S
omething that really sets us pros apart from average golfers is that we know exactly what our strengths and weaknesses are, so we can practice with purpose. At the end of each year, I review my stats. And when I looked at 2019, I saw that I was weakest in wedge shots, especially when it was less than a full swing. The problem was, I used to have only one shot with wedges: a high fade with a lot of spin. Playing a high fade all the time made it tougher to control distance, like when it was windy or the pin was back. If you look at the best players in the world, like Tiger, they can hit their wedges low and high, fade or draw them, so they can reach any pin. Slowly I’m learning to hit different shots with my wedges, mostly by changing how I set up for them. For example, ball position can change trajectory. You can hit it higher if you play the ball forward of center in your stance, but you never want to play the ball farther forward than that because you might catch it fat or thin. The adjustments need to be subtle, like setting up with your body slightly closed to the target to make it easier to draw the ball. These adjustments are a work in progress. I’m working on other things, too. My game is all about driving. When I’m consistent off the tee, I’ve got shorter shots into the green, and that helps your accuracy as much as anything. With my driving, all I’m trying to do is repeat the swing I’ve always had. I get asked a lot about bowing my left wrist when I take the club back. What it does is allow me to swing my body as hard as I want and not worry about the ball going left, because the bowing shuts the clubface. Knowing I can turn as hard as I want frees me up mentally. I don’t play well when I restrict my swing. I’m an aggressive player. As for the look of my driver swing, my fiancee, Kelley Cahill, said it reminds her of Andy Roddick’s tennis serve—super quick and short. But that’s what I want to see when I practice. If I tried a longer swing like Dustin, it’d be a disaster. —with keely levins
you beat tiger, 2 and 1, in singles in your first ryder cup, in 2018. what was that experience like? Unlike any other.
This is a long story, but I have to tell it. I watched him from the balcony of the clubhouse at East Lake when he got his 80th win [and first since 2013] at the Tour Championship that year. As a guy who grew up watching golf and watching him, it was emotional for me to be there and to witness that and just be part of it. Forever I’ll be able to say that I watched Tiger make a putt to win and restart his career again. So then I go to my first Ryder Cup—I was jacked up. Then I’m the first match off on Friday morning, playing [four-balls] with Justin Rose. We’re playing against Brooks and Tony Finau. I played good the first nine holes, but then I completely tanked, and we lost, 1 down. The next morning, I played [four-balls] with Ian Poulter, and I played bad the first 12 holes then finished strong, but it was too late. We lost to Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, 2 and 1. I was supposed to play in all five matches, and I ended up playing in three. I probably shouldn’t have even played that second match. I was playing bad, not feeling my best, but the team is winning, so I’m happy. Then the singles pairings come out, and I’m playing Tiger. To that point, he hadn’t scored any points but wasn’t playing terribly. He ran into Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood, and I think anybody in the world would have lost to them that week. But I know he wants to win a point badly. In theory, it was a golf course that fits Tiger, with the emphasis on position and strategy. [Captain Thomas] Bjorn told me that I had to beat him at his own game. He said he’s not going to make mistakes; he’s going to capitalize on my mistakes. So I couldn’t give him a chance to do that. Well, all I’d done so far is make nothing but mistakes. So after talking to Fleetwood and talking to my mental coach for a half hour on the phone, I came out confident and tried to play like Tiger wasn’t even there. I didn’t even look at him almost the entire day. Somehow, that’s what I was able to do, and I played beautiful golf. Then my emotions finally came out when I missed a short putt on 16 and my lead was down to 1 up. I told myself I was winning the match. I hit the best drive I ever hit on 17, a great second shot to five feet and made the putt. Then everything I had inside of me that day came out. ●●●
what has it been like to see tiger come back from all the injuries to win multiple times, including last year’s masters? were you surprised? I always
said he would be able to do it as long as he was able to swing. I felt that he could win
again at some point, even if he played five events a year, because he’s Tiger Woods. To be at TaylorMade photo shoots with him and pick his brain, it’s incredible. He’s a golf genius. That’s his strongest attribute. We don’t know if he’ll get to 18 majors someday, but he has only three more to go, so who knows. Some people say that Tiger is the greatest player but that Jack Nicklaus is the greatest champion. But if Tiger gets to 18 [to tie Nicklaus’ record], he’s the undisputed greatest of all time. Then you add in everything he’s done for golf, the amount of money we play for because of him. We should thank him every day. He’s the face of golf again. ●●●
what kind of player do you think you’ll be in your 40s? Man, I have no idea. But
I will not be the next Seve, I’ll be the next Jon. Maybe I’m closer to him in persona or emotion or whatever than other Spanish players have been, but he was unique, a one-of-a-kind talent and person. You can’t replicate that. To be as charismatic as he was and elevate the game the way he did would be amazing, but it’s not possible. Take Arnold Palmer, for example. There won’t be another Arnold Palmer. We’d need to wait a hundred, two hundred years for someone similar. Same with Seve.
what’s a typical day of practice look like for you? I’ll wake up, go to the gym,
eat, go to the course, practice and play 18 holes. During the season, I won’t even practice most of the time. I’ll just warm up and go play. We’re already playing so much golf, I need a break or I’ll get burned out. Last season, I took two weeks off before the U.S. Open, partly because I went to a friend’s bachelor party, but I needed the break. I finished third, second and won in my next three starts. But I’m working on getting more structure around my practice. ●●●
there’s a bit of a misconception about how you learned to speak english. clear it up for everyone. I want to set
the record straight that I did not learn how to speak English by listening to rap. I had taken some classes back in Spain, but I wasn’t comfortable with the language when I got to Arizona State, so I spoke Spanish a lot with my teammate Alberto Sanchez, who’s from Mexico. But my coach [Tim Mickelson, who later went on to become Rahm’s agent before moving on to caddie for brother Phil] said that for every word of Spanish that I spoke in front of the team that I had to do a burpee. ●●●
how many burpees did you end up doing? Not a single one.
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you finished t-3 in the 2019 u.s. open, fourth in the 2018 masters and t-4 in the 2018 pga. what’s the next step for you to take to win a major? which one do you have the best chance of winning? A lot of times, I’ve gone into majors
sure. [laughter.] so where’d the rap music fit in? I listened a lot to Eminem and
somewhat tired. It’s a long year, so maybe I need to make some schedule changes. I know my game is strong enough to win one; it’s just a matter of getting it done. I’ve been close at Augusta a couple of times. I like the course, and it really fits my eye and my game. But as a European, the Open is the pinnacle of golf. I’d love to win any of them, of course, but the Masters is probably the best chance. ●●●
how is your game more refined since your first victory on the pga tour, when you made a 60-foot eagle putt on the final hole at torrey pines in 2017? I’m maybe slightly smarter. I’m aware
of strategy a little more—when to lay up on par 5s, and when to go for it, because there have probably been some moments when I should have laid up but didn’t. That’s mainly because my wedge play has become progressively better the last five years. Hopefully I can tighten it up the way Dustin did. Once he did, then he broke through and won a major. But really, I feel like my whole iron game has improved. I’ll always be aggressive, but I’m more calculated now.
Kendrick Lamar. I liked the music, and it did help with learning slang and how to say certain phrases. It’s like if you try to learn Spanish by taking classes, having a conversation is much different. ●●●
who’s on your playlist now? I’m re-
ally into Logic—I love his song “Homicide.” Sometimes you’ll see me mumbling the words to it when I’m warming up on the range. D Smoke, who was the winner on Rhythm + Flow on Netflix, is another one. His song “Last Supper” is another favorite. ●●●
if you had to cook one spanish meal to impress someone, what would you make? I don’t cook. I love food, though. My
favorite dish is called chuletón, which is basically a bone-in ribeye for two. It’s salted and slowly cooked on a wood-fire grill. It’s incredible. Give me that when I’m home, and I’m happy. ●●●
what’s the best course you’ve never played? There are too many. Pine Valley
would be at the top of the list, though. ●●●
what would a buddies golf trip look like for you? It wouldn’t involve golf. Do
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Birdie Machine
SCOTT STALLINGS SHARES A GLIMPSE OF THE TOUR-PRO >>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> WORKOUT THAT GOT HIM SHREDDED BY RON KASPRISKE pga tour wins 3 lives Knoxville, TN age 34 story Was 240 pounds. Now heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 185.
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for four hours , Scott Stallings demonstrated for our video crew dozens of high-intensity exercises that he routinely uses to maintain one of the most chiseled bodies in PGA Tour history. He slammed medicine balls, swung kettlebells, slung barbells, jumped rope and generally torqued his body in ways that might impress an Olympic gymnast—with virtually no break between moves. As the video crew was packing up at the end of the shoot around lunchtime, someone asked Stallings what he was going to do with the rest of his day. “I still have to work out,” he said. That level of commitment is why Stallings has transformed from a 240-pound “biggun’ ” with 26 percent body fat, to a 185-pound piece of granite with less than 10 percent body fat. Serious concerns about his overall health a few years ago sparked the transformation, Stallings says. Not only was he more than 50 pounds overweight, he was diagnosed with a sleep disorder and Photographs by Eric Ryan Anderson
kb power snatch ▶ “This is a great hip-hinging exercise that trains you for explosive power in the golf swing,” Stallings says. It starts by using ground force to leverage the kettlebell upward, and it finishes with the shoulder, arm and back supporting the weight as it gets pushed overhead. “Great exercises for golf don’t always look like motions in the golf swing,” Stallings says, “But they do train the body for a good golf swing.” And with this one, there’s a cardio boost thanks to the effort required.
kettlebell halo ▶ Stallings starts with a mediumweight kettle, holding it upside down in front of his chest at the base of the handle. He then lifts it to head height and rotates it
around his head—like a halo—in both directions. “Shoulder mobility is so important in the golf swing, and this exercise really warms up the muscles and soft tissue around
the shoulder girdle,” Stallings says. “The ability to swing the club on plane, and swing it fast and stop it safely, depends a lot on having good shoulder function.”
“KETTLEBELLS AND LANDMINES GIVE YOU A LOT OF FITNESS BANG FOR YOUR BUCK. IF YOU JUST USED THOSE TWO THINGS, YOU COULD EASILY GET INTO GREAT SHAPE.” kb clean to lunge ▶ This exercise hits a lot of key areas golfers need to generate power in the swing—everything from the calves to the forearms, Stallings says. “And it requires strength, stability, power and endurance.” The clean is the portion of the exercise where the kettlebell is hoisted from the ground to shoulder height. The forwardlunge portion offers the training bonus of learning to load weight into the legs individually, which also happens as you go from the backswing to the downswing. issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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▶ if you’re interested in getting “golf fit,” you’re in the right place. After closely examining hundreds of applicants, a panel of 10 of the most respected experts in golf fitness (see below) have selected the top 50 trainers in the United States. (They actually selected 52; there was a three-way tie for the last spot.) Unlike our first fitness ranking in 2017, which included professionals in all aspects of wellness, this list focuses solely on trainers. That means you can get a workout from anyone listed here. (It also means some top trainers were omitted as they work almost exclusively with tour pros.) “We wanted this list to be about the trainers in the trenches, the ones who can and sometimes do work with tour pros, and can make a 65-year-old with spinal stenosis play and feel better,” says Golf Digest fitness advisor Ben Shear. —RON K A SPR I SK E
WEST janet alexander Pacific Fitness & Health Encinitas, Calif. pacificfitnesshealth.com evaluation $200 hourly $200 brian bradley The Egoscue Method San Diego. egoscue.com e $0 h $185 milo bryant Milo-Limitless Fitness Del Mar, Calif. milostrong.com e $1,050 h $250 brian chandler Elevate Sports Performance Las Vegas. elevatevegas.com e $500 h $150 sean cochran Sean Cochran Sports Performance San Diego. seancochran.com e $175 h $125-$175 andrea doddato Shape and Sport Los Angeles shapeandsport.com e $250 h $175 shawn farmer-sese Golfletica Sports and Rehab Bellevue, Wash. golfletica.com e $175 h $70 jennifer fleischer Fleischer Tour Fit San Francisco fleischertourfit.com e $250 h $200 lance gill LGP Remote Training Protocol Oceanside, Calif. lgperformance.com e $0 h $400
mike hansen Hansen Fitness for Golf Irvine, Calif. hansenfitnessforgolf.com e $200 h $120 mark smith The Sports Club/Mission Hills Rancho Mirage, Calif. docsmith.org e $415-$625 h $125 dee tidwell Colorado Golf Fitness Club Greenwood Village, Colo. coloradogolffitnessclub.com e $125 h $125 robert yang RYI Performance and Nutrition Encinitas, Calif. robertyang.net e $600 h $300
SOUTHWEST andrew hannon Premier Fitness Systems Scottsdale premierfitnesssystems.com e $115 h $115 manny hernando ChiroSport Specialists of Dallas Dallas chirosportspecialists.com e $200 h $125
spencer tatum Tatum Human Performance Scottsdale ignitethp.com e $300 h $200
MIDWEST scott barthlama Gleacher Golf Northwestern University Evanston, Ill. wildcatgolfacademy.com e $175 h $125 lindsay becker Buckeye Performance Golf Dublin, Ohio. buckeyeperformancegolf.com e $150 h $100 bill glegoroff Get Fit Pro Golf Performance Chicago. getfitpro.com e $325 h $150 neal hausch Golf Fitness Plus Akron, Ohio. golffitplus.com e $200 h $100 jeff pelizzaro Empire Fitness Academy Brentwood, Mo. 18strong.com e $200 h $100
clint howard Golf Fitness Systems Tulsa. golffitnesssystems.com e $250 h $95-$110
chad odaffer Altered Physique Indianapolis alteredphysique.com e $125 h $75
greg mclean Premier Fitness Systems Scottsdale premierfitnesssystems.com e $150 h $115
cory puyear P.U.R.E. Golf Northfield, Ill. pure-golf.net e $325 h $130
pam owens Royal Oaks Country Club Houston pamowensfitness.com e $325 h $125
kirk adams Athletic Edge Scotch Plains, N.J.. athleticedge.net e $150 h $115
joey diovisalvi Joey D Golf Sports Training Jupiter, Fla. joeydgolf.com e $750 h $275
kevin duffy FieldHouse Sudbury, Mass. coachkevinduffy.com e $75 h $125
david donatucci Florida Institute of Performance Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. floridainstituteofperformance.com e $150 h $150
brandon gaydorus Greenwich Office Park Fitness Greenwich, Conn. bggolfandfitness.com e $0 h $100 ali gilbert Metabolic Golf Greenwich, Conn. metabolicgolf.com e $500 h $250 jason meisch Peak Golf Fitness Rockville, Md. peakgolffitness.com e $600 h $150 matt palazzolo Golf & Body NYC New York City golfbodynyc.com e $400 h $250 kaitlyn sharpless-pimentel Felix Fortis Golf Narragansett, R.I. felixfortisgolf.com e $450 h $150 ben shear Ben Shear Golf Scotch Plains, N.J. bensheargolf.com e $395-$695 h $250
SOUTH trevor anderson Better Every Day Performance Orlando bettereverydayorlando.com e $250 h $125 alex bennett PGA Tour’s Performance Center at TPC Sawgrass Ponte Vedra Beach tourperformancecenter.com e $100 h $150 ashley campbell Performance One Golf at Golf House Tennessee Franklin, Tenn. performance1training.com e $300 h $175 ryan blackburn Orlando Golf Performance Orlando orlandogolfperformance.com e $0 h $60-$80 john d’amico Golf Fitness Edge Naples, Fla. golffitnessedge.com e $300 h $100
chris finn Par4Success Raleigh, N.C. par4success.com e $190 h $185 dan hellman H3 By Dan Hellman Fort Lauderdale h3bydan.com e $500 h $250 dave herman Dave Herman Performance Winter Garden, Fla. davehermanperformance.com e $185 h $100 darin hovis Par 4 Fitness Naples, Fla. par4fitness.com e $200 h $120 ken macdonald Lifetime Performance Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. lifetimeperformancepbg.com e $200 h $130 lenny mello Pillar Health & Sport Performance Louisville pillarsport.com e $250 h $80-$100 randy myers Sea Island Resort Sea Island, Ga. randymyersgolf.com e $750 h $350 karen palacios-jansen Trump National Golf Club Charlotte Charlotte kpjgolf.com e $225 h $120 mitch sadowsky Coastal Performance Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. mitch11strength.com e $150 h $150 scott shepard Driven Sports Performance Lake Mary, Fla. drivenspt.com e $250 h $100 kolby tullier Joey D Golf Sports Training Jupiter, Fla. joeydgolf.com e $750 h $275
advisory panel Janet Alexander, Lindsay Becker, Craig Davies, Dave Herman, Randy Myers, Dave Phillips, Ben Shear, Ralph Simpson, Troy Van Biezen, Mike Voight
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inset: Christian Petersen/Getty imaGes
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THE BEST GOLF-FITNESS TRAINERS IN AMERICA
NORTHEAST
▶ now and then Stallings 2020 vs. Stallings 2016 (below).
“WORKING WITH A QUALIFIED TRAINER IS A MUST IF YOU TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY.”
landmine rainbow ▶ “Any standing exercise where you’re moving an external load in more than one plane of motion is going to benefit your body when you play golf,” Stallings says. “That’s why I like doing these.” This exercise, taking the barbell down alongside each hip in a rotational movement and then back to an overhead position, tracing the shape of a rainbow, is great for strengthening the legs, shoulders and arms—and it helps improve the coordination needed for a functional, ground-up downswing.
“LANDMINES HELP YOU TRAIN YOUR BODY TO BE STABLE DURING A MULTIFACETED MOVEMENT— JUST LIKE WHAT YOU NEED FOR THE GOLF SWING.” landmine rotational clean and press ▶ Golf is a one-sided sport, meaning you’re swinging in only one direction and recruiting muscles in an imbalanced nature to do so. That’s why it’s smart to train in both direc-
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tions, and unilaterally when applicable, to achieve better muscular balance. This one-armed rotational clean and press is great for that (switch hands from a pull to a push),
and it mimics the look of a golfer finishing a swing—at least from the waist down. “Another move that hits lower- and upper-body muscle groups,” Stallings says.
landmine thruster ▶ Golf-fitness trainers and swing coaches are in strong agreement on the importance of training the lower body to push into the ground at the start of the downswing. Using the ground this way creates a lot of power that can then be redirected to hitting the ball harder. This explosive exercise of thrusting a barbell upward from a squat position gets the key lower-body muscles primed for better golf. It should be a staple exercise for any golfer who wants to get longer off the tee, Stallings says.
discovered certain food allergies also were making it tough to compete on the PGA Tour. “I was exhausted all the time,” he says. But not anymore. The way Stallings trains depends on if he’s at a tournament or if it’s an offweek, or the offseason. But it’s typically an everyday program going from hard, heavy workouts early in the week to lighter, faster stuff by the weekend. And he doesn’t train alone. At his home gym pictured here, known as The Barn because of its previous use, on any given day you might find professional baseball and football players, mixedmartial-arts fighters and his trainer, Adam Kerley—all getting after it with the same intensity as Stallings. It’s a cult of conditioning. To be clear, much of what Stallings does to stay fit isn’t what the average golfer should do, at least not without clearance from a doctor and a lot of progression training building to the level of difficulty in his current programs. “What I used to do as a workout is now something we might do as a warm-up,” he says. But if you’re curious, here are a handful of things he does with a kettlebell and a device called a landmine, a barbell anchored to the floor that can be used for exercises in multiple planes of movement. User discretion is advised.
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words on putting â&#x20AC;¢ by tommy fleet wood
Photograph by Dylan Coulter
DRAIN— •••
so much of being successful on the greens is what you do before you take the putter back. That’s why Golf Digest asked me to share my pre-putt routine. I’ll also talk to you a bit about my technique, but there are so many styles of grips, stances and strokes, what seems to matter most is having a consistent and effective approach to green-reading. I use a method called Aim Point. It’s a little complicated to explain how it works in a short article, so I’ll give you a basic understanding of how I figure out the speed and break on every putt. When I step on the green, I use my eyes and feet to detect slope. I’ll walk around the hole, then I’ll get low to the ground—not Spider-Man low like Camilo Villegas—but low enough to see which way the ball is going to move.
But sometimes your eyes can fool you, which is why I try to confirm what I see with my feet. I want to feel where the weight is in my feet; that’s the direction the ball will roll. Once I have a line picked, I stand behind the line and visualize the ball tracking to the hole on that path. I see the ball moving in real time, which helps me know how big a stroke I need to make. Then I’ll stand to the side of the line I’ve chosen and make a couple of practice strokes while visualizing the ball rolling to the cup. That last bit, standing astride, gives me a nice perception of what’s about to happen. That’s important because if you just visualize behind the
ball, things will look off when you set up to putt. Like most pros, I use a line on my ball to match the line I want the ball to roll on. I set up in a neutral stance, everything as square to the line as possible. It might not be perfect, but it’s never that far off, so don’t worry too much about it. More important is to get the ball started on the line you’ve chosen. I’ll talk more on that in a second. The last thing is to make a stroke in which the putterhead does the work. That means the length of the stroke is equal on both sides. I try not to vary effort, just length of stroke. I also like to feel free. It’s important to have as few moving parts as
possible, but you don’t want to be too rigid. For example, I’ll keep my head down past impact in the stroke, but I don’t resist it pivoting toward the hole. One more thing I want to say about putting is, you have to be confident. You’re not always going to read the putt right, and you’re not always going to hit it with the proper speed. But if you address the ball strongly believing in what you’re about to do, it makes a difference in execution. So pick a line, judge the speed, and hit the putt. No second-guessing. —with ron kaspriske
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PLANET golf
▶ rugged and royal Northern Ireland’s Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the Irish Sea at No. 1 County Down.
G R E AT E S T GOLF COURSES
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Something OLD, something NEW No. 1 ROYAL COUNTY DOWN and No. 2 TARA ITI lead a strong mix by ro n wh it ten
I
t’s tempting to describe Golf Digest’s fourth biennial ranking of the World 100 Greatest Golf Courses as a contest between advanced age and youth, legends versus new kids, Old Guard versus Upstarts. ▶ I’m speaking not of the architects responsible for the courses, but of the courses themselves. Twenty-three of the 100 Greatest courses outside the United States for 2020-’21 were founded in the 19th century, including Northern Ireland’s Royal County Down, No. 1 in our world ranking for the third consecutive time. Granted, every one of those 23 courses has been expanded, revised, modified, reshaped and remodeled many times in many ways over many decades, but they were heralded in their youth and remain cherished today in the eyes of our Course Ranking Panel, which includes more than 1,700 North American golfers and over 350 international players.
▶ new zealand beauty The par-3 17th at No. 2 Tara Iti is surrounded by pits of sand and seagrass.
previous pages, these pages and following pages: nick wall
▶ tight approach The fairway on the par-4 second at Royal County Down pinches down like a neck of an hourglass.
The Old Guard dominates the top 10. There’s No. 3 Muirfield, created in 1891; No. 4 Royal Dornoch (1892) and No. 6 Old Course at St. Andrews (1848). Royal Portrush, site of last year’s Open Championship and ranked eighth, has been around since 1888. Farther down the list are veteran layouts less modified and more reflective of an earlier game of persimmon and even hickory: the delightful North Berwick (1877) at No. 39, the natural Machrihanish (1876) at No. 46 and the classic Prestwick (1851) at No. 66. The Old Guard are all vintage designs that still carry a lot of clout. But there’s a youth movement at every corner of our latest ranking. Thirty ranked courses were built in the 21st century, including two in the top 10 and seven of the top 20. Nearly a third of the courses on our list are not yet 20 years old; five of them aren’t even five years old.
No. 1 Royal County Down, originally routed by Old Tom Morris and subsequently tinkered with by a half a dozen designers (most recently Donald Steel), is being challenged by Tari Iti in New Zealand, a dazzling Tom Doak design from 2015 that made its debut at No. 6 in 2018 and jumps to No. 2 on this survey. But in truth, our world ranking isn’t as polarizing as statistics make it seem. Panelists aren’t examining birth certificates or sell-by dates. They’re examining course architecture, and if Tara Iti has a chance to someday replace Royal County Down at the top, it’s because Doak’s design reflects the same sort of strategies and features that have made Royal County Down so admired and feared over the centuries. It just might be that Tara Iti, and its young kin, add a few more crowd-pleasing wrinkles.
IOO
NO. 1 VERSUS NO. 2
C
ounty down and Tara Iti have some things in common and some clear differences: ► The routings have a glorious natural flow among oceanside sand dunes, large and small. County Down’s dunes are mostly covered in dense marram grass and dotted with blooming gorse; Tara Iti has far more exposed sand. Both have bunkers snarling with heavy turf moustaches, but those at Tara Iti mostly merge with surrounding raw sand. ► Both have blind shots. White rocks and barber poles serve as targets at County Down; at Tara Iti, there are grassy sideboards visible to feed shots into hidden greens. ► The putting surfaces at Royal County Down are flattish but small and hard to hit when the wind blusters off the nearby issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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PLANET golf
IOO â&#x2013;ś glorious Designer Tom Doak had to remove thousands of trees from a pine plantation to reveal the dunes that dominate Tara Iti. Pictured: the par-5 fifth.
TARA ITI IS THE TOP CONTENDER AMONG THE LATEST GENERATION OF WORLD-CLASS COURSES.
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RAPID RISES
A
s hot as Tara Iti is, it’s not the most dramatic rise on our list among 21st-century designs. Six-year-old South Cape Owners Club in South Korea, which debuted in 2018 at No. 49, moves up 40 spots to No. 9 this year. The design by Kyle Phillips (who also has No. 27 Kingsbarns and No. 48 Yas Links on our list, and has remodeling credit at No. 7 Morfontaine and No. 38 Valderrama) runs along the rocky cliffs of an ocean shoreline. It features two par 3s over ocean coves and another that plays out to an intimidatingly narrow green on a peninsula. It’s rugged where Tara Iti is graceful, and it’s conceivable that both could be contending for the No. 1 spot in our next world ranking.
TOM DOAK HAS BEEN INVOLVED WITH 11 OF THE WORLD 100 COURSES, INCLUDING NO. 2 TARA ITI. South Cape’s rise was dramatic, but it wasn’t the biggest move on this year’s list. Kawana Hotel’s Fuji Course in Japan (a “tweener” 20th-century design) moved up 49 spots, from No. 75 in 2018 to No. 26 in 2020. A 1932 layout by English architect C.H. Alison, it occupies ocean bluffs much like South Cape and several others on this ranking. Incidentally, Alison’s longtime design partner, H.S. Colt, has 13 courses on the list (six originals, seven remodels), matching Martin Hawtree (one original, 12 remodels) for the most on the list by a single architect. Of the 10 courses that join our World 100 ranking, four are 21st-century designs: ► No. 88 Trump International Golf Links Doonbeg in Ireland (2002). ► No. 89 Ba Na Hills Golf Club in Vietnam (2016). ► No. 90 Ayodhya Links in Thailand (2007). ► No. 94 Kinloch Golf Club in New Zealand (2007). Only one newcomer was an Old Guard layout: No. 78 Royal Cinque Ports in Kent, England. It originally opened in 1895. The other five newly ranked courses are 20th-century designs: ► No. 63 Tokyo Golf Club (a 1939 layout back on the ranking after a two-year absence). ► No. 82 Le Golf National’s Albatros course in France (opened in 1990 and site of the 2018 Ryder Cup). ► No. 96 Portstewart (Strand) in Northern Ireland (1910). ► No. 98 Tralee in County Kerry, Ireland (1986). ► No. 100 King’s Course at Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland (1919). For those suspecting that our future world rankings will be dominated by Upstarts, there is this fact: Of the 10 courses from 2018 that failed to remain on our latest ranking, six were 21st-century designs and four were from the 20th century. Not a single 19th-century design dropped off our list. The Old Guard isn’t just well-established, it’s entrenched. For more on the World 100 and for the country-by-country rankings, please go to golfdigest.com/go/100greatest.
these pages: nick wall • following pages: joann dost
Irish Sea. The greens at Tara Iti are big with countless knobs and dips and have more recovery options for shots blown astray by Pacific winds. ► Both layouts represent links golf, where yardages mean less than shotmaking. Many consider Royal County Down a supreme examination of one’s game, which is why it earns such high scores. Tara Iti offers a wider variety of angles and bailouts, perhaps making it more playable and thus the top contender among the latest generation of worldclass courses. The talent of the respective architects should not be discounted. Old Tom Morris, whose craft involved the rudimentary staking out of fairways and greens wherever the land suggested, is responsible for the original layouts of seven ranked courses—the most of any architect. Besides County Down, Muirfield, Royal Dornoch and Royal Portrush in the top 10, there’s also No. 31 Lahinch, No. 53 Cruden Bay and No. 66 Prestwick. He also remodeled two of the top 100 courses, No. 6 Old Course at St. Andrews and No. 20 Carnoustie. Many of his original routings remain. Doak, whose career has been based on embracing the Old School idea of letting nature dictate the design, but who also uses modern technology to enhance topography where Mother Nature falls short, has been involved with 11 of the top 100. Besides Tara Iti, he and his dedicated team have designed No. 16 Barnbougle Dunes, No. 22 Cape Kidnappers and Australia’s St. Andrews Beach, which is tied for No. 91. Doak has also remodeled seven others, including both 18s at Royal Melbourne and No. 70 Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda.
▶ newcomer The par-4 fifth at No. 94 Kinloch is nestled beneath hills that resemble the folds of a giant slumbering Shar-Pei.
PLANET golf
TOP IO 1 (1) royal county down g.c. (Championship) Newcastle, Northern Ireland Old Tom Morris (1889), Donald Steel (remodeled, 1998)
2 (6) tara iti g.c. Mangawhai, New Zealand Tom Doak (2015) 3 (4) muirfield Gullane, Scotland Old Tom Morris (1891), H.S. Colt (1925), Martin Hawtree (2011) 4 (2) royal dornoch g.c. (Championship) Scotland Old Tom Morris (1892), George Duncan (1947), Donald Steel (1993), Tom Mackenzie (2013)
5 (3) royal melbourne g.c. (West) Black Rock,
Australia Alister MacKenzie, Alex Russell (1931), Tom Doak (2015-’16)
6 (5) the old course at st. andrews
Fife, Scotland Allan Robertson (1848), Old Tom Morris (1865-’85), Martin Hawtree (2013-’14)
7 (14) morfontaine g.c. France Tom Simpson (1927), Kyle Phillips (2004)
8 (7) royal portrush g.c. (Dunluce) Northern
Ireland Tom Gilroy (9, 1888), Old Tom Morris (9, 1889), H.S. Colt (1933), Martin Ebert (2015) ( p r e v i o u s r a n k i n g i n p a r e n t h e s e s ; n r : n o t r a n k e d p r e v i o u s ly )
9 (49) south cape owners club Namhae Island, South Korea Kyle Phillips (2013)
10 (10) trump turnberry (Ailsa)
Scotland P.M. Ross (1951), Martin Ebert (2015)
Hunter Valley, Australia Greg Norman (2001)
15 (12) sunningdale g.c. (Old) England
20 (21) carnoustie g. links (Championship)
Willie Park Jr. (1901), H.S. Colt (1922), Donald Steel (1986)
16 (11) barnbougle dunes Bridport, Australia
II-2O
Tom Doak, Mike Clayton (2004)
11 (9) cabot cliffs
17 (16) ballybunion g.c. (Old) Ireland
Inverness, Canada Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw (2015)
12 (13) kingston heath g.c. Heatherton, Australia Des Soutar, Mick Morcom (1925), Mike Clayton (2002)
13 (50) hirono g.c.
Hyogo, Japan C.H. Alison (1932), Martin Ebert (2018-’19)
19 (31) ellerston g.c.
14 (8) shanqin bay g.c. Hainan Island, China Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw (2012)
Lionel Hewson (9, 1906), Reginald Beale (9, 1927), Tom Simpson (1937), Martin Hawtree (2011), Graeme Webster (2015)
18 (16) the club at nine bridges Jeju Island,
South Korea David Dale, Ron Fream (2001), David Dale, Steve Wenzloff (2016)
Scotland Allan Robertson (1838), Old Tom Morris (1895), James Wright (1931), Martin Hawtree (2006), Martin Ebert (2016)
2I-3O 21 (24) cape wickham links King Island,
Australia Mike DeVries, Darius Oliver (2015)
22 (17) cape kidnappers g. cse. Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand Tom Doak (2004)
T-23 (15) royal birkdale g.c. Southport, England George Lowe (1897), F.G. Hawtree, J.H. Taylor (1931), Fred W. Hawtree (1974-’85), Martin Hawtree (2010)
T-23 (19) royal melbourne g.c. (East) Black Rock, Australia Alex Russell (1932), Tom Doak (2012)
T-23 (20) st. george’s g. and c.c. Etobicoke, Canada Stanley Thompson (1930), Tom Doak, Ian Andrew (2015)
26 (75) kawana hotel g. cse. (Fuji) Shizuoka,
Japan C.H. Alison (1936)
27 (30) kingsbarns g. links St. Andrews, Scotland Kyle Phillips, Mark Parsinen (1999)
PLANET golf IOO
▶ nice view The par-3 14th at No. 9 South Cape Owners Club in South Korea is part of what designer Kyle Phillips calls a promendade along the sea.
28 (22) royal st. george’s g.c. Sandwich, England W. Laidlaw Purves (1887), H.S. Colt (1914), Martin Ebert (2010)
29 (39) swinley forest g.c. Ascot, England
H.S. Colt (1911), Frank Pont (2012)
30 (41) royal porthcawl g.c.
Wales Ramsay Hunter (1898), H.S. Colt (1919), Martin Ebert (2011)
3I-4O 31 (34) lahinch g.c. (Old)
Ireland Old Tom Morris (1894), Alister MacKenzie (1928), Martin Hawtree (2003)
32 (27) casa de campo (Teeth of the Dog) La Romana, Dominican Republic Pete Dye (1971)
33 (18) new south wales g.c. Le Perouse, Australia Des Soutar, Carnegie Clark, Alister MacKenzie (1928), Eric Apperly (1936), Greg Norman (2010), Tom Doak (2018)
34 (47) diamante g.c. (Dunes) Cabo San Lucas, Mexico Davis Love III (2010)
T-35 (43) cabot links Inverness, Canada Rod Whitman (2013)
T-35 (63) punta espada g. cse. Cap Cana, Dominican Republic Jack Nicklaus (2006)
T-35 (33) sunningdale g.c. (New) England H.S. Colt (1923), Martin Hawtree (2010)
38 (42) valderrama g.c. Sotogrande, Spain Robert Trent Jones (1975), Kyle Phillips (2012)
39 (25) north berwick g.c. East Lothian, Scotland
49 (40) royal troon g.c. (Old), Scotland
Charles Hunter (1878), Willie Fernie (1909), Martin Ebert (2014)
50 (81) anyang c.c. Kunpo-shi, Kyonggi-Do, South Korea Chohei Miyazawa (1968), Robert Trent Jones Jr. (1997)
David Strath (1877), C.K. Hutchison (1935)
5I-T-6O
40 (58) portmarnock g.c. (Championship) Ireland
51 (74) loch lomond g.c. Luss, Scotland Jay
W.C. Pickeman, George Ross, Mungo Park (1895), Martin Hawtree (2000-’04)
4I-5O
Morrish, Tom Weiskopf (1992)
52 (36) national g.c. of canada Woodbridge,
Canada George Fazio, Tom Fazio (1974), Tom Fazio (2005)
41 (32) st. george’s hill g.c. Weybridge,
53 (56) cruden bay g.c.
42 (64) trump international g. links Balmedie,
54 (28) jack nicklaus g.c. korea Incheon City,
43 (37) kauri cliffs
55 (60) hamilton g. and c.c. (West/South)
England H.S. Colt (1913), Martin Hawtree (2003), Tim Lobb (2018)
Scotland Martin Hawtree (2011)
Matauri Bay, New Zealand David Harman (2000)
44 (76) jack’s point g. cse. Queenstown, New Zealand John Darby (2008)
45 (67) rye g.c. (Old) Deal, England Douglas Rolland, H.S. Colt (1894), Sir Guy Campbell (1959) 46 (61) machrihanish g.c. Campbelltown, Scotland Charles Hunter (1876), Sir Guy Campbell (1948)
47 (26) barnbougle lost farm Bridport,
Australia Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw (2010)
48. (44) yas links Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Kyle Phillips (2010)
Aberdeenshire, Scotland Old Tom Morris, Archie Simpson (1899), Tom Simpson (1926), Tom Mackenzie (2015)
South Korea Jack Nicklaus (2009)
Ancaster, Canada H.S. Colt (1915), Tom Clark (1999-2005)
56 (38) fancourt hotel & g.c. (Links) George, South Africa Gary Player, Phil Jacobs (2000)
57 (46) royal lytham & st. annes g.c. England George Lowe (1897), H.S. Colt (1923), Martin Ebert (2010)
58 (89) fairmont jasper park lodge g.c. Jasper, Canada
Stanley Thompson (1926), W.H. Brinkworth (1948)
59 (79) sentosa G.C. (Serapong) Singapore Ron Fream (1983), Gene Bates (2007)
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65 (77) paraparaumu beach g.c. New Zealand
T-76 (87) highlands links Ingonish Beach,
Inverness, Scotland Gil Hanse, Mark Parsinen (2009)
James Watt (1930), Alex Russell (1952)
Canada Stanley Thompson (1941), Ian Andrew (2011)
T-60 (80) woodhall spa g.c. (Hotchkin) England
66 (95) prestwick g.c.
78 (NR) royal cinque ports g.c. Deal, England
Harry Vardon (9, 1905), H.S. Colt (9, 1912), S.V. Hotchkin, Sir Guy Campbell (1926), Tom Doak (2018)
62-7O 62 (52) emirates g.c.
Ayshire, Scotland Old Tom Morris (12, 1851), Charles Hunter (6, 1883)
67 (29) haesley nine bridges Yeoju County,
South Korea David Dale (2009)
68 (83) old head of kinsale County Cork,
(Majlis) Dubai, United Arab Emirates Karl Litten (1988), Tim Lobb, Ross Perrett (2014)
Ireland Ron Kirby, Eddie Hackett, Paddy Merrigan, Joe Carr (1996), Ron Kirby (2013)
63 (NR) tokyo g.c.
69 (65) leopard creek c.c. Malelane, South Africa
Saitama City, Japan Komei Ohtani (1939), Gil Hanse (2010-’18)
64 (71) royal aberdeen g.c. (Balgownie) Aberdeen, Scotland Robert Simpson (1888), James Braid (1925), Martin Hawtree (2011) MOST WORLD 100 COURSE DESIGNS
Gary Player, Phil Jacobs (1998), Ernie Els, Greg Letsche (2007)
70 (54) mid ocean club Tucker’s Town, Bermuda Charles Blair Macdonald, Seth Raynor (1923), Tom Doak (2014-’15)
7I-8O 71 (84) naruo g.c. Inagawa, Hyogo, Japan Rokuro Akaboshi, Shiro Akaboshi (1929), C.H. Alison (1930), Harry C. Crane (1948)
72 (66) walton heath g.c. (Old) Walton-on-the-Hill,
England Herbert Fowler (1904), Donald Steel (2011)
13 H.S. Colt
(six originals, seven remodels)
13 Martin Hawtree
(one original, 12 remodels)
11 Tom Doak
(four originals, seven remodels)
9 Martin Ebert
(all remodels)
MOST ORIGINAL DESIGNS ON THE LIST
7 Old Tom Morris
(also has two remodels)
73 (45) victoria g.c. Cheltenham, Australia William Meanor, Oscar Damman (1927), Alister MacKenzie (1927), Mike Clayton, Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking (2015) 74 (51) capilano g. & c.c. West Vancouver, Canada Stanley Thompson (1937), Doug Carrick (2016)
75 (55) waterville g. links Ireland Eddie Hackett (1972), Tom Fazio (2003)
T-76 (35) the bluffs ho tram strip Vietnam Greg Norman (2014)
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Tom Dunn (1895), Sir Guy Campbell (1949), Martin Ebert (2007)
79 (57) metropolitan g.c. Melbourne, Australia
J.B. Mackenzie (1908), Alister MacKenzie (1926), Neil Crafter, Paul Mogford (2016)
80 (85) royal adelaide g.c. Australia Cargie Rymill,
C.L. Gardiner (1905), Alister MacKenzie (1925), Tom Doak (2015-’17)
8I-9O 81 (72) royal liverpool g.c. Hoylake,
England Robert Chambers, Geordie Morris (1871), H.S. Colt (1920), Martin Hawtree (2010)
82 (NR) le golf national (albatros)
Guyancourt, France Robert von Hagge, Hubert Chesneau (1990), Ross McMurray (2016)
83 (73) siam c.c. (Old) Pattaya, Thailand Ichisuke Izumi (1970), Lee Schmidt, Brian Curley (2007) 84 (T-68) ganton g.c.
Yorkshire, England Tom Chisholm, Robert Bird (1891)
85 (62) sheshan international g.c.
Shanghai, China Neil Haworth, Robin Nelson (2004)
86 (88) spring city golf and lake resort (Lake) Kunming, China Robert Trent Jones Jr. (1995)
87 (99) fairmont banff springs g. cse. (Thompson) Banff, Canada Stanley Thompson (1929), Les Furber (1999)
88 (NR) trump international g. links doonbeg
Ireland Greg Norman (2002), Martin Hawtree (2014-’16)
89 (NR) ba na hills g.c. Da Nang, Vietnam Brit
Stenson, Luke Donald (2016)
90 (NR) ayodhya links g.c. Ayutthaya, Thailand Peter Thomson, Ross Perrett, Tim Lobb (2007)
T-9I-1OO T-91 (70) cabo del sol (Ocean) Los Cabos, Mexico Jack Nicklaus (1994)
T-91 (86) st. andrews beach g. cse. Fingal, Australia Tom Doak, Mike Clayton (2004)
93 (97) querencia c.c. Los Cabos, Mexico Tom Fazio (2000)
94 (NR) kinloch g.c. Taupo, New Zealand Jack Nicklaus (2007)
95 (92) the european club Brittas Bay, Ireland Pat Ruddy (1992, 2000-’11)
96 (NR) portstewart g.c. (Strand) Northern
Ireland A.G. Gow (1910), Willie Park Jr. (1913), Des Giffin, Michael Moss (1992)
97 (98) the national g.c. (Moonah) Cape Schanck, Australia Greg Norman (2001)
98 (NR) tralee g.c.
Ireland Arnold Palmer, Ed Seay, Bob Walker (1984), Brandon Johnson (2013)
99 (100) western gailes g.c. Irvine, Scotland Willie Fernie (1894), Fred W. Hawtree (1975)
100 (NR) gleneagles hotel g.c. (King’s) Scotland James Braid, C.K. Hutchison (1919
sarah fabian-baddiel/heritage images/getty images
T-60 (53) castle stuart g.c.
PLANET golf
â&#x2013;ś in the clouds Pradeep Kumar Shrestha on the first hole of the Baahrakhari Everest Golf Tournament.
A WILD TRIP to NEPAL includes a TRIBUTE at the WORLDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S HIGHEST golf tournament
TEE TIME AT , 13 943 FEET by oliver horovitz
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
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I
get the whatsapp call in Washington Square Park, New York City—7,522 miles from Nepal. •“Ollie, how are you?”• “Deepak! I’m good, man! What’s up?” • Deepak is Deepak Acharya, the Fonzie-level-cool senior director of golf at Gokarna Forest Resort in Kathmandu, Nepal. I haven’t spoken to my friend in ages. I gulp down some coffee, sit back on my bench. It’s nice to hear his voice. • “Listen, Ollie, I’ve got some exciting news. There’s going to be a major golf event here very soon. The world’s highest golf tournament.” • I put down my coffee. • “Wait, what?” • Deepak continues. “It will be played up at Kongde Ri. That’s 14,000 feet. We’re going up in choppers.” • There’s a pause, then Deepak arrives at his main point: “I think you should come over for it.”
Photographs by Ramesh Gautam
‘YOU’RE GONNA FEEL LOUSY UP THERE’
‘D I first visited Nepal in April 2016, with my friends Miles and Vlad. After trekking to Everest Base Camp, we put together an article on Nepal’s little-known golf scene. There are six courses in Nepal, including Royal Nepal Golf Club and the wonderfully named Yak Golf Club, Himalayan Golf Course and Nirvana Country Club. There are 700 golfers, of which one in 10 is
a professional, earning cards at an annual Q school for the Professional Golf Tour of Nepal. At Royal Nepal, we met a special young golfer: Pratima Sherpa. Then 16 years old, Pratima lives in a shed on the course’s fourth hole . . . and is the No. 1 female golfer in Nepal. I wrote an article on Pratima for this magazine, and Miles, Vlad and I started Team Pratima to support her dream of becoming the first female golf pro in Nepal’s history. (Pratima is now a freshman at Santa Barbara City College in California, playing for the golf team.) Ever since that trip, I’ve felt deeply connected to Nepal, and to its warm and wonderful people. I’m now friends with retired Gurkha majors and climbing Sherpas, Nepali golf professionals and Royal Nepal caddies. Anytime there’s an excuse to revisit the Land of Everest, I’m in.
iamox won’t touch it.” It’s a few days before my trip, and I’m on the phone with the world’s preeminent high-altitude doctor . . . who, at this moment, is sort of freaking me out. “Are you serious?” “Yeah, you’re going up too quickly for it to be effective,” Dr. Hackett replies, referencing the standard altitude medicine. “Well, uh, what if I just hydrate a lot?” “I mean, definitely do that. But that’s not really going to help.” A few days earlier, it hit me that going directly up to 14,000 feet in 45 minutes might not be, like, the most incredible idea. Doing some research, I stumbled upon the Institute for Altitude Medicine, based in Telluride, Colo., and run by Dr. Peter Hackett. Hackett is basically the Jack Nicklaus of high-altitude medicine. He was also the 111th person to summit Mount Everest, accomplishing it in 1981. He also coughed up part of his lung on the descent, a fact that I find gross—and cool. Dr. Hackett is usually OOE (Out On Everest) or midway up Denali researching altitude sickness. But I find a phone number on the institute’s website and
THE NO. 1 RULE OF FLYING CHOPPERS IN THE KHUMBU VALLEY IS SIMPLE: DON’T FLY INTO CLOUDS.
▶ up in the air Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Lukla is only 1,729 feet long with a graded runway that is 11 percent. Prateek Pradhan, Gyaneshwor Acharya, Mahendra Mainali, Mahesh Baduwal, Deepak Acharya and Dawa Sherpa head to the helicopter after the first hole at Kongde Ri.
leave a rambling voicemail about my upcoming golf adventure. I’m shocked when Dr. Hackett calls me back a few days later. More shocked when Dr. Hackett spends 40 minutes graciously walking me through every upcoming logistical and physiological detail. It’s a little surreal. I feel as if I’m talking to Jacques Cousteau. “Yeah, you’re gonna feel lousy up there,” Dr. Hackett says. “But it’s doable. Although you should definitely bring up some Dex.” “Dex?” “Dexamethasone.” “Oh, right. Of course.” “Do you know what that is?” “No.” I’ve been in some relatively high altitudes before. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania at 19,341 feet and trekked to Everest Base Camp at 17,650 feet. But—and here’s what’s keeping me up at night—I hit those elevations after four and eight days, respectively. With this tournament, I’ll be going directly from 4,600 feet at Kathmandu to 14,000 feet in Kongde, where there’s 43 percent less oxygen than at sea level. And sure, we’re scheduled to be Kongde-side for only an hour. But if the weather turns—and it often turns—then we’re stuck up there, in a very remote part of the Khumbu. At least the ball should go a little farther.
PLANET golf
OPTIONS (AND DANGERS)
T
he final few pre-trip days pass by in a blur. I pack, organize visa materials, purchase special trip insurance (featuring, I notice, repatriation of remains). On Wednesday afternoon, I catch a flight to Istanbul, then switch planes for Kathmandu. Thirty-one hours after leaving Manhattan, my sneakers hit Nepali tarmac. The tournament organizers have offered to pick me up at the airport, but I’ve got other ideas. I schlep suitcases across the street, dodge several taxis, and, roughly 17 seconds after leaving the arrivals terminal, enter Royal Nepal Golf Club. “Ollie!” It’s Major Naren Rai, the kindly retired Gurkha officer who introduced my friends and me to Pratima. “Hi, Major!” We hug, then Major Rai drags me inside the clubhouse for breakfast. Within seconds, I’m at a table with four other retired Gurkha majors—all with perfect posture and Titleist caps. Monkeys
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scamper around the porch outside. Kathmandu is waking up. “So tell us about this tournament!” Major Rai says. It’s called the Baahrakhari Everest Golf Tournament. Forty competitors. All amateurs. Most Nepali. The format: 18 holes, stroke play, with hole No. 1 taking place at Kongde Ri, 13,943 feet above sea level, and the remaining 17 holes played the next weekend at Gokarna Forest Resort back in Kathmandu (at a more oxygen-friendly 4,600 feet). This high-altitude hole at Kongde, a downhill (relatively speaking) 100-yard par 3, didn’t exist a week ago. It’s been constructed over the past four days by a team of four, supervised by Deepak Acharya. The hole features an artificial tee and green (flagstick location: dead center, three paces from the back edge), with all materials helicoptered up from Kathmandu.
Kongde is off the beaten Everest trekking route. It’s a remote, wind-swept area (predicted tournament temperature: 18 degrees Fahrenheit) with the best views of Everest in the Solukhumbu, and the strikingly picturesque Yeti Mountain Home, considered one of the world’s highest hotels. A team of about 20 people are up at Kongde, readying last-minute details. Two photographers have even hiked up over four days to be fully acclimatized for tournament-snapping. To arrive for their tee time, competitors have two options. Option 1: Take a Tara Air propeller plane into Lukla (9,383 feet) the day before the event, then a B3 helicopter up another 4,560 feet to Kongde the next morning. Option 2: Chopper directly from Kathmandu to Kongde the morning of the tournament in an MI-17 Nepal Army helicopter. After some light thought (read: an obsessive amount of panicked indecision),
I CROSS MY FINGERS. FOUR GOLFERS ARE RISKING THEIR LIVES TO HONOR THEIR FRIEND.
I’ve chosen Option 1, to sleep at 9,383 feet pre-tournament and (hopefully) acclimatize. There are only two issues with this choice. Issue 1: Lukla’s Tenzing-Hillary Airport is considered the world’s most dangerous airport. Issue 2: The airport, being wedged into the side of a mountain (and also being in the mountains), often shuts down for weather. Like, very often. Like, in 2011, thousands of hikers were stuck in Lukla for two weeks when weather rolled in (and then stopped rolling). Regardless of the chosen option, all competitors will play the hole, have breakfast and be back in Kathmandu by 10:30 a.m. That’s the plan, anyway. The totality of this event, I’m quickly realizing, seems somewhat Herculean in scope. Choppering over 100 people, including support staff, up into the Everest region, at 14,000 feet, for a single hole of golf, before returning to Kathmandu? Military operations have involved less planning.
EARLY ARRIVAL
‘M
ake sure you sit on the left-hand side of the plane.” It’s 6 a.m., next day. Less than 24 hours after arriving in Kathmandu, I’m heading to Lukla with 12 other golfers (Option 1). As our 13-seat prop plane finishes boarding, a flight attendant passes out cotton balls for ears. Everywhere I look, there are Titleist caps and Callaway vests. I notice one extraeager player already wearing a golf glove on each hand. “How long is the flight?” somebody asks. “Twenty-five minutes,” my friend Mahendra Mainali answers. Mahendra is playing in the tournament. Mahendra is a lawyer. Mahendra is due in Nepali Supreme Court at noon tomorrow, to argue a case. Anything for golf. With a roar, our plane hurtles down the runway and into the air. The buildings of Kathmandu fade away, replaced by steep, green hills. To our left, majestic snowy peaks stretch into the sky. Before long, we’re in the mountains, clearing peaks by 50 feet. The pilots appear to be concentrating extra hard. The single,
short, uphill runway of Lukla’s airport comes into view—and we enter a final approach that has to be timed perfectly, or none of us will be teeing off tomorrow. I’ve done this flight twice before but still grip my armrests rock-climber tight. With a thud, we land hard, screech to a halt. Passengers applaud. I yell “Shabash!” a phrase normally reserved for things like holes-in-one. Suddenly, we’re at 9,383 feet. And in Lukla 24 hours before the rest of the field arrives. I’ve never been this early for a tee time in my life.
A TRIBUTE
T
his tournament is happening for one main reason: Ang Tshering Sherpa. I describe Ang to my friends as “the Nepali Richard Branson.” A kind, deeply humble man, Ang was born in the Everest region village of Khumjung. He attended the school founded by Sir Edmund Hillary and began working on climbing expeditions at 11. By age 50, Ang owned Yeti Airlines, Gokarna Forest Resort, Tara Air, Thamserku Trekking and several hotels in the Everest region. He was also president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, leading
▶ and you think you’ve played in tough conditions Bikash Rana (left) tees off at Kongde Ri as two guests of the hotel look on; the tee and green at Kongde Ri (elevation: 13,943 feet) were brought by helicopter to create a par 3 of 100 yards. (No one made a birdie.)
large campaigns to clean up Mount Everest. I met and interviewed Ang Tshering in 2016 and stayed in touch with him as I covered Pratima’s journey. (A passionate golfer, Ang was incredibly generous with Pratima.) To all who knew him, Ang was the definition of Nepali kindness—and a true Nepali success story. Six months ago, Ang was killed in a helicopter crash. It had always been Ang’s dream to stage the world’s highest golf tournament in Nepal, up at Kongde. By playing, Ang’s friends are honoring the great Nepali. Because Ang Tshering did so much for his people, for his country, for his beloved sport in Nepal. His portrait has been placed at Kongde, beside the first tee. I’m proud to be taking part.
PRE-TOURNAMENT PREPARATIONS
‘I
t’s on the right, up those steps.” Our group exits Lukla Airport, passing hoards of trekkers either starting up for Everest Base Camp or waiting for Kathmandu-bound flights. We drop our bags at a nearby lodge, do a two-hour acclimatization hike. It’s a clear day in Lukla, the gateway to Everest. I was here three years ago, in these same mountain towns, in these same hiking boots, and it’s hard not to be swept up in the excitement of the place. With every footstep, Everest beckons. At 1 p.m., we’re given keys to our lodges. I’m in the Yeti Mountain Home, which Ang Tshering owned. It’s easily the nicest in Lukla, with en-suite showers and heated mattresses. In the garden, colorful prayer flags flutter in the breeze. Our group gathers here, drinking tea in the sunshine. A pre-tournament chipping contest begins, as a group of Sherpa children hug the nearby fence, counting down my swing. “Three . . . two . . . one . . . gooooo!” Mountains stretch in all directions. I’m among smiling Nepali golfers in Ang Tshering’s hotel. I can’t help thinking that Ang would have loved this.
THE TOURNAMENT IS A TRIBUTE TO ANG TSHERING, WHO DID SO MUCH FOR HIS BELOVED NEPAL. 90 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
SCARY CONDITIONS
I
t’s 5 a.m., tournament day. I’m wearing snowboard pants, plus my green expedition jacket that I bought in Namche Bazaar (11,286 feet) in 2016 for $20—which makes me look a little like the Nepali Michelin Man. In my pockets are Diamox, Dexamethasone and golf tees. I’m sitting across from Surya, one of the event organizers. He doesn’t look pleased. “It’s very cloudy,” Surya says. I look out the window. In the direction of where Kongde’s peak should be at 20,299 feet, I see a wall of clouds. This isn’t great. The No. 1 rule of flying choppers in the Khumbu Valley is simple: Don’t fly into clouds. “Do you think the clouds will clear?” I ask. Surya looks back at me. “We’ll see.” Others arrive at the lodge, armed with golf clubs and hiking packs. We sip Sherpa tea and stare at the mountain. At 6:30 a.m., 15 of us head down to the helipad. Two choppers are already there, and our group sits at the field’s western edge to wait. Rajeev Bikram
Shah, president of the Nepal Athletic Association, takes practice swings in the middle of the helipad, wearing a camouflage jacket and shades. “Swing looking good, Rajeev!” someone calls. I feel like we have other concerns. Weather in the Khumbu, particularly when it comes to flying choppers, is tough to predict. Although approaching weather systems off the Bay of Bengal can be tracked online, there are so many microclimates—each changing so quickly—that the main method of assessing whether to take off is usually to just look out the window. Early in the morning, there are often cloud gaps. But Kongde is hidden behind clouds thicker than thukpa soup. I see my lawyer friend Mahendra checking his watch. Mahendra is due in Supreme Court in four hours. He looks a little anxious. To pass time at the helipad, our accompanying doctor, Dr. Sudhamshu KC, takes our group’s oxygen saturation levels with a pulse oximeter. Above 90 percent is ideal. Below 85 percent means “descend immediately.” I receive a 92, which I’m rather pleased with. Dr. Sudhamshu checks
▶ it’s official Mahesh Baduwal, Gyaneshwor Acharya, Deepak Acharya, Jivan Bhattarai,
the next golfer. “Ninety-six! Very good,” he tells her. I feel unexplainably jealous. “OK, first chopper!” There’s a commotion around us as word spreads. There’s been a slight break in the clouds (a break I am definitely not seeing); the first chopper is going to try for Kongde! Four golfers—Bikash Rana, Aarti Rana, Rajendra Shrestha and Rekha Ghimire—quickly load into the chopper, and the pilot lifts up. We watch them careen into the distance, out of sight. I cross my fingers. Four golfers are risking their lives to honor their friend. Soon, the walkie-talkies crackle. The chopper made it! All passengers were dropped at Kongde. They’re playing the hole now. The organizers shake hands with each other and smile brightly. It’s official. The Baahrakhari Everest Golf tournament is the highest in the world. “Here it is!” The same chopper lands back at our helipad, loads up five more golfers, and roars back toward Kongde. “We’ll be going up soon,” Mahendra tells me. Within minutes, however, there’s more commotion. The chopper couldn’t
make it through the clouds to Kongde. The pilot diverted to Syangboche (12,402 feet), where a separate hole was built just in case. More news arrives: The golfers back in Kathmandu can’t leave. The MI-17 Nepali Army pilots have deemed conditions too dangerous. This is all not sounding good. The chopper finally returns with the Kongde group. Bikash, Aarti, Rajendra and Rekha disembark and are mobbed by the waiting crowd. Everyone wants pictures with them. We learn their scores: Bikas and Rekha made double, Rajendra bogeyed, and Aarati made par. I take a photo with the group. I’m thrilled for them. I just hope I can join them. Five more people load into the chopper, but this time, the pilot won’t even consider Kongde. It’s too dangerous. The chopper flies instead to Syangboche. Soon, Mahendra hears news. “The golfers are stuck at Syangboche. The clouds are too thick to take off.” “Are you serious?” I check my phone’s weather app. It’s 9 a.m. And there’s a rain storm approaching Lukla. If we don’t get out of Lukla soon, the airport will close. We’ll be stuck overnight.
Narintorn Sukkaseam, Prateek Pradhan and Deepak Khadka putt out at Kongde.
It dawns on me that my flight back to New York City is tomorrow morning. Prateek, the event organizer, walks up to me. “Oliver, we’re still trying to get you up to Kongde. A pilot here says it’s risky, but if there’s a gap in the clouds, he’s willing to take you, Mahendra, and two others. But once the pilot drops you, there’s no guarantee he can come back. You might be stuck at 14,000 feet overnight.” I consider this plan. It seems, in a word, unwise. Mahendra speaks. “I love this idea. We will both do it.” The weather, however, has other plans. As we wait, clouds completely cover Kongde. The call is made: Kongde is off. Priorities switch to getting us out of Lukla before the storm. Everyone heads for the airport. “We tried,” I say to Mahendra, as we’re handed boarding passes and rush through security. Within minutes, our plane throttles down the runway (downhill this time, which feels like a roller coaster) and launches into the air. My tournament is over. Lukla’s airport shuts down 10 minutes after our plane leaves. The rest of the group is stuck in Lukla overnight.
SUCCESS
I
have to fly back to New York City the next morning; my score for the opening hole of the World’s Highest Golf tournament: a DQ. Over the next four days, however, 13 more golfers make it up to Kongde. (Mahendra, fresh from Nepali Supreme Court, is among them.) In total, 25 players were able to compete in the Baahrakhari Everest Golf Tournament. Seventeen golfers played at Kongde, eight at Syangboche. Tashi Tshering Dong won the overall event with 39 Stableford points. (Almost all amateur events in Nepal are Stableford.) Tashi was tied with Rabindra Tiwari at 39 points but won on a three-hole count-back (seven points to four). The Baahrakhari Everest Golf Tournament was many things. It was a tribute. It was a successful record attempt. It was Nepali through and through. One fact about the tournament will always stay with me. Of the 25 players, one, it turns out, was Ang Tshering’s son, Norbu. Although we didn’t know it at the time, later in the day on Sunday, long after we’d arrived back in Kathmandu, Norbu made it up to Kongde in a chopper from Kathmandu. He quietly completed the hole, under the watchful eye of his father’s portrait. issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
91
H ME T WN HER the u . s . amateur , andy ogletree returned to Union, Mississippi,
Two months after winning
to celebrate his victory with those who helped make it possible by ryan herrington
92 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
Photographs by Rob Tringali
â&#x2013;ś home hole Ogletree couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t visit Union without hitting balls behind his house.
‘I
feel like I’ve left something behind,” Andy Ogletree says as he steers his Jeep Cherokee onto I-20 heading west out of Atlanta, the traffic bearable for an early Friday afternoon in November. It’s hard to figure out just what that could be, though, from a glance at the back seat, a heap of clothes, books, papers and boxes strewn door to door. And the trunk might be mistaken for a storage closet at a muny golf shop with all the gear. Even so, conscientiousness causes Ogletree to tick through an imaginary checklist until, eventually, he relents. “Oh, well,” he says. “We have the trophy. That’s really all we need.” Ah, yes, the trophy. That’s definitely there, sitting tall in the right back seat, shiny and golden, buckled in, shoulder harness and all, for safety. On most days, the Havemeyer Trophy that Ogletree claimed after winning the 119th U.S. Amateur Championship last August sits on a coffee table in his college apartment, he and his two roommates still catching themselves staring at the names. Now, like its owner, the trophy is settled in for a weekend road trip. 94 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
Since rallying from 4 down after five holes to beat John Augenstein, 2 and 1, in the 36-hole championship match at Pinehurst (N.C.) Resort, Ogletree has started his senior year at Georgia Tech, flown to England to help the United States win the Walker Cup, competed in three college tournaments, stood on the field while being honored by his school at a Yellow Jackets football game and done dozens of media interviews. For two months, he has been pulled in countless directions except the one he longs for the most. Home. With the conclusion of Tech’s fall golf schedule,
Ogletree finally has a window to return to Union, Miss., where four generations of his family have lived, worked, played and prayed. It’s an opportunity for the 21-yearold business major—set to graduate in May a month after he’ll play with Tiger Woods at the 2020 Masters— to say hello in person to friends and relatives, many for the first time since winning the biggest tournament of his life. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a while,” Ogletree says shortly into the drive. “I’ve got a lot of people I’d like to thank.” It’s also a chance for the folks in Union to thank
Ogletree for winning the biggest tournament of their lives, too. In the days after Ogletree’s victory, all anyone in the town of 1,988 wanted to do was brag about how one of their own became a national celebrity. “The Monday after he won, I had kids who will never pick up a golf club talking to me about it. ‘Did you see Andy? That was awesome,’ ” says Robbie Robertson, a teacher at Leake Academy outside of Union and a freelance sportswriter who wrote about playing against the local prodigy when Andy was 8. “That’s the thing that really shocked me. Just how excited they were
about it. I know these kids don’t play golf. But he’s from Mississippi. He’s from Union. That was a big deal.” So it is that Ogletree is in for a hero’s welcome. It begins with a Mississippi trooper meeting him shortly after he crosses the state line and escorting him the final leg of the 4½-hour, 300-mile drive. The patrol car takes him past a large highway billboard, one of 10 around the state, that shows Ogletree holding the Havemeyer and congratulates him on his Amateur win. Sirens on, lights swirling, the trooper brings Ogletree to Union’s one standalone grocery, the Piggly Wiggly
in the days after ogletree’s victory, all anyone in the town of 1,988 wanted to do was brag about how one of their own became a national celebrity.
▶ paying tribute Local businesses took time to acknowledge Ogletree’s return.
owned and operated by Andy’s father, Jim. The store has been in the family since 1928. Andy worked there as a bagger in high school for $7.35 an hour—when he wasn’t off winning state golf titles. Waiting for him in the parking lot are Jim and other supporters, including Andy’s mother, Melissa, and his brothers, Eric, 19, and Colin, 18. The next 40 hours are waves of handshakes and hugs. Later that night, Ogletree steps onto another football field, receiving a proclamation from the town before Union High’s final home game. On Saturday, Northwood Country Club, one of the courses instrumental in Ogletree’s development as a junior—and whose ▶ after party Being back in Union gave Ogletree the chance to hang out with family, including his mother, Melissa, and father, Jim (third and second from right, above) and show off the trophy from his U.S. Amateur win (lef).
members sprung for the billboards—holds a luncheon in his honor. On Sunday, before driving back to school, he joins an assortment of aunts, uncles and cousins at his grandmother’s house for family brunch, a weekly tradition going back years. “So much has happened in such a short time,” Ogletree says. “But these people were here before I won, and they’ll be here after. They’re not going away.” Neither is he.
96 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
‘UNION GOT PUT ON THE MAP’
‘A
nywhere in America, if you have a small community, and one of your own had an accomplishment like this, it puts your town on the map,” says Ricky Chesney, whose family has owned Chesney Grocery & Café, a gas station in town, for 37 years. “Union got put on the map. How many people can do that?” You’ll find Union on said
map roughly 25 miles north of Meridian and 90 miles northeast of Jackson, in the central-eastern portion of Mississippi. And just how small a community is it, really? “There are no strangers,” Andy says, explaining that he doesn’t just know everybody in town but that he “can pretty much tell everyone by their car.” If Union is small, it’s also proud. Not too long ago, according to Jim Ogletree, there were more jobs in town than people. There was a shirt factory and a glove warehouse. Lumber from Tri-C Wood was used for, among other things, building Radio Flyer wagons. Century Insulation made Styrofoam. Allied Lock produced chains and other hardware. Jim, 55, is familiar with this because his father, Ed, along with running the Piggly Wiggly, was Union’s mayor from 1969-’81. Slowly, though,
as the economy turned, the manufacturing sector waned. So did the reasons to move to Union. However, generational families, like the Ogletrees, remained. Jim took over the grocery in 1986 and got married in 1994 to Melissa, who grew up in nearby Philadelphia and has her immediate family still in the area. Soon came the three boys. With Andy being the oldest, it might be expected he would one day take over the grocery, but he had other ideas. He played his first golf tournament when he was 5, a qualifier for the U.S. Kids World Championship. He finished second and knew how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. “I like being in control,” Andy says when asked what it was about golf that hooked him. “I like the weight on your shoulders, the adrenaline rush. I just think there is nothing like it.” Jim didn’t hold back in encouraging his sons’ interest (Eric and Colin played from an early age, too) when he built a golf hole beside a 75acre lake behind their house. As the boys got older,
maintaining the hole (complete with a bunker) became their responsibility. They bought a green mower on eBay and sent grass samples to learn what fertilizers would work best. “It was as good a hole as you’d find on a course,” Jim says with pride. Conveniently, the yard was big enough for the hole to grow with his sons, allowing them to hit 200-yard shots. Important, too, was the streetlight that sat over the green, allowing the Ogletrees to play well past sunset. “We’d be out there all hours,” Eric says. “A lot of times it would be midnight, and Mom finally had to come out and make us come in. Andy especially.” Starting in high school,
Andy gave up basketball and football to concentrate on golf. For a full round, he’d play at Northwood, or at Dancing Rabbit, a casino/resort course 25 miles away, or hop over to Union Golf Course, a nine-hole muny that Jim says once had an airplane runway between two holes. The hard work paid off. Andy won the state AA individual title five times, including in 2016 by 16 strokes. That same year, Andy’s senior season, he, Eric and Colin were Nos. 1-2-3 on the Union boys’ team that won the state team title. Everyone in town knew of Andy’s golf talent, most assuming he would stay near home for college and play at
Ole Miss, his father’s alma mater. But that changed when Georgia Tech coach Bruce Heppler spotted Ogletree at a summer junior tournament in 2013. “I’m watching, and here comes this little redhead with horn-rimmed glasses, skinny little dude,” Heppler recalls. “And I think, This guy is probably smart. He’s got to come to Georgia Tech. And he striped one down the fairway, and he won the tournament. And I’m going, There’s my guy. I was all in.” Going to Tech was no easy decision for Ogletree, whose high-school graduating class was just 62. About half went to college, Andy says, many at East Central Community
College in Decatur. Everybody in Union knew of Andy, but that wouldn’t be the case in Atlanta, where his reputation as the driven golfer wouldn’t precede him—or protect him. “I wanted to challenge myself,” says Ogletree, despite naysayers convinced he’d made a bad decision, the screen saver on his phone helping speak to his usual mind-set: Today I will do what others won’t so tomorrow I can do what others can’t. “It was a big deal for him to leave,” says Wilkins Thames, a classmate in Union who lives and works in the area and is among Ogletree’s closest friends. “But golf is what Andy was always going to be about. He had to go.” ▶
‘so much has happened in such a short time. but these people were here before i won, and they’ll be here after. they’re not going away.’
▶ friday night lights Ogletree watches a Union High football game with childhood friend Walker Kelly.
‘A BREAK FROM ALL THE NEGATIVE’
W
hen Ogletree arrives at Union High on a chilly Friday night ahead of the ceremony in his honor, Thames is there to greet him. They’re joined by another Union buddy, Walker Kelly, and soon it’s as if they’re back in high school . . . except for the receiving line that forms around them, folks hoping to grab a second with Andy. “Got to say hi to the legend,” says one passerby,
Ogletree embarrassed but appreciative. “He’s never bragged about himself much,” Thames says. “We were always the ones doing that for him.” The reception is similar, albeit a bit more formal, the next day at Northwood, the 80-some people attending more elders than peers. Andy says a few words, expressing his gratitude for everything they’ve done, before giving everyone a chance to stare at the names on the Havemeyer. “The whole weekend, that’s the one I was most
nervous about because I knew I had to give a speech,” Ogletree says. When lunch ends, Ogletree heads to the course, connecting with Tony Ruggiero, his instructor since 2015, who drove from his home in Mobile, Ala. It’s the first time since Pinehurst that Ogletree has worked face to face with Ruggiero. “I need some fixin’,” Ogletree says. “Haven’t had time to practice like I’d like.” Ruggiero watches him play a handful of holes, not too concerned by what he sees. Inside Northwood’s
clubhouse, Melissa, who teaches first grade in Union, reflects on everything that has happened. She wasn’t supposed to be at Pinehurst, but at the beach for a vacation with Colin. But Andy called her during match play and convinced her to change plans. “It’s been exciting to see the things that he has dreamed of since he was a little boy actually materializing in front of your eyes,” she says. “The things he always said he wanted to do, but you thought, Hmm. Yeah, that’s great, but in the back of your mind you’re
‘it’s been exciting to see the things that he has dreamed of since he was a little boy actually materializing in front of your eyes.’
98 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
▶ like old times Since his victory at Pinehurst, relaxing has been a luxury (above). The Ogletrees’ back-yard hole is where Andy’s love of golf began.
really thinking, OK, that’s a really big expectation.” Her joy is colored, in part, with the satisfaction for what she believes Andy’s win has been able to provide the town. “Happiness,” Melissa says. “A break from all the negative. It’s kind of nice to have something that’s positive going around in town instead of somebody else talking about somebody else.” So how badly did Union need something like this? “Everywhere needs something like this,” she says The good news is that as the memory of summer and Pinehurst fades, the coming of spring and the Masters will restore the buzz. After Ogletree won the Amateur, Chesney bought tickets for Thursday and Friday at Augusta National on StubHub, as did others close to the Ogletrees. “I still need a place to stay,” Chesney says. “Worst case, I grab the floor
[at Jim and Melissa’s rental].” Ogletree will be back in Union before then, certainly around Christmas, but his visits are likely to become less frequent. After the Masters and graduation, he will turn pro and start chasing a tour card. He’ll be focused on moving on, building a life elsewhere. Of course, that’s what he’s been doing for a long time. It’s why he went to Georgia Tech, and why he spent all those nights practicing behind his house under the streetlight. Early Sunday afternoon, fueled on grandma’s fried chicken, Ogletree re-packs the Jeep Cherokee, trophy secure in the back seat once more. He says goodbye to his loved ones and waves as he pulls away, heading toward I-20 east and a return to the craziness of his post-Pinehurst life. As home becomes smaller in the rearview mirror, the young man driving can take solace in this: There’s one thing Andy Ogletree will never leave behind, no matter where he goes. And that’s Union.
Golf Digest and How to play, what to play, where to play are registered trademarks of Discovery Golf, Inc. Copyright © 2019 Discovery Golf, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Volume 71, Issue 1. GOLF DIGEST (ISSN 0017176X) is published monthly (except for a combined issue in December/January) by Discovery Golf, Inc. Principal office: Golf Digest, One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Discovery Golf, Inc.: Alex Kaplan, President & GM; Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement 40644503. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration 123242885RT0001. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS (see DMM 507.1.5.2); Non-Postal and Military facilities: Send address corrections to Golf Digest, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 500370617. For subscriptions, address adjustments or backissue inquiries: Write to Golf Digest, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037-0617; visit golfdigest. com; or call 800-PAR-GOLF. Please give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. Subscribers: If the post office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after the magazine becomes undeliverable, you are ever dissatisfied with your subscription, let us know. You will receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within eight weeks after receipt of order. Address all editorial, business and production correspondence to: Golf Digest magazine, One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007 or call 212-286-2860. For reprints, please email reprints@ condenast.com or call Wright’s Media 877-652-5295. For reuse permissions, please email contentlicensing@condenast. com or 800-897-8666. Golf Digest does not accept any unsolicited submissions and is not responsible for the return or loss of, or for any damage or any other injury to: unsolicited manuscripts, unsolicited artwork (including, but not limited to, drawings, photographs and transparencies), or any other unsolicited materials.
issue 1 . 2020 | golf digest
99
Last Shot
“You sent me a letter, and I didn’t respond . . . “ Lost Letters (From Tiger and Others) by jerry tarde / Editor-in-Chief As the Oldest Member, I’m often copied on irate letters and apologetic texts. Some get lost in the ethernet, so it’s my responsibility to bring them to your attention. Here’s a sampling.
Y
ou tied me at 82 official PGA Tour victories, but you know I won a lot more than that. The Google Machine credits me with 94 PGA-sanctioned tour wins, but the egghead professors in Pondy Verde robbed me. They count The Greenbrier as official one year and somehow unofficial the next. I won the West Virginia Open 17 times, but I guarantee you they didn’t count them. I just want to warn you, as time goes by, they’re gonna start taking away your majors. Like those three U.S. Amateurs you won. By my count, you’ve got 18 majors to Jack’s 20 (including his two National Amateurs), so you’re only two behind. Keep your eyes on those boys in accounting. The Ghost of Sam Snead to: sean mcmanus,
CBS SPORTS ’ve come to my senses and realize that maybe you didn’t fire me. Actually, I think I retired. I’ll be 73 by the time you read this, young enough to run for president but maybe a little too old to run around a golf course with a backpack and rabbit ears. You gave me the best 27 years of my life, traveling the world first-class, hanging with celebrities like Gary McCord, and making a pretty good living. Not bad for a golf pro from Maine with a 6-handicap. I just want to say thank you very much.
I
Sincerely, Peter Kostis
100 golf digest | issue 1 . 2020
dear mr. palmer,
I
’m writing you because I think I’ve dug myself into a divot hole over the last year. First, it started with short-paying my caddie in Mexico. He agreed to five grand for the week, never thinking I’d win a million pounds and the going rate would be 10 percent. At the match play, I won a hole when Sergio raked away a two-inch putt before I conceded it—was that wrong? Then there was the rules flap at the Memorial when I claimed relief because my ball landed in another player’s pitch mark. What are the odds of that? Then I said the sand particles were so coarse in a bunker in Germany that they actually were loose impediments and I was entitled to remove them. I figured you’d get a kick out of that last one. You always said Jack had big MacGregors, but you never knew he had big sand particles. My manager, Mark Steinberg, told me that my motto should be to ask myself: What Would Arnie Do? So this is the third time I’ve sent you a letter, and I haven’t heard back. Respectfully, Matt Kuchar
dear brooks,
T
hanks for pointing out that I haven’t won a major championship since you joined the tour. I hadn’t realized that. I forgot my last major was the 2014 PGA at Valhalla, beating ol’ Phil by a shot. You know the tour-pro mentality—one week’s just like any other.
I agree we haven’t had much of a rivalry. In fact, I don’t even notice when you’re in the field. Wish I could fly under the radar like you. Speaking of the Ryder Cup, what is it—Europe has won or retained the cup in 12 of the last 17 matches? Not much of a rivalry there, either. See you in Wisconsin. Shoren begorrah, Rory yo, commish,
I
understand I am the problem. Some weeks the designated slow player is J.B. Holmes, and other weeks it’s Kevin Na or Jason Day. But even Justin Thomas was looking at his watch when I took over two minutes to miss an eight-foot putt. Or when my pre-shot calibrations turn glacial. I’m willing to donate my green-reading book to science. But the real problem is green speed getting out of control. If we slowed down the greens to a reasonable 11 or 12 on the
Stimpmeter, especially in the majors, play would speed up. I have a beautiful mind. The pro who knew infinity, Bryson DeChambeau dear mr. norman,
I
t’s come to my attention that you sent me a congratulatory letter after the Masters, and I didn’t respond. I’m sorry about that. I try to make it a practice these days to do the right thing. I maybe remember your note, because it had a big white fish on the letterhead, but no address. I see there’s a Greg Norman on the faculty of the University of Chicago and another who’s a lawyer in New York, and there’s an obesity doctor in San Diego. And one I think used to be a golf-pro-turned-vintner. Are any of them you? Please send me your address and postage, and I’d be happy to return an autographed picture. Best, Tiger
Woods: Christian Petersen/Getty imaGes • tyPeWriter: ozGur donmaz
dear tiger,
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