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THE WORLD’S 100 GREATEST COURSES A BACK-YARD HOLE YOU WON’T BELIEVE

YOUR DRIVER FACE IS OUTDATED.

SO WE REIMAGINED A BETTER ONE … WITH A TWIST. INTRODUCING TWIST FACE, AN INNOVATION DESIGNED TO GIVE EVERY GOLFER ONE THING – STRAIGHT DISTANCE. ONLY FROM TAYLORMADE.

The Ocean Course, Kiawah Island

Where to find the sweet spot. Tee off as waves crash behind you on “America’s Toughest Course,” test your short game amid mountain waterfalls or shoot for greens surrounded by Revolutionary War replicas.

Play hundreds of links from the mountains to the sea, and come to find that a change of course is just the break you needed.

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With more than 360 courses to choose from, South Carolina offers enough golf destinations to play new links every day of the year, and the variety matches the volume.

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Natural water features dot courses across the state.

Choose from more than 360 golf courses in South Carolina.

Reconnect on a South Carolina golf getaway.

The state’s layouts stretch from mountaintops to the waterfront, with hundreds of public courses featuring cascading waterfalls, gorgeous sand dunes, historical landmarks and 10 warm-weather months annually.

Kiawah Island Golf Resort is among the state’s most famous properties and home to the legendary Ocean Course—host of the 2012 PGA Championship and named by Golf Digest as “America’s Toughest Course.”

Play River Falls Plantation in Duncan, South Carolina.

Farther north, Myrtle Beach is one of North America’s most iconic golf destinations. With more than 100 courses to play, the Grand Strand offers variety and challenging courses for every skill level. About 200 miles south is Hilton Head Island, home to beloved PGA Tour course Harbour Town Golf Links and dozens more pro-designed layouts.

In the Midlands, South Carolina’s rich history is on display at The Patriot Golf Course, where Davis Love III’s design weaves in a replica of a Colonial-era fort just off Lake Greenwood.

In the Upstate, the Blue Ridge Mountains house some of the state’s most beautiful golf courses. Cherokee Valley in the town of Travelers Rest is a must-play, showcasing vivid mountain backdrops and a signature 14th hole highlighted by a breathtaking waterfall.

With so many unique championship courses from the mountains to the sea, South Carolina is Just Right for golf getaways.

Contents 02/18

how to play. what to play. where to play.

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48

Cover Story: Exclusive Look at Tiger’s New Swing

BY RON KASPRISKE, WITH ANALYSIS

BY JIM MCLEAN

57

74

How Tiger Chooses His Equipment The 14-time major champion brings a meticulous approach to club testing.

What Made Tiger Great?

Nicklaus, Player, Trevino, Miller and Faldo on going from good to transcendent.

82

86

66

The Bullet & The Bomb!

Attack your golf course with two different tee shots. BY DANIEL BERGER Nobel Golfer Richard Thaler, the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, has ideas for the game. BY DAVID OWEN

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Planet Golf Nicklaus and Norman tie for most courses among living architects on our World 100 Greatest list.

Make Bunker Shots Fun Again Borrow these tour-pro keys to splash it out and land it soft. BY MATT KILLEN Life of Harmon Claude III on his famous family, famous pupils and the blank canvas that was Tiger Woods.

New Ranking How many have you played in these 23 countries?

Solid and Far Made Simple Keys to a repeatable swing and finding the sweet spot.

BY GERINA PILLER

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Tour Technique Control your chip shots.

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Eliminate Three-Putts Become automatic from long distance.

Editor’s Letter Canada’s Briga-dune? BY JERRY TARDE

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The Golf Life 10

20

Undercover Tour Pro A guide to private-jet life.

WITH MAX ADLER

32

Art of Exaggeration How to feel a proper release.

BY DAVID LEADBETTER

Bad Advice Why “keeping your head down” is killing your swing.

BY NICK CLEARWATER

BY BUTCH HARMON

Catching Up with Rickie Fowler Eight questions for the four-time PGA Tour winner.

WITH KEELY LEVINS

34

Keep It Down Never clank one off a branch again.

The Digest Nine ways to wreck a golf date.

BY ALEX MYERS AND SAM WEINMAN

BY TOM WATSON 36 22

Golf Digest Schools Quick tips for more power and crisper hybrids.

BY MICHAEL JACOBS AND ADAM KOLLOFF

24

Control Experiment New irons worth testing.

BY MIKE STACHURA

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New Looks Five ways to rethink your wedge game.

BY MIKE STACHURA

8

30

BY MATT KUCHAR

WITH GUY YOCOM

BY RON WHITTEN 70

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19 92

BY JAIME DIAZ

Features

Play Your Best

BY DOM FURORE

BY E. MICHAEL JOHNSON 58

Good Things in High Places Golf in the Andes is breathtaking—literally.

You can’t breathe.

A Back-Yard Hole You Won’t Believe

BY ALEX MYERS

44

Ask Golf Digest What we can learn from Jordan Spieth’s stroke

46

Club Politics The issues that truly divide our country clubs.

BY MAX ADLER

100 Closeout

Your 2018 golf horoscope.

BY MAX ADLER

Cover photograph by Walter Iooss Jr.

andes: dom furore

The Tiger Issue

dr. wedge retired surgeon john wedge has found a summer h o m e a t c a b o t.

Canada’s Briga-dune?

BY JERRY TARDE Chairman and Editor-in-Chief his past summer my wife and I packed up the SUV and drove 939 miles from our home in Connecticut through Maine and New Brunswick to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia to play a couple of courses owned by Mike Keiser and his Canadian partner, Ben Cowan-Dewar. It was my third visit, Beth’s first, to Cabot Links resort, or what they should have called Brigadoon.

Keiser is famous for his Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon: He gives Americans a wee dram of Scotland without crossing the ocean. It’s hard to

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believe, but Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links are even better in my book—they rank ninth and 43rd among Golf Digest’s World 100 Greatest Golf Courses (see page 66). I should add that Keiser churns out masterpieces at a Picasso pace because he has more projects going in Wisconsin, Oregon, Scotland and California, but if I had to pick one spot anywhere to spend a summer, it would be in this old coal-mining town called Inverness on a beach fronting the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The proof is in the four caddies who carried my bag over four rounds there: a Scottish farmer, a junior high school principal, a practicing attorney and a renowned pediatric surgeon. Each made their way from far and wide to live or

8 golfdigest.com | february 2018

summer in Inverness so they could caddie and play the Cabot courses.

Ken Hunter emigrated from Scotland and tried his hand at dairy farming but was drawn to caddieing when the first course opened. “I always say to players, ‘You’ve come a long way—if your game’s not at its best, don’t let that spoil the experience of playing two amazing courses,’ ” he says.

Jim MacMaster grew up in Inverness, then moved to western Canada for a career in education and returned with his wife to build a house on the hills overlooking Cabot.

“Knowing when to give advice, listen, encourage or shut up are the primary tools of the trade,” he says. “I’m also a golf addict.

I tinker with my game all the time, and I love talking to others about theirs. You know the adage: Playing a round of golf is the best way to get to know someone, and it applies to caddieing as well.”

Jill McCutcheon is a lawyer in Toronto most of the year, but she bought a villa on the Cabot Links course and took several weeks off last summer to caddie, donating all her fees to an assisted-living facility in Inverness.

“I like fresh air, exercise and golf, not in that order,” says Jill, a 6-handicapper. “Being a lawyer involves sitting at a desk and giving advice. I like giving advice, but I don’t like sitting at a desk. So in planning ahead to retirement, I asked myself how to combine all the things I love and am good at and came up with being a caddie. As much as I love golf, I think playing seven

days a week might be too much even for me! Why Inverness?

Because Cabot is a gender-blind golf destination, so I fit in.”

Everything about the good doctor seems implausible, including his name: John Wedge.

His first job at age 13 was caddieing in Saskatchewan, then came medical school, and 46 years of pediatric surgery; he rose to become the head surgeon at Toronto’s world-famous Hospital for Sick Children. He retired last year at 71, travels frequently with his wife, Patty, but has found a home in late summer every year mixing golf and caddieing.

“Meeting interesting people, the camaraderie among the players and other caddies, the spectacular scenery of Cape Breton, the phenomenal exercise carrying a bag and walking seven to 12 miles a day,” are the elixirs of Inverness (population: 1,248), Dr. Wedge says. “For a non-intense sport, golfers endure variable degrees of stress.

And the essence of their character is unveiled in a broad range of human emotions: humor, anger, frustration, despair, honor, self-deprecation, self-respect, optimism, pride. I’ve witnessed them all on these challenging courses.”

This erudite foursome of caddies would seem out of place at Winged Foot or Augusta National, but not in Inverness.

Their lifestyle is from another time. John and Patty Wedge hike in the national park, rappel down the area’s spectacular waterfalls, swim in the North Atlantic, take advantage of the caddie rate to play the Cabot courses in the afternoon, and “read a combination of fiction and history in the evenings.”

Fiddle-playing at the Red Shoe Pub in Mabou, free samples at the Glenora Distillery, and Pebble Beach views at Canadian prices (79 cents U.S. to the Canadian dollar)— what’s not to like? Every golf course is a special place, but you can find your Brigadoon in our World 100.

photograph: courtesy of fairways magazine • illustration: tim l ahan

Editor’s Letter

Memories are made around meals.

The Savor card makes them more rewarding.

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You probably forgot what you ate.

But you remember everything else.

The Golf Life Mr. X

Undercover Tour Pro High stakes: A guide to private-jet life grew up in a big family. Vacations were always to places we could drive.

My parents weren’t in a position to fork over round-trip airfares for us all. The first time I flew was in high school, for a funeral, and I remember my dad going through the rigmarole of obtaining the death certificate for the airline so we could get the discounted rate. When I was getting started in my pro career, I sat through my share of major airport delays and slept crookedly on plenty of red-eyes after missing in Monday qualifiers. I mention this only as a preamble for the following statement, which I know will sound ridiculous to most people: Sharing a private jet is a great way to get to know another golfer.

At tournaments, each of us is in “go mode.”

The course is the stage where we compete, and off the course gets to be a kind of stage, too. Around the clubhouse and the hotel, out to dinner, all the sponsors and deal-makers hover in the little schedule of functions.

You might interact with another player, but often in forced situations. Like, you’re both wired for sound and people are filming you.

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You and that player, however, sinking back into fineleather chairs up in the clouds and enjoying a beverage, you couldn’t be any farther above it all. There’s the chance to really get to know the person behind the brand. And it might be someone whom you’d otherwise never seek out.

One year at the WGC-Match Play, when it was still outside Tucson and the format was single-elimination, I lost early.

Immediately after the handshake—as in, before I even put my putter back in the bag—I take out my phone and call my guy who handles flights for a lot of the players. How soon could he get me home? Our deal is, schedule a flight more than 10 hours in advance, and you set the terms. Less than that, you take what’s available. At roughly $5,000 per hour, it makes sense to share as much as you can. To get out that afternoon, my only option was to share with a golfer who is, shall we say, known as a

presence on the European Ryder Cup team. Maybe because I’m American, maybe because I just assumed our personalities would clash, I’d never said more than two words to the guy.

I’ve never laughed harder.

What a funny and genuine person this Englishman revealed himself to be. Our kids are roughly the same age. Now when we see each other at tournaments, we always exchange a warm greeting.

It’s not often that players refuse to fly together, but when they do, the reasons are understandable. When you’re paying premium, maybe you don’t want to fly with a guy who’s bringing his newborn, or pet, or with a group that’s going to get rowdy when all you want to do is sleep. I know it can be a chess game for the operators: constantly updating who’s letting his caddie or entourage hop on, being sensitive to which players might not be on friendly terms, and laying that all against the Sunday tee times to get everyone home or to the next tournament cost-efficiently. And on top of that, the players who are endorsed by the jet company have priority. I fly with NetJets and Wheels Up, but the logo of one is stitched onto every golf shirt I own. It’s useful for me to have active accounts at both to increase my ride-sharing flexibility.

Some players let their manager handle their travel details, but I like to know exactly what’s going on. If it’s a Friday and there’s a good chance I’m missing the cut, I’ll beckon my manager to the rope and give him instructions to make flight arrangements. I don’t want to put him in the position of making that guess. And if I birdie in, it’s no big deal because I don’t get penalized for cancellations.

En route to the last Presidents Cup, I heard Patrick Reed and Hideki Matsuyama had to fly to New York together. No word if they hit it off, but given the timing, I’d bet it was a silent flight. —WITH MAX ADLER

hans neleman/getty images

“At roughly $5,000 per hour, it makes sense to share.”

Solid and Far Made Simple

BY GERINA PILLER hear a lot of people say to shift all your weight away from the target when you take the club back and then shift it back to your front side on the way through. I’m sure that works for some, but my swing doesn’t have a lot of lateral movement. Mine’s more about rotation. I think it’s because I grew up playing baseball, where you start your swing with your weight already on the back foot and then you just step and turn, getting the bat to move its fastest as it strikes the ball.

I took what I learned in baseball and applied it to my golf swing.

The benefit, I’ve found, is that it makes it easier to find the sweet spot on the clubface and create effortless power. If you tend to sway too much and/or swing too hard, you’ve got to rely on really good timing to have the same consistency. So if you’re struggling to hit it solid and far, try copying the way I swing. Here I’m going to walk you through how I do it. — WITH KEELY LEVINS

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Photographs by J.D. Cuban

february 2018 | golfdigest.com

13

Play Your Best Tour Technique

14 golfdigest.com | febraury 2018

Where’s the whoosh in your swing? downswing and follow-thro u gh LET SPEED BUILD The mistake I see amateurs make is trying to generate as much speed as they can with their hands. If you hit it worse when you’re swinging your hardest, this is probably the reason.

Instead, let the speed gather so the clubhead is at its fastest as it strikes the ball—that’s how you get effortless power. If you think of your swing as moving along a clock face, you want it at its quickest from 7 o’clock to 4 o’clock. To get a feel for this, hold your club upside down and swing it trying to make that whoosh sound loudest when the grip end is closest to the ground. This will teach you what it feels like to put your energy in that 7-to-4 zone. Now flip the club around and re-create that same feeling—and speed—when you hit shots. You might be surprised how much power you can generate without having to sway off the ball or swing like a maniac.

Gerina Piller, a three-time member of the U.S. Solheim Cup team, had a fairway accuracy of 75.6 percent on the LPGA Tour in 2017.

Play Your Best Tour Technique

Chipping: How to Adjust for the Rough Let conditions dictate your technique

BY MATT KUCHAR hen it comes to chipping, you might have been told to hit down on the ball with the handle leaning toward the target at impact. Chipping this way might allow you to hit it solid, but I bet you’ll struggle controlling where the ball ends up.

Instead, what I do is produce a wide swing bottom, with the club gliding along the turf and into the ball—instead of crashing down on it. This allows my club to strike the turf, yet still contact the ball low on the clubface.

That’s key to producing loft and spin, and you need both to get the ball to stop where you want it to. I’ll explain.

When I’m chipping from closely mowed areas, I know I can put good spin on the ball to stop it using my standard chipping technique—rotating my body toward the target like you see here (above). The mistake is to get a

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little wristy through impact and catch the ball on the upswing. Even if you approached it on a shallow angle, you’ll likely blade the shot if the club moves upward through impact.

When I’m chipping out of the rough, I can’t produce the same amount of spin because the club comes in contact with more grass. That means I have to use loft to get the ball to stop quickly. To pop the ball up, I simply make a bigger swing. Again, the club slides along the grass, but the bigger swing creates more swing speed which, lets the ball roll up the clubface, float in the air and land soft.

—W I T H R O N K A S P R I S K E Matt Kuchar ranked second in scrambling from the rough in 2017, saving par or better 68.5 percent of the time.

▶ “I know a lot of amateurs are concerned with controlling distance when they chip, but that’s putting the cart before the horse for most of them,” says Chris O’Connell, Kuchar’s swing coach.

Instead, O’Connell says focus on crisp contact.

“Think of it this way: If you can’t master contact, then there’s no way of knowing how much energy you need to hit the ball a specific distance.”

The first thing to practice is making your swing bottom as wide as Kuchar’s. Let the clubhead glide along the turf even after it strikes the ball.

“Come in wide and stay wide,” O’Connell says. Once you can do that routinely, it’s time to vary conditions. The reason Kuchar is one of the game’s best chippers is because he practices from all types of lies. “He wants to be challenged,” O’Connell says. “He likes to find an area where guys are tearing up the turf and he’s short-sided [little room between his ball and the pin]. From there he wants clean contact with the ball without disturbing the ground, to land it on the green, and spin it enough to keep it short of the hole.” The point?

Prepare for the worst lies you might face on the course. The others will seem easy. —RK

kuchar: tyler lecka/stringer/getty images • turf: golf digest archive

PUT YOURSELF IN A TOUGH SPOT TO CHIP LIKE KUCH

Patience.

Repetition.

Dedication.

Time.

That’s what it takes to become a professional golfer.

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Play Your Best Tee to Green by Butch Harmon

Eliminating Three-putts Break the old rule on firm wrists see this a lot: Golfers roll a bunch of 10- or 15-footers before they tee off, then they have to putt one clear across the green on the first hole. What happens? They usually three-putt because they have no feel for distance. The quick fix is to practice lag putts before you head out, but you also need to know the keys to effective long putting. Let’s take a look.

Golfers are often told to lock their wrists when they putt and control the stroke with their shoulders. That might work for short and mid-length putts, but from long range it leads to a stiff motion and no feel. By feel, I mean distance control: the ability to look at a putt, make a few practice strokes, and then put the right amount of hit on it. When you have a long putt, get the extra distance by letting your wrists hinge a little.

Here’s how: At address, your left wrist (for righties with a traditional grip) is slightly cupped or bent back. As you swing the putter away from the ball, let the momentum of the stroke flatten that wrist. That little bit of hinge will help you put more energy into the ball. Then, as you stroke through, let your right wrist flatten—that shows that you’re letting the putterhead release, which creates acceleration. That’s how you hit it harder without adding arm or shoulder motion.

Getting the pace right will become second nature if you work on these keys and make lag putting part of your warm-up. You’ll handle that long putt on the first green—and all the greens after it. —WITH PETER MORRICE Butch Harmon is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional.

what made tiger so clutch Tiger was as good a putter as I’ve ever seen. He was phenomenal under pressure—he lived for those moments when he had to make one. And it wasn’t just on 18. It might be on No. 10 or 12 to keep a charge going.

What Tiger did better than anyone was, he had great preparation before every putt. His preputt routine and setup, yes, but I’m talking more about attitude: Tiger would tell himself, I’m going to make this putt. And he usually did.

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So much of good putting is just positive thinking, because the actual stroke is very simple. Let’s get back to our example above. If you allow yourself to think, Don’t three-putt, you’re pretty much programming a three-putt. So start with a positive thought, and then focus on making a longer, smoother stroke with that little wrist hinge back and through. You’ll make better contact than you would on a stroke where you try to force the ball to the hole.

Photograph by Dom Furore

woods: stuart franklin/getty images

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Art of Exaggeration by David Leadbetter

any times in golf instruction, the easiest way to get a player to learn a skill or correct a mistake is to have them overemphasize the movement needed to execute the task, or do the opposite of what they’re doing. I call this teaching philosophy the art of exaggeration. I use it to improve technique in all facets of the game.

For example, a common issue is trying to steer the ball in play. By that, I mean the followthrough is truncated and regulated in an effort to carefully guide the ball in the right direction. This type of swing almost always has the opposite effect, and the result is a poor shot.

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Photographed at The Concession Golf Club by J.D. Cuban

What you should do in the through-swing is release the club. That means the clubhead should move past your body and toward the target as the ball is struck. Steering a shot not only prevents the club from doing what it’s designed to do, it slows it down way too soon— there’s no power.

A great way to learn the feeling of the proper release in the through-swing is a drill where you literally throw a club at your target. It really works for players who grip the club too tightly or are worried about

Play Your Best

hitting a shot off-line. Find an old club and try it in an empty field. Make a swing, but let go of the club as you follow through.

You’ll immediately realize that to do this, you have to lighten your grip pressure as well as maintain a feeling of extension in your arms.

Once this feeling of release becomes routine, you can even use the mental imagery of throwing the club on the course.

It’s especially helpful when facing a narrow fairway or dealing with a pressure situation.

—WITH RON KASPRISKE David Leadbetter, a Golf Digest Teaching Professional, runs 32 academies worldwide.

february 2018 | golfdigest.com

19

Play Your Best For Better Players by Tom Watson

Keep It Down Never clank one off a branch again e’ve all been there: off the fairway, wanting to get the ball back in play.

Problem is, there’s a tree directly between you and your great escape. The tree is too tall to go over and too thick to curve a shot around it. You’re only option is to hit a low runner under the branches. How do you do it?

Take a lower-lofted club and make an easier, less-thanfull swing. This is guaranteed to lower the trajectory of the ball—that’s the easy part. The tricky part is knowing what

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club is going to keep the ball under the branches, but get it airborne enough to reach safety in the short grass.

The only way to truly know that is practice. You’re going to have to work on this shot, and if you can, do it from the rough as well as cleaner lies. Keep in mind that rough normally lowers the trajectory of the ball because it reduces backspin.

I suggest practicing this shot with your long and middle irons and your hybrids. Hit a few balls with each club to a

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100-yard target. Imprint in your mind how far the ball carried and how high it flew with each club to get it to stop near the 100-yard target. Then go through the same exercise with 75- and 125-yard targets.

You’ll soon build feel for what club and what swing is the smartest choice for the trajectory of the recovery shot you’re facing.

—WITH RON KASPRISKE Tom Watson is a Golf Digest Playing Editor.

more from tom ▶ An alternative triedand-true swing technique I use to keep the ball down is to lower my left shoulder at address, and play the ball farther back in my stance.

Again, experiment with ball position to see how it changes the trajectory, but when you need to hit it low, this works.

Photograph by J.D. Cuban

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Getting the Most Out of a Hybrid How to use it from the rough

BY ADAM KOLLOFF e’ve got it made. Used to be that if you wanted to hit a fairly long shot into a green from the rough, you’d have to pray you swung your 3-iron just right. There was little margin for error.

Nowadays, while our 3-irons are collecting dust, we’ve got hybrids to do this job more reliably—provided you make

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a few adjustments from your normal swing.

The first is the way you hold the club. You’ve got to make sure the face doesn’t twist open or closed as it passes through the grass. That’s why you should grip it firmly with the last three fingers of your glove hand like I am here (above).

The second adjustment is

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to play the ball in the center of your stance. The tendency is to address it farther forward like a fairway wood, but you need a steeper angle of attack to minimize contact with the grass around the ball, and a middle ball position helps.

When you swing back, don’t sway away from the target. Focus on turning

around a fixed axis. This also promotes the steeper attack angle you need. Finally, as you swing down, focus on accelerating through the rough while maintaining that firm grip pressure in the last three fingers of your glove hand.

Do that, and the club will come down on the ball square to your target. You’ll turn a potential double bogey into a scoring opportunity.

Thank you, Mr. Hybrid.

Adam Kolloff, a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, is at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, N.J.

grip: ben walton

Play Your Best GD Schools

“Pulling the grip up whips the clubhead into the ball.”

Pick up Driver Speed Think pull instead of push T

ou’ve played enough golf to know that you don’t have the same issues as the guy hitting balls next to you.

But there are two things you both want: longer drives and lower scores. This month in our videoinstruction hub, aka the Golf Digest Schools, we launch two series: “The Science of Speed” and “Scoring 101: The 5 Requirements.” Here are two Golf Digest Best Young Teachers— Mike Jacobs and Adam Kolloff— at the top of their games. Jacobs teaches you the essential truths about distance, and Kolloff presents the quickest ways to bring down your scores. Each series ($9.99) contains five extended video lessons, with tips, fixes and drills you can access anywhere and everywhere you want. For more on these new programs, go to golfdigest.com/ golf-digest-schools.

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BY MIKE JACOBS here’s an epidemic of misapplied force that is ruining thousands of swings every day. I’m talking about the concept of pushing the handle ahead of the clubhead through impact. It’s a basic piece of instruction you’ve probably heard a lot—usually as a seemingly innocent part of correcting a wristy, flippy motion in a swing. But the problem with that advice is, it ruins your ability to produce good swing speed.

Try this exercise: Hold your driver in front of you with your right arm only and, from a standstill, push the handle as quickly as you can toward the target (below, left). When you do that, what happens to the head? It stays behind. Do

MORE ON POWER & SAVING SHOTS

this during a swing, and you’re essentially trying to force the club to swing backward, and it will take a dramatic adjustment by your hands, arms or body to force the head into a decent striking position.

Instead of obsessing about getting your hands forward at impact, concentrate on pulling the handle instead of pushing it.

As you swing through impact, feel like you’re pulling up toward the middle of your chest (below, right). That will make the club rotate and pick up the exponential speed at the head end—the signature of the biggest hitters.

Mike Jacobs is one of Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers in America. His X Golf School is in Manorville, N.Y.

Photographs by Dom Furore

Play Your Best Slug by Firstname Lastname

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Control Experiment Test new irons for accuracy IVEN THE VARIETY OF DESIGNS, an iron model’s distance is relative. The range of lofts on most 7-irons, for example, stretches from 26 to 34 degrees. So one brand’s 7-iron might be equivalent to another brand’s 5-iron. Our advice: Ask a qualified clubfitter to show you the dispersion on five to 10 shots with each iron you’re considering purchasing. Your left and right misses might vary slightly from swing to swing, but the ideal iron offers sufficient length and the tightest dispersion from shortest hit to longest hit. Here are six new models to consider. —MIKE STACHURA

G

2 c a ll away x- forged

▶ Mizuno has updated the feel of this classic forged iron through a special process that compresses the grain structure of the carbon steel in the hitting area.

▶ Based on the company’s 2013 forged cavity-back made popular on tour, this upgraded version has a different center of gravity for each club to produce ideal launch and spin.

New grooves add more control, too.

pr i ce $1,200 eight cl ub s

p ric e $1,300 ei gh t c l u bs

24 golfdigest.com | february month 2017 2018

3 to u r e d g e exotic s c bx bl ad e ▶ This throwback forged blade design adds some modern punch with stronger lofts in the middle irons.

Precision-milled grooves improve spin on shots from the rough. pric e $1,000 e ig h t c l u bs

4

5

6

cob r a k ing f8

xxio x

t i t l e i st 7 1 8 a p2

▶ The irons in this set are designed differently depending on the need: hollow long irons for distance, fullergrooved short irons for spin and blade-like wedges for versatility. A one-length set is available, too.

▶ Built with the distance-hungry in mind, these lightweight irons help you stay balanced during your swing. Titanium faces provide extra spring, and tungsten in the sole produces a higher ball flight.

▶There’s a lighter, more flexible steel in the face on the long and middle irons and mounds of heavy tungsten in the heel and toe for better distance on mis-hits. Onepiece forgings finish out the short irons for feel and control.

price $800 s e ven club s

price $1,280 ei gh t club s

price $1,300 ei gh t club s

PhotographbybyRyan FirstZimmerman Lastname Photograph

gutter credit tk

1 m i zu n o m p- 1 8

4

P RO MOTI O N

Breadth. Depth.

The Best Technology Journalism.

arstechnica.com

to u r e d g e e xotics cbx ▶ The groove design might get your attention for spin (deeper on the lower lofts, wider on the higher lofts), but don’t overlook what’s underneath.

There’s less area on the heel, toe and back, so it’s easier to manipulate the club from any lie. price $130

28 golfdigest.com | february 2018

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Play Your Best Technically Speaking

Bad Advice = Bad Shots Why ‘keeping your head down’ as you swing is killing your game

BY NICK CLEARWATER

t’s probably a familiar scene in your foursome. Somebody (maybe even you) tops a shot and immediately offers a boilerplate analysis of why it happened: “I lifted my head.” ▶ Well, maybe, but that isn’t why most shots are topped. In fact, a lot of times it’s the opposite problem. We measure thousands of swings at GolfTEC studios around the country, and we also have an extensive database of tour-player measurements to compare what they do with what you do. What we’ve found is trying to keep your head down is probably doing more harm than good. If you want to learn a skill that will keep you from topping it—and get you closer to hitting the same kinds of consistently good shots the professionals do—develop a tour-pro follow-through that involves a rotation of the head. Here’s how.

I

30 golfdigest.com | february 2018

Pose like you see here (above, left)— legs straightened, shoulders and hips facing the target, head rotated in that direction, too, and the grip extended as far away from the body as possible—that’s key.

You’ll notice this is a significantly different look to the follow-through we see from many amateurs—especially if you’re trying to keep your head down through impact (above, right). When you’re scrunched up like that, you don’t have room to extend your arms, and that lack of extension puts you in poor position to make solid contact.

Keep rehearsing the tour-pro followthrough you see me demonstrating. Once you’ve burned the feel of it into your memory, hit some soft, slow shots while getting into that same position after impact. The closer you come to copying it, the easier it will be for your swing to bottom out in a predictable place every time.

Then you’ll no longer worry about having to make an excuse for your bad shot before the ball stops rolling.

—WITH MATTHEW RUDY Nick Clearwater, GolfTEC’s Vice President of Instruction, is based in Englewood, Colo.

illustrations by todd detweiler

The head rotates in a tour-pro follow-through

BUY NOW. CHEER LATER.

TICKETS AND TRAVEL PACKAGES AVAILABLE AT THEPLAYERS.COM/TRAVEL MAY 8-13 TPC SAWGRASS | PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL ©2017 PGA TOUR, Inc. All Rights Reserved

edited by peter finch

ickie Fowler had a win, two seconds and eight other top-10s in 2017, earning more than $6 million.

He also won the Hero World Challenge, an unofficial event, with a final-round 61. Associate Editor Keely Levins recently spent some time with him.

R

●

how do you feel about 2017? Statistically, it was one of my best seasons. I was more consistent throughout the whole game. I just wish we’d won a bit more, so that’s the goal this year. I’m looking to start 2018 where we left off. ●

what are you working on for 2018? My main focus coming into this season was getting more gym time, getting in better shape so that we have a good starting point. Because of the time we spend on the road, you can’t necessarily build strength and fitness. During the season, you’re just trying to maintain and not taper off too much. ●

justin thomas said he stored his wanamaker trophy in a safe in your house during hurricane irma. have you stored other cool things in there? My Players trophy was in there, too. We had a good collection of watches in there, and some cash. That’s the first time we’ve had to put stuff away for a hurricane, so hopefully we don’t have to do that again. ●

have any secret talents?

I feel like everyone has a pretty good idea of what I like to do.

I don’t have any secret talents— that I know of anyway. I do wish I had some sort of musical talent or voice. I have neither. ●

what’s your next tattoo going to be? I have some ideas, but if I knew for sure what it was going to be, I’d probably already have it. ●

what would you be doing if you weren’t a golfer?

If I wasn’t a golfer, I’d probably be into action sports. Riding dirt bikes or something. I’m still close with a lot of the guys I used to ride with, so I follow that closely. I’m more of an action-sports guy, but I follow the NFL, MLB, and I like playoff hockey a lot. ●

what do you like about following other sports?

I like watching all pro sports at the highest level because I know roughly what it takes to get there. The sacrifices. To be an athlete like we are, to play golf at the highest level, you have an appreciation for other professional sports. I’ve met a lot of other professional athletes, like Tom Brady and Brian Urlacher. And I’ve spent time with the St. Louis Cardinals during spring training. It’s fun to get to know those guys. ●

what’s your favorite oncourse memory? Being a part of the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup: the moments out there with my teammates, the camaraderie and energy. Those are the most memorable moments of my career.

32 golfdigest.com | february 2018

“If I wasn’t a golfer, I’d probably be into action sports.

Riding dirt bikes or something.”

Photograph by J.D. Cuban

”

round” to test a new club and chart some hard data.

2 Inviting your regular golf buddies to round out the foursome.

6 Talking about how good you used to be.

3 Driving past the forward tees, slamming the brakes and saying, “Oh, sorry, do you want to play this hole?”

4 Always standing precisely where your date can’t see you staring.

5 Utilizing this “non-

7 Charging everything to your dad’s account at the club and still acting like it’s a date.

8 Taking relief behind a bush.

9 Hitting your date with a ball. Sorry, but even if you yelled “Fore!” there’s no way to salvage this one.

making sure this is a gimme

▶ Five tips for proposing marriage on a golf course I’m not a marriage expert, but I know a bit about golf-course proposals—I helped orchestrate my twin sister’s proposal at Streamsong, and I was surprised when my boyfriend, Jeff, dropped to a knee at Bandon Dunes (pictured).

1

know the answer before you pop the question.

If you’ve been dating for five weeks, and the thing that excites you most is that he or she is into golf, now is not the right time.

2

you love golf. does your sweetheart?

If the answer is no, you should

34 golfdigest.com | february 2018

IS YOUR VALENTINE THE ONE FOR YOU? 1. You arrive home

after a poor round.

Your partner: A. Reminds you that it’s just a game.

B. Gently suggests giving away your clubs to free up closet space.

C. Says, “Get back out there and practice! And don’t come home until that driver swing is grooved.”

2. You want to take

9 ways to wreck a golf date 1 Putting in earbuds for the warm-up on the range.

QU Z

find another spot to propose.

3

throw him or her off with a few white lies.

Say you think golfcourse proposals are cheesy. Or mention you’ve been eyeing Paris flights. My fiance did, and it worked.

4

tell a few people at the course before.

They’ll be thrilled, and they might

offer suggestions or even some perks (a photographer, a dinner reservation, etc.).

5

know there will be things beyond your control. You might encounter wind, rain and other golfers.

Just as marital bliss means being able to adapt, so too should your proposal.

–ashley mayo

a five-day buddies golf trip to Ireland.

Your partner says: A. “Fine, as long as you can get your electronicmonitoring bracelet through Customs.”

B. “If you go, let me know the address where you’re staying so I can ship your stuff there, because we’re done!”

C. “Only five days?

Is that enough time to hit Scotland, too?”

3. You’re attached

to a 15-year-old golf shirt. Your partner would: A. Be fine with you wearing it, but only inside the house, under a sweater.

B. Be waiting on you to fall asleep so it can be burned.

C. Carefully hand wash it so it’s ready for your Sunday game.

KEY

Mostly A’s: Have patience. This is going to take time.

Mostly B’s: Run, don’t walk, away.

Mostly C’s: Your soulmate.

suggs: bettmann/getty images • cart couple: h. armstrong roberts/cl assic stock/getty • proposal: courtesy of bandon dunes golf resort • pillers: courtesy of the piller family • hearts: photograph by gary gay/getty images, photo illustration by gluekit • priml and resort: courtesy of the resort • golf couple: ranplett/getty images

—louise suggs

?

“

GOLF IS LIKE A LOVE AFFAIR: IF YOU DON’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, IT’S NO FUN; IF YOU DO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, IT BREAKS YOUR HEART.

by sam weinman + alex myers

pro golf’s no. 1 couple

▶ Gerina and Martin Piller, full-time touring golf professionals, on how they make it all work

augusta fl ag: streeter lecka/getty images • woods: andrew redington/getty images • nickl aus: focus on sport/getty images • super: rebecca naden/pa images/getty images phil and bones: chris condon/getty images • kostis: chris condon/getty images • swingvision: courtesy of minolta • nantz: chris condon/getty images

that’s the reality of the situation and prepare yourselves for it each year.” their inauspicious first meeting

gerina piller, 32, is an LPGA star and member of three U.S. Solheim Cup teams. Her husband, Martin, also 32, is a six-time Web.com Tour winner and a member of the PGA Tour. what’s that like? being golf’s no. 1 couple?

gerina: “I know there are other couples that do the same [work], but it might not have been their dream jobs. So we’re really blessed to be in this situation. However, we do wish that the tours played on the same week and in the same place more, because we don’t get to see each other often.” their crazy schedules

martin: “Summer is the toughest, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and you try to do the best you can. It’s not easy to leave each other, especially for a long period of time, but you have to say

gerina: “I’m put in this cart with this guy, and on the first hole, he hit a shot and said, ‘Oh, I hate hitting it dead perfect every time.’ At that point, I was thinking, 17 more holes of this? I couldn’t wait for it to be over.”

heart of the matter ▶ Valentine’s candy messages we’d like to see

martin risking his pga tour card to see her play in the 2017 solheim cup

jack + his macgregor tommy armour 3-wood

martin: “It was a really easy decision for me.

Those are really special weeks, and I love being there and supporting her for those because they mean that much more to her.” their competitiveness off the course

gerina: “We’re definitely competitive at home, but not much in golf for the sake of our marriage.

We have little quirky games here and there, dumb stuff like when we land at a place with each other, we turn our phones off airplane mode and whoever gets service first wins. It’s very childish, but we definitely like to beat the other person when it’s not golf.”

tiger + frank the headcover

golf’s greatest love affairs ▶ These matches went the distance your course super + his dog

phil + bones

peter kostis + the konica minolta bizhub swingvision

couples who ace together . . . ▶ One isn’t always the loneliest number

▶ happy couple: Not the Blundys

Valentine’s Day is Feb. 14, so perhaps it’s fitting that the most romantic feat in golf has happened exactly 14 times, according to Golf Digest records. We’re talking about back-to-back aces by couples on the same hole in the same round. The latest to achieve it were Tony and Janet Blundy of Portland, Mich., in 2015. It was Tony’s first hole-in-one, which matched his wife’s career total until she teed off. One-upmanship by the wife is actually a theme in this record category. The married couple with the most combined aces, Lessely and JoAnn Noel of Atlanta, have 25. She’s responsible for 15 of them.

tee for two Four romantic getaways our course-ranking panelists love ▶ primland resort, virginia Treehouse rooms. Need we say more? sea island resort, georgia “Wow” ocean views, luxurious rooms, fine dining. boulders resort & spa, arizona Private casitas overlook the Sonoran Desert. the american club, wisconsin Four top courses, a legendary spa and superb dining.

—stephen hennessey

Hole Goals A Connecticut developer turns his back yard into something special s one of the country’s leading real-estate developers, Charles S. Cohen has overseen countless projects. But when it came to building a golf hole at his home in Greenwich, Conn., Cohen was mostly hands off, leaving it to Michael Lehrer, founder of Home Green Advantage of Armonk, N.Y., to create a massive, 11,000-squarefoot synthetic putting green. The month-long process involved 150 tons of crushed rock and stone dust for the foundation, 25 tons of sand for the bunkers, and a price tag in the

A

36 golfdigest.com | february 2018

going yard: low six figures. The Charles S. Cohen’s result was one hapback-yard green py owner. “This is a covers 11,000 great way to relax, square feet. practice your short game and have a good time with your family,” Cohen says. There are seven tee boxes scattered around the property, including one measuring 165 yards that’s just steps from Cohen’s front door. “It’s a beautiful setting when you drive up and see this green,” he says. “It makes you feel like you should be getting ready to play golf.” Yep. We’re ready. —ALEX MYERS

joe williams

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The Golf Life

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A

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We want to putt like him, too! There must be some magic potion for always making that 25-footer when you really need it. As for the technical aspects of Spieth’s cross-handed grip, the young Texan overlaps his right index and middle fingers over the ring and pinkie knuckles of his left hand. (The more common methods of going left-hand low are to place all 10 fingers directly on the handle or overlap just the top index finger.) “Jordan does this because he’s actually lefthanded, so the more he can feel the putter in his left hand, the better his touch and control,” says Cameron McCormick, Spieth’s longtime coach.

That’s right: Spieth

played baseball lefthanded as a kid and still shoots a basketball lefthanded. We hear he gets a hot hand there, too. ▶▶▶ Our club plays a competition over two days where the golfers can choose which day to play. Can the tees and pin position change between the two days?

KATHRYN CROSS, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

It depends what kind of competition it is. If it’s stroke play, holes and teeing grounds must be the same for all competitors (Rule 33-2b). If it’s match play, teeing grounds or holes can be changed if needed as long as the golfers in each match compete on the same setup (see Decision 25-1b/4).

JOHN REID, GARLAND, TEXAS

Well, taking a maximum score for handicap purposes is a real thing. (And it’s a good thing because it helps with pace of play.)

But nobody’s max score is a triple on every hole. The USGA handicap system has a feature called Equitable Stroke Control, which limits the number of shots you can take on a hole when posting your score. If your course handicap is 9 or less, the most you can take is a double bogey. For 10-19 handicaps, the max score is a 7, no matter the hole’s par. It’s a maximum of 8 for handicaps 20-29. submit your burning questions here: ask@golfdigest.com or on Twitter @GolfDigest

spieth: dom furore • illustration: tim l ahan

Q

I would like to putt like Jordan Spieth. I’m curious about his lefthand-low grip. Can you explain what he’s doing?

As long as you submit a scorecard at the end of the round with your name and scores on it, signed by you and your marker, it will be accepted, even if it’s not the official card, according to Rule 6-6a/7. Keep in mind that you are responsible for making sure an accurate scorecard gets handed in. If your marker is as irresponsible as he sounds, you might want to check those numbers again. ▶▶▶ After a bad hole, my buddy will often say, “I’ll just take the max of a triple on this hole.”

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The Golf Life Big Events

Hotly Contested The issues that truly divide our country clubs ou can’t watch the news these days without hearing about how divided America is. Don’t worry, we’re not here to talk politics. We concern ourselves with more important things, like how golf tournaments should be run. To get a sense of the landscape, we conducted a national survey of head professionals to learn how they conduct their club championships and memberguests. The following four questions were the most polarizing. There are no wrong answers; every club is different.

In the spirit of tolerance, we simply want golfers to understand the other side. Because, hey, can’t we all just get along? —MAX ADLER

Y

how do members qualify for the club championship?

are juniors allowed to play in the club championship?

is the championship flight of the memberguest handicapped?

the main social event of the men’s member-guest is . . .

57% All flights sorted by

60% Yes

73% Yes

52% Spouses invited

34% No

27% No

38% Stag night

6% We play the tournament when most kids are away at school

▶ The saying about a member-guest is, don’t win it twice. Apparently, Bob, who each year brings that mini-tour player with the plus-5 handicap (he says they’re cousins?), didn’t get the memo. One way to block ringers is to require that partners’ handicaps add to a minimum. But most clubs just play with strokes. Says Dylan Thew, director of golf at Kiawah (S.C.) Island Club’s Cassique course: “Unfortunately, we don’t get the caliber of players required to make the top flight fair and equitable without handicaps.”

10% All members

handicap

26% 18 holes, stroke play 17% 36 holes, stroke play ▶ Sometimes it’s a struggle to get enough people to bother entering. But when a lot want to win, there will be an uproar over how the bracket is set. At Kennett Square Golf & Country Club near Philadelphia, the 36-hole qualifier also crowns the year’s strokeplay champ. Says head pro Ryan Nuechterlein: “We’ve debated shortening it to soften the commitment, but the belief is that over the course of two rounds, the best players will rise.”

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▶ You bust your butt commuting and taking care of business, then you get knocked out by the 16-year-old who doesn’t pay dues but plays 54 holes every day. The ruling on the issue has flip-flopped several times at Country Club of Darien in Connecticut, but the current regime is inclusive. Says head pro Cory Muller: “We want our championships decided on the golf course, not in the boardroom.”

invited, even those not competing

▶ It’s one night a year reserved just for steaks, cigars, chipping contests and dude-centric chatter.

Then again, isn’t more merrier? For guests traveling from afar, a dinner and dance function can help turn the tournament into a couples trip. At Richland Country Club in Nashville, they do both. Says head pro John Spelman: “One purpose of a memberguest is to showcase all the facilities of the club.”

Illustration by John Ueland

DERRY MOORE

Authoritative reporting, opinionated features, and ınside info—we’ve got the news you need to know now. The ultımate resource for pros who want the AD advantage.

ARCHDIGEST.COM/ADPRO

An exclusive look at Woods’ newest driver swing

TIGER 48 golfdigest.com | february 2018

by ron kaspriske WHILE YOU WERE ENJOYING YOUR EGGNOG AND FRUITCAKE this holiday season, Tiger Woods concerned himself with something most golfers can relate to: taking his practice swing to the course.

After playing in the Hero World Challenge in December, his first tournament in 301 days, Tiger said he wasn’t getting the same distance off the tee that he was seeing in practice at his club, the Medalist in Hobe Sound, Fla. ▶ Woods admitted he was relying on a “tournament ball,” meaning a reliable driver swing that emphasized accuracy over distance. He repeatedly hit a gentle fade (the ball curving to the right) while playing in the event. Although pleased with his eight-under-par performance (tied for ninth), considering it came about eight months after spinal-fusion surgery, Woods says his driving needs to improve.

To that point, he isn’t being bashful about asking his peers for help— especially about equipment. ▶ “I’ve really talked to the guys; played

golf with Rory [McIlroy], DJ [Dustin Johnson], and I ask them, ‘What are you doing?’—really picking their brains as we’re playing,” Woods told Golf Digest in December after displaying his swing for this article.

“These guys are tournament tough. I hadn’t played in 10½ months, so it’s nice to pick guys’ brains who have been through the battles.” ▶ Every instructor Golf Digest asked about the latest version of Tiger’s swing, including former coaches Hank Haney and Sean Foley, praised it for its effectiveness. Wanting to know more about it, we asked Jim McLean, one of the top-five instructors in America as ranked by his peers in Golf Digest, to tell us what he sees. ▶ “If my math is right, this is the fifth major swing change we’ve seen from Tiger,” McLean says. “I’ve seen guys change, but not nearly as often or with as much success as Tiger. And this swing looks pretty good.” Read McLean’s analysis on the following pages.

Photographs by Walter Iooss Jr.

setup PREPARED FOR LAUNCH ▶ As Tiger addresses the ball, you can see that he’s geared to hit up on it, says Golf Digest Teaching Professional Jim McLean.

Tiger told Golf Digest he plays the ball off his front toe, “which is different than what you typically see from tour pros,” McLean says.

“Most prefer to set up to the ball off the heel of their front foot. The farther forward you play it, the easier it is to hit up on it, which is the ideal way to maximize distance with a driver.” ▶ Also of note is Tiger’s wide stance, with the shaft and his spine leaning away from the target—“all signs he’s going to launch it,” McLean says. ▶ Looking for something to copy? Stand tall like you see Tiger doing here. “If you want power, you can’t be all hunched over,” McLean says.

‘He’s setting up to give this ball a ride.

It’s the look of a power hitter, not someone who just wants to put the ball in play.’

—Jim McLean

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‘Even though he’s well into his backswing, note how extended his arms remain. That’s how you create width for power.’ ta k e away STAYING SHALLOW AND WIDE ▶ Renditions of Tiger’s swing before this one showed him taking the club back steeper and letting the club move more inside the target line and behind his chest. “His arms are out in front of him now; everything is turning back together,” McLean says. ▶ Taking the club back like this keeps it moving on a path that is shallow in relation to the ground (making it easier to catch it on the upswing) and at maximum width (for extra power). ▶ “If you can stay wide, you’re going to get the most out of your drives,” McLean says.

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at t he top LOADING UP FOR THE BIG HIT ▶ “Tiger has moved off the ball—a few inches away from the target—by the time he finishes his backswing,” McLean says. “You wouldn’t have seen that a few years ago.” This lateral shift is reminiscent of his backswing as a young adult, McLean says: “It’s a power move, for sure, but it’s also good for someone with a back problem. There’s a lot less side-bending going on, so the bottom of his spine isn’t feeling extra pressure. I like this change. If you think about golfers who were great drivers, such as Nicklaus and Norman, they loaded up behind the ball instead of feeling like their body was over it.” ▶ If you want to copy this move, don’t let your weight sway outside your back foot, or you’ll struggle with consistency, McLean says.

Tiger prevents an overshift by keeping his right leg braced throughout the backswing.

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‘The club stops short of parallel, but look how far his left shoulder is behind the ball. That’s the turn of a healthy golfer.’

Photograph by First Lastname

‘For a guy who’s had multiple back surgeries, this is an impressive move down.

He’s still very aggressive.’

downswing TRANSFERRING ENERGY FROM GROUND TO BALL ▶ Woods has long been known for squatting as he starts the downswing, using the ground as leverage for a forceful swing.

But McLean says the dip isn’t as pronounced as it was in years past. More important, he does a terrific job of maintaining enough space for the club to sling into the ball. ▶ “That’s the trick,” McLean says. “When you drop from your address posture like this, you have to be careful to not get the club trapped where it has no room to move into the ball.

He does a great job of keeping it out in front of his torso, not blocked behind his body.”

‘He’s got a really fast arm swing now.

It reminds me of Greg Norman’s in his prime.’ into impact A DIFFERENT WAY TO GENERATE POWER ▶ Considering his mobility has been limited by a fourth back surgery that fused vetebrae, it’s unrealistic to think Woods can produce 320yard drives doing it the way he used to. He’ll have to pick up swing speed somwhere else, and it appears he’s generating more power with his arms. “It’s definitely more of an arm swing than it used to be. They’re moving so fast, the club even recoils against his back as he finishes,” McLean says. ▶ And though the shaft might be leaning toward the target at this point in the downswing, a fraction of a second later it will be perpendicular to the ground. “He’s releasing the club hard—really getting it out in front of him and catching the ball on the upswing.

He’s not dragging the club through impact.

He’s letting his right arm dictate the action.”

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thro u gh-swing RELEASING THE CLUBHEAD

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▶ If you were to compare Tiger’s throughswing to Jordan Spieth’s, you’d see a noticeable difference in the position of their hands and arms. “With Jordan, you’d see the left elbow still bent. Not Tiger. It’s straightening, and the club has released,” McLean says. “Jordan drags the club through, but Tiger is throwing it—meaning the type of motion you’d make if you were throwing a ball hard with your right hand. His chest is rotating toward the target, but not nearly as much in comparison to how his arms, hands and club have traveled by the time the club is parallel to the ground after impact.” ▶ If the slice is your typical ball flight, this is the move to copy. Get that right hand over the left in the through-swing, McLean says.

‘He’s not dragging the handle through impact anymore.

He’s releasing the club hard, like a throwing motion.’

Photograph by First Lastname

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‘Protecting his spine is more important than ever. That’s why Tiger is not bending back at the end of his swing.’ fi ni s h MAKING A WISE MOVE ▶ Let’s face it: Lower-back problems are common to many golfers, not just the pros, McLean says. “Knowing that, you’ve got to do everything you can to protect your spine.”

Copying the end of Tiger’s swing is a good idea. “It’s a great finish for a guy with a bad back. Look how upright he is. The right shoulder is higher than the left. And if you drew a line from his right ear to the inside of his left foot, it’s a straight line—there’s no reverse-C look to his spine. That means no extra pressure on the lumbar discs.” ▶ As you get older, having this straight-and-balanced finish is going to add time to your playing career. “Let that club finish resting on your neck and shoulders,” McLean says. “Tiger is standing tall. Good to see he’s swinging like a champion again.”

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HOW TIGER CHOOSES HIS EQUIPMENT The 14-time major champion brings a meticulous approach to club-testing by e. michael johnson HAVING WATCHED TIGER WOODS TEST EQUIPMENT in 2003 and given the

opportunity again this December, I was eager to find out how his approach had changed. It turns out, it hasn’t. Instead of projecting as a 42-year-old seeking a magic elixir to boost his aging game, Woods displayed the same exacting attention he did as a 27-year-old at the peak of his powers. This was Woods’ first official testing session since joining TaylorMade in January 2017, and he and the company’s research and development team spent nearly two hours on the range at Medalist Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla., minutely analyzing his equipment specs. ▶ “That’s a lot higher,” Woods called out on his first swing with a TW prototype, muscle-back blade 6-iron, comparing it to the ball flight of his current 6-iron. For Woods, ball flight is everything. In the 2003 session, he said, “If I look up and don’t see the ball right where I expect it to be, then we have a serious problem.” But not an insurmountable one. Keith Sbarbaro, TaylorMade’s vice president of tour operations, tells Woods that it could be the center-of-gravity location, and he and his team would measure Woods’ old set and match it.

Woods is likely to notice anything amiss, having used the same club specifications for decades, only changing the lie angle when a swing change called for it. He also said in his early years as a professional that it was necessary for him to go through eight or nine sets and pick clubs from each to get the center of gravity just right.

Despite the trajectory issue, Woods was pleased with what he saw. The look of the club, especially at address, is very important to him. Woods prefers an iron with a longer blade length, thin sole and squared-off toe.

His TaylorMade prototype was spot-on. “The look is sweet,” he said. “It feels great going through the ground; feels fantastic. Everything is right.”

Moving on to drivers, Woods hit the majority with impressive velocity. His launch conditions featured ball speeds of 180 miles per hour and spin rates from 2,200 to 2,400 revolutions per minute with a launch angle of 11 to 13 degrees—all highly respectable.

His carry distance often reached 315 yards.

Woods started with the TaylorMade M2 he has been using, before trying the M4 model.

The newer M4 produced similar ball speeds, but a higher ball flight. “It looks a touch open. It’s floating out there, but it has a more solid sound and feel,” Woods said.

He then tried the new M3, a club with a technology called “twist face,” because the face is twisted slightly to produce optimum performance on mis-hits. Asked if he noticed it at address, Woods said: “I don’t see it at all, but the idea makes total sense.”

Starting with a 9.5-degree model, Woods

felt the club was too upright. A change was made to an 8.5-degree head, which sat flatter. After a few swings, Woods still wasn’t satisfied, saying it didn’t look right. As with his irons, the look of the driver is vital. “I know when I’m waggling it,” he said. “If I feel it matches up to me, it frees up my swing.”

Sbarbaro then suggested an M3 440 at 9 degrees—a club with a slightly smaller head.

After a couple of waggles, Woods flashed his trademark smile and said, “I like it a lot.” A few swings in, Sbarbaro made a tweak, adjusting the two movable weights on the sole all the way forward. On the next swing, Woods tattooed one: 322 yards of carry, 15 degrees of launch, 2,100 rpm of spin—nearly perfect.

After about 90 minutes during which he hit close to 100 balls, Woods was closer to some new clubs, though his set makeup (driver, 3-wood, 5-wood or 2-iron, depending on course, 3-iron through pitching wedge, 54- and 60-degree wedges and putter) is likely to remain unchanged. Before any decisions, Woods insisted there was work to do, mostly on the course. “Right before the Hero, I had a 3-wood I was using last year,” he said. “On the range, I hit it fantastic. On the course, I couldn’t hit it. It had too much toe droop right before impact. When I tried to turn it, I’d hit this toe pop-up. The golf course showed that. It’s not just about making it look good [on the range].”

As with any testing session there were some lighter moments, like when Woods said he used Confidence irons as a kid until he saved enough money to buy a set of Mizunos. His keen sense of feel was on display, too.

Woods cast aside the last driver he hit because of an air bubble in the grip only he could feel.

To the last swing, the same ol’ Tiger. what made tiger great? ▶

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Nicklaus, Player, Trevino, Miller & Faldo on going from good to transcendent by jaime diaz MORE THAN ANY OTHER PLAYER IN HISTORY, Tiger Woods at his peak refuted the adage that no golfer gets it all. The image of that once-supreme completist from the century’s first decade remains indelible and continues to magnify light onto every part of the game—especially the elements that constitute greatness. ▶ Those who can perceive and convey that last piece with the most precision are the elders in an ultra-exclusive fraternity that includes Woods as a junior member. So as Tiger embarked on his latest comeback—begun remarkably free of back pain and with correspondingly surprising success at the Hero World Challenge— Golf Digest sat down with five of the best: Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller and Nick Faldo. ▶ All are multiple major winners—collectively their total is 41, the inverse of Woods’ 14. All are essentially retired from competition yet remain avidly connected to the current scene. All are close students of a

TIGER GREAT figure who has transcended and brought scrupulous attention to the game they once mastered. ▶ For them, Woods is both an illuminating prism and a mirror.

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nick faldo the journey to thursday morning

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iger and I were similar in that we could almost be in the zone for four days. I had this ability to focus on golf. You hear the psychologists say you should bounce around, but I didn’t. Sometimes Fanny [caddie Fanny Sunesson] would go off on a subject, and I used to drag her back: “No, no, no. Just keep talking golf.”

The preparation time between majors is vital, and this is where I think Tiger was absolutely phenomenal. It’s the journey getting to Thursday morning of the U.S. Open or whatever, and if you’re really smart and know more about the game, it starts the week before or two weeks before or, in the case of the Masters, months before. But you’ve got to start well, to be absolutely ready for Thursday morning. I remember reading that Arnold Palmer said he would take the intensity of 17 and 18 on Sunday of a major and bring that to Thursday. And that was a little jolt to me. I used to say to myself in the majors: Every shot is history on Thursday as well, so don’t waste them.

With Tiger, I think of the opening nine

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‘Tiger knew he was different.

Special. He hit a golf ball differently— full stop—than anybody else.’

—NICK FALDO holes when he shot 40 at the 1997 Masters.

[Faldo, the defending champion, was his playing partner in the first two rounds of Woods’ 12-stroke victory.] I wonder if that was one of his epiphanies where he said, I’m never going to do that again. I’m never going to set myself up to get that far down.

I’m going to find a way to prepare. And I think that’s what he did so brilliantly. How he could go out, win a tournament, disappear for three weeks and come back out in a major, and there was no wastage of shots or sloppiness. And the number of times you would say, How does he come out holing every putt?

Tiger knew he was different. Special. He hit a golf ball differently—full stop—than anybody else. Nobody could drive it like him, nobody could hit long irons like him, or the wedges and the putter. There wasn’t anybody ever who was that good in every department. And then he’d believe he was better prepared for Thursday than anyone else, and it became a pattern.

It’s true in other sports. With Tom Brady, I tune in to make sure I watch his first possession. I love Formula One racing. How come these guys will all qualify within tenths of a second, and then on the first lap of the race, Lewis Hamilton will be a full second ahead of everybody?

I birdied a lot of opening holes at the Open Championship. You psych yourself all week, and you visualize it, seeing yourself knock it out there, on the green, in, and off you go. Whereas some people stand up on the first tee, and they can’t see the fairway. ▶

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Our idea was to exploit a premise that has proved reliable since Woods first came to world renown as an amateur in the mid’90s: The better the player, the better the take on Tiger.

To varying degrees, each Hall of Famer possessed some or even all of Woods’ myriad qualities and strengths. But to allow the interviews to form a more coordinated whole, the subject matter for each former player focused on the area he most closely compared with Woods.

With Nicklaus, it was the uncanny ability for making it happen. For Player, an indefatigable self-belief. For Trevino, an undying obsession for the game. For Miller, a nearly identical crucial head start as a youth. For Faldo, a relentless focus on majors.

The individual framing allowed each of our sages to pull from personal experience and observation. The result is wisdom and insight about what it takes to reach the very highest levels of golf—and through a more intimate understanding of five all-timers, a more refined appreciation of Woods.

Greatness in golf will remain fascinating and mysterious. The current question: When, if ever, will Tiger, now 42, achieve the kind of late-career climax—Nicklaus’ 1986 Masters at 46 the epitome—that provides each of our five elders such an enduring satisfaction? As 2018 develops, they’ll retain the most interest and empathy as a renewed Tiger—still very much a completist—chases his missing pieces.

r i g h t : w o o d s a s a n a m at e u r i n 1 9 9 5 . p r e v i o u s pa g e s : w o o d s i n a p r i l 1 9 9 7 b e f o r e h i s f i r s t m a s t e r s v i c t o ry.

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Photograph by First Lastname

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“ h e g o t b o r e d , ” l e e t r e v i n o s ay s o f w o o d s , s h o w n i n 1 9 9 7 . “ i t w a s t o o e a s y f o r h i m . ”

‘Tiger wanted to please his dad. . . . I believe Tiger, if it wasn’t for Earl, would be just another guy.

I really believe that.’

—JOHNNY MILLER I’d like to do some of my career differently. I made mistakes working too hard at tournaments. I know I wore myself out, wore out my golfing batteries. But I said to myself, I don’t want to get to 45 and regret that I didn’t try hard enough. Because I know some golfers, I watched them get into their 40s, and they were lazy. And suddenly it’s gone. You’re an athlete given a window of opportunity. And while you’ve got your

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nerve, you’d better make the most of it. Because once your nerve starts to go, you ain’t getting that one back.

That last round at the 1996 Masters [overcoming Greg Norman’s six-stroke lead] was the best round mentally I ever had. The swing wasn’t quite right, and I had to mentally push myself through each shot. I would think to myself, Are the wheels coming off?

And I had to yell at myself, No, they’re not!

Come on, what are we going to do? OK, hit it, land it there, piece it together, and I’m going to do this in the swing, because I know if I do this, I’ll hang on to it. I had a little checklist I had to go through. I’d lost that 100 percent self-belief, or whatever the percentage is where you’re Superman. Once it gets chinks, it becomes, Oh, I got away with it. And then one day, you say all those things to yourself, and twang!—it goes sideways. And that’s the day when you go, Oh, blimey.

To go to a major with the intention of winning it and doing it, that gives me the greatest pride. I did that in three of them [1990 at the Masters and St. Andrews, and 1992 at Muirfield were among Faldo’s six major victories]. With Tiger, I don’t know if he’s done 14 with the intention quite like that. It gives you that sense of power. You definitely feel everybody must be looking at you. The way you act probably pisses off a lot of the players—has to. Because I’m sure that’s when you’re at your rudest. Because you’re so focused, you’re so engrossed.

Tiger was quite happy to come into a tournament with a horrendous spotlight on him.

johnny miller the father influence

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I was amazed how he could do that. I’ll never forget, I was on the range doing TV at Augusta. He came on the range, and you could feel the aura. Every player would turn and look. All the gallery, every eye was on him. He turned it into energy. I’m sure Ali had that.

Once you get everything right, it’s that wonderful feeling knowing that you’re going to do it. I had that once: walking down the first fairway at St. Andrews, in 1990. They had put the flag just over the burn, into the breeze, and David [Leadbetter] came to tell me that balls were spinning back into the burn. So it’s a 9-iron, but I’m worried, so I’ll hit 8. And then I get a little more nervous and take out a 7. So I chip a 7, and I land it right in the back of the bloody green, and I’ve got a 30-yard putt. And I said to myself, Just relax.

You’re going to win.

You can say it now 30 years later, and people don’t think you’re an ass. But how cool a line is that to say to yourself? That is your ultimate. The millions of golf balls and the thousands of hours just to be able to say you know what to do and how to do it under the ultimate pressure, and you love it.

hen Tiger came up, I saw a lot of my golf upbringing in him. I don’t know exactly how Earl worked, but I could tell he had that affirmation thing going bigtime with Tiger. I mean, he said, This guy’s going to be the greatest, and he probably said it a million times to Tiger. He also paid the price with Tiger with his time, doing a lot of things my father did. Everything was centered around his dad, right?

With Tiger, what I saw was the drive, even a stronger drive than I had. And he had the rarest of all abilities: If he needed to make the putt, somehow he could make it go in.

Not many guys can actually make it, you know. I think of Casper, Nicklaus—for a while, Trevino. It’s very rare to have a guy who actually improved his putting when it mattered the most. Tiger was definitely that way. I could do it with my ball-striking. But you still had to finish it off with the putts.

I think Earl had that sense that this guy is special, and I think it was a special relationship. Tiger wanted to please his dad and follow what his dad wanted to accomplish with him. Sometimes you hear some of the negative, but I think most of it was pretty amazing. I believe Tiger, if it wasn’t for Earl, would be just another guy. I really believe that.

When my dad started me out hitting balls into a canvas tarp in our basement when I was 5, you couldn’t use too much loft because it would hit the rafters. So I hit a lot of 5- and 6-irons. And I would wear out this dark-green canvas, making a little light green line where it would start to shred. I’d aim for that little stripe about 15 feet away, and I knew where a perfect 6-iron would hit.

The thing that the basement did for me, is that it really got me to know what the sound and feel of a pure shot was. You could hear the strike, and you could feel no vibration.

Trying to get that would really focus you.

I was very little. When I graduated from ninth grade, I was 5-2, 105 pounds. I was a phenomenal putter. I’ll bet you when I was 12, I was in the top 10 in the world putting.

I once had 16 putts for 18 holes [at San Francisco’s Lincoln Park]. On terrible greens, by the way.

But I loved the game, everything about it.

My dad, he made me like a little pro, had me practice how I put my hat on, how I tipped my hat, how I put my glove on, and how I squinted my eyes and gritted my teeth. Sort of a little Hogan. He always talked about psyche. And he had a blackboard with certain things he wanted me to do because I was

small and I needed to be strong—push-ups, squeeze grips, pull-ups.

He would work the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift so that he could sleep while I was in school. After school, he’d take me to San Francisco Golf Club, where I was taking lessons [from John Geertsen], and the club sort of adopted me. They averaged only 20 players a day, so in the afternoon no one was even out there, so I could hit as many balls as I wanted. Even on approaches into the greens, I could hit eight balls, fixing my divots.

If I hit a bad shot, my dad didn’t really focus on the bad at all. It was just, “OK, one more shot.” It was always one more, no matter how many balls I had hit. It was, “OK, let’s see you hit another one,” never, “OK, let’s go home.”

I don’t think he ever said, “Let’s go home.”

He was a smart guy, and he was teaching the best he could. He’d give me 10 things to try, and eight of them were just way out there. But I would analyze why each one was not a good idea. And then one of the ideas was really good, and one was fantastic. Like when I was 10 or 11, he had me carry a lefthanded 5-iron. So I became quite good lefthanded, about a 6-handicap. Now coaches recommend swinging left-handed as a training aid. It wasn’t boring, because he was super creative.

I was a good little fighter. My dad was a boxing fan, and he taught me how to box. I didn’t get in that many fights, but I never lost a fight. The fight would last only 30 or 40 seconds, but that’s the way you settled disagreements back then. When he taught me how to box, that gave me confidence, too.

When I was a young player, I didn’t even know what a bad stretch was. Never played bad. Never. It’s not like I would shoot a bad round and then a real good round. It was just always good. I was a plus-2 when I was 16 years old on the Lake Course at Olympic Club.

I do think you need a start like I did to get a head start. All my friends would work as hard as I did, but they were always a little behind me. They didn’t have their father involved. That can work negatively if the guy is overbearing. But my dad was always about affirmations—“You’re doing great. . . . You’re on the right track. . . . Keep doing those exercises. . . . You’re going to be a champion.”

Over and over. He’d call me Champ—that affirmation of potential. Actually, not just potential, because I knew when I was 9 years old that I was going to be a champion golfer.

Something inside me said, Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re going to be a champion, like your dad said. So that affirmation of greatness or being successful from your father is the strongest affirmation there is for a boy. ▶ february 2018 | golfdigest.com

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making it happen

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hen you say, “Making it happen,” I think the key to that, and what Tiger and I both understood, is knowing what was happening.

I go back to some of the mistakes that I made. I look at the 39 I shot on the last nine holes of the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills in 1960.

At Pebble Beach in 1963, I came to the last hole tied with Billy Casper but three-putted from 22 feet by being too aggressive with the first putt and then missed the comebacker.

As good as Casper was, my chances of beating him in a playoff were higher than making that 22-footer. Later that summer, down the stretch at Royal Lytham, I lost by one after bogeying the last two holes by not being smart.

Those are things you learn from, how to assess a situation and learn who you are and what you can do. And you gain confidence when those lessons teach you how to choose the correct course. Ultimately you become that golfer.

If I had a putt on the 18th to make, that I needed to make, more often than not I made it. Inside 10 feet, more than likely I made that putt. With Tiger, the same thing. Think of Tiger at the [2003] Presidents Cup in South Africa in sudden death with Ernie Els. Particularly the second putt, the one in the dark.

I mean, that was just . . . he made it happen.

In those situations, I always stood over a putt, and I’d say, I need . . . I HAVE to make this putt. Period. I gotta make it. And more often than not, that made me focus more, and I made it. And once you do that a couple of times, you say, Well, what should I say this time: Gee, I’d LIKE to make it? No. I HAVE to make it. Once you find something you tell yourself that works, you continue to do that thing until it proves it doesn’t. For me, it kept working most of the time.

I got nervous all the time, as nervous as the next guy. It’s just that I caught myself before it became destructive. You might be thinking, Gosh, I’m worried about missing it.

When you get that out of your system, you eliminate all the negatives.

I don’t know how much is innate. I mean, I started winning when I was 10, 11 years old.

I was out playing with [wife] Barbara out at Lost Tree on the sixth hole one time, a par 5, and Barbara hit three fairway woods up there and made 4. And I had a 25-footer for 4, and I made it. And she says, “You can’t ever let me win one?” I said, “I’m sorry, it’s what I do. I’m like the scorpion and the frog. It’s my nature.”

Why, I don’t know. I wish I could answer that question, but I can’t—I just don’t know. It was not an accident. No, I worked very hard

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for that. But no, I never tried to figure it out.

How does Jack Nicklaus know who Jack Nicklaus is? Whatever I had to do, I just went ahead and did it.

Sure, I could have gone the other way.

Why didn’t I? Because I didn’t want to

woods in december 1996, four months after turning pro and s h o r t ly b e f o r e h i s 2 1 s t b i r t h d ay.

‘I wanted to learn why I made mistakes.

I think Tiger does much the same thing.’

—JACK NICKLAUS

[chuckles]. I didn’t want to be a bad player.

I didn’t want to lose tournaments. I wanted to learn why I made mistakes. I think Tiger does much the same thing.

My dad loved playing all sports, and so did I. I’ve played tennis all my life. I played basketball in a rec league until I was 40. I’d take the kids to football practice, and I’d throw to them in passing drills. Playing all those sports taught you a lot about yourself and about what you can do and what you can’t do. Especially when you’re dealing with team sports, you’re working with your teammates and seeing them make mistakes and their strengths. And you relate those things right back to yourself and how to make yourself better. Did what I learned from team sports help me to learn to rise to the occasion in golf? Absolutely.

Tiger was always a guy who once he got ahead, he was able to gain the ability to just bury everybody. And I never really thought about burying the field. All I ever thought about was, I got my lead, now how do I not do something stupid to lose my lead?

The 1965 Masters [where Nicklaus won by nine], it just happened. And the 1980 PGA [Nicklaus won by seven at Oak Hill], I was playing terrible.

I try to subdue my emotion in competition. When I was a kid, I’d find myself getting excited when I did something good, and I’d lose my focus and wouldn’t get back down for a hole or two. I said, I can’t do that. So I was one of those guys who didn’t pump himself up by getting excited. I had to control it so I could continue to do something good.

The game is unpredictable, and it’s different every day. I don’t think I ever had two problems to solve in a round that were exactly the same, ever. You always have to figure out, How do I really make this happen?

I trusted my instinct. I always felt like any time I played a tournament, any place in a round, if I didn’t like how I was swinging, I would change it. I go back and look at a lot of times I did that, and who knows why I did it, but I just said, This is not what I want to be doing. I need to make an adjustment, and I need to make it now, and I’ve got to do it without destroying myself to do it.

gary player “bound for great things”

T

iger had advantages physically and in his early exposure to the game that I didn’t have. It put him on the road to being the greatest golfer who ever lived. But the thing where we were equal, or I might have even had more of, was drive. Man, I was driven. There is never enough success for me.

One of the first things I noticed about

this page and opening pages: michael o’neil/corbis/getty images

jack nicklaus

second spread: steve munday/allsport/getty images • third spread: david cannon/allsport/getty images

Tiger is his strong belief in his destiny. He carried himself with a peaceful but powerful sense that he was bound for great things.

I understand that feeling. It was vital to my inner view of myself, especially when I knew others might not have shared it. But that only made me more determined.

When I was 15, I broke my neck showing off for some other boys by jumping headfirst into what I thought was a pit of soft leaves and grass, and hit bottom. I had to stay inactive for nearly a year. I had been playing golf for only a year, but I was already consumed by the game. During my convalescence, I would be alone in the house and stand in front of a mirror, saying over and over, You’re the greatest golfer in the world. It was absurd, but something told me that mattered. Later, I learned from reading and befriending Norman Vincent Peale. He once wrote, “If you want something and you go for it, you will be astonished at the values you will find.”

My parents, Harry and Muriel, always encouraged us. I’m sure it gave me the belief that what I could conceive, I could achieve.

It’s the greatest gift you can give a child.

My older brother, Ian, was a tremendous influence on me. I remember at 8 or 9 trying to run a five-mile course with him, but I fell down less than halfway, exhausted. I cried, “Ian, I can’t make it.” He yanked me to my feet and very sternly told me, “You can do anything you want to. Remember that.

There’s no room for ‘can’t’ in this life.” Then he kicked me on the backside to emphasize the point. Ever since, if I’ve ever been tempted to say I can’t, I feel that kick again.

A golfer’s true greatness is revealed not when he’s playing his best, but when he’s not and still manages to win. For all his talent, Tiger has shown even more will, and so often when he was fighting his swing he still found a way. There were many times in tournaments when I was lost, hitting absolute rubbish, but I would get the ball on the green and make the key putts. How does that happen? Desire. Tiger has always had more of that than the players he’s beaten.

You feel as if he cares more than anyone else. I was told that when I played, I gave that impression.

Tiger has hit so many amazing shots under pressure. Often, with some players more than others, pressure can destroy performance. But I’ve found it’s amazing how the intense pressure of the crucial moment, when something special is required, produced the best shots of my career. I don’t know if you can say it’s luck if you continuously did that. Talent, maybe?

Obviously I’m pulling for Tiger—I am a big Tiger Woods fan. But I think we could look back and say that his downfall was striving for too much perfection. He was on

‘A golfer’s true greatness is revealed not when he’s playing his best, but when he’s not and still manages to win.’

—GARY PLAYER the way to being the best player the world had ever known. He wins the U.S. Open by 15 shots, and shortly after he’s having lessons and changing his swing. There is always a limit, and I don’t think he could have gotten better. I pursued better technique my whole career—my only regret is a lost chance to learn from Ben Hogan—and it’s a capricious thing that often doesn’t lead to improvement. Golf is such a very, very intricate game, and there is a limitation.

lee trevino a reason for everything

T

iger, like me, is obsessed with golf.

People have to understand that he made himself what he is. He wasn’t born with that. Superstars make themselves that way.

When you want to be the best, you gotta do something extra. You can’t just do the same thing that everybody else is doing. All the great ones do that. I outpracticed them.

The better I did it, the more I’d like to see it, and the more I practiced.

The secret is, everything that you do, there’s a reason. The good players figure out the why. Why that ball’s doing that. And why you can do this. Most people don’t do that.

I played a hook with a pretty swing until I came back from the Marine Corps and saw Ben Hogan hitting fades at Shady Oaks. After that, I figured out a way to play to avoid the left side. See, I play with two flags. I aim at this flag, but I hit it at that one. I’ll stand here, and I’ll go like this [simulates his open stance]. I’m looking right at the

target. I don’t have to do this [looking more over his left shoulder from a square stance].

And then I played a block fade. You have to, if you’re aiming left. It’s in your mind, it’s in your makeup, it’s in your body. Putted the same way. Copied Jack Nicklaus, the greatest putter I’ve ever seen.

You have to respond to the target. During the swing, I look for the target in my subconscious mind. You can’t think when you swing. The more you think, the worse you’ll play. What’s happened, unfortunately, and I mean no disrespect by this, is that people who are teaching are getting way too crazy with too many little movements and muscles. You can’t let too many people mess with you. Mr. Palmer had it right when he said, “Swing your swing.”

Tiger outsmarted himself. He didn’t realize that if he just maintained, he would still be winning everything. Instead, he wanted to do something else. He got bored. He wasn’t satisfied winning by 15. He wasn’t satisfied by winning 30 percent of his tournaments.

It was too easy for him. He was actually too good, and it got in his way.

Here’s what Butch Harmon told me. I said, “Tiger?” He said, “Lee, I can’t teach him anymore. He knows more than I do about the swing. You can’t believe what he knows about this thing.”

Because Tiger dissected it like me. He knows why it happens this way when you do a certain thing. But like Butch said, “There are some guys that want somebody watching over them.”

I didn’t. Jack told me one time, “You’re the smartest golfer I ever met.” That was the best compliment I’ve ever had. Ever had.

You never stop dreaming it. I love the art of it. I love the people. And still being able to go out and perform. With Tiger, it’s even more so. It would be very easy for him to say, “I don’t even want to mess with it.” I mean, his retirement fund alone has got more money than AT&T. So no, he loves the sport, he loves competition, he loves to win, he loves to play well. That’s his whole thing. If Tiger does not hurt anymore, I think he’ll play until he’s 50, and then he’ll play the majors on the Champions Tour.

One of the greatest feelings in the world is when you’re out of pain. When my L-5 nerve was completely trapped, I was in that bed upstairs for three months. Wasn’t able to even put my pants on. I could not move.

Then [after a 2004 procedure to implant a spinal spacer], no pain. It was like cutting me loose with 31 flavors. Tiger is going to be the same thing. He lost his body, but he didn’t lose his talent. And the longer he goes with no pain, the more confidence he’s going to build. And then he’s going to get up one day and say, “I’m back, baby!” february 2018 | golfdigest.com

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PLANET golf

t h e 1 6 t h h o l e at c a b o t cliffs, no. 9 on the world 100, i s 1 7 6 ya r d s o f b e a u t y.

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Photograph by First Lastname

WORLDI I

I00

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GOLFDIGEST’S

Photograph by First Lastname

february 2018 | golfdigest.com

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r o ya l c o u n t y d o w n (championship) r e p e at s a s t h e top-ranked course on the world 100. the fourth hole stretches from 2 0 2 t o 2 2 9 ya r d s .

NICKLAUS & NORMAN TIE FOR MOST COURSES AMONG LIVING ARCHITECTS

BY RON WHIT TEN

G

OLF DIGEST ’S THIRD BIENNIAL ranking of the World 100 Greatest Golf Courses is truly global, showcasing brilliant layouts everywhere from Abu Dhabi to Vietnam, but not the United States. This is not a slight against courses born in the USA; Golf Digest will continue to produce biennial rankings of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses in odd-numbered years. A big part of the reason is that our two rankings are determined differently. America’s 100 Greatest is always based on evaluations by North American panelists judging courses in seven criteria.

The World 100 Greatest uses a single criterion of overall greatness scored not just by Americans but also by international panelists organized by our affiliate magazines around the world.

Still, if you’re in a debating mood, allow us to pose another topic. Even a cursory look at our World 100 Greatest, topped again by Royal County Down in Northern Ireland, reveals that a group of big-name golf-course architects are responsible for many of the courses on our list. Here’s the question: Does it take a prominent name to generate a world-class course, or does a great course turn an architect into a big name?

Among living architects, the two with the most designs on this year’s ranking are Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman, both champion golfers long before they transitioned into golf design. Each has five original designs among the World 100. Nicklaus is responsible for No. 28 Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in South Korea, No. 63 Punta Espada in the Dominican Republic and in Mexico, No. 70 Cabo del Sol (Ocean), No 91 Four Seasons Punta Mita (Pacifico) and No. 93 Quivira.

Norman is credited with the ultra-exclusive Ellerston (No. 31) and No. 98 The National (Moonah) in his native Australia, No. 35 The Bluffs Ho Tram Strip and No. 94 BRG Da Nang in Vietnam and No. 82 Jumeirah (Earth) in Dubai, where the European Tour’s Race to Dubai has finished every year since 2009. Norman has also been involved

in a bit of renovation at No. 18 New South Wales in Australia.

Close behind those two titans is perhaps the most influential golf architect on the planet, Tom Doak, who designed No. 6 Tara Iti, the highest ranked American-designed course on our list, and No. 17 Cape Kidnappers, both in New Zealand, plus No. 11 Barnbougle Dunes and No. 86 St. Andrews Beach, both in Australia. (The latter two were codesigns with Australian tour pro-turnedarchitect Mike Clayton.) Doak is so respected as a design historian that he also has been engaged in restoring No. 3 Royal Melbourne (West) and No. 19 Royal Melbourne (East), No. 85 Royal Adelaide, all in Australia, as well as No. 80 Woodhall Spa (Hotchkin) in England, No. 54 Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda and, with the assistance of Canadian architect Ian Andrew, No. 20 St. George’s in Ontario.

Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have three highly placed courses: No. 8 Shanqin Bay in China, No. 9 Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia and No. 26 Barnbougle Lost Farm in Australia, but because Crenshaw prefers not to travel much internationally, he was involved only in the design of Cabot Cliffs.

Gil Hanse has one course on the list, No. 53 Castle Stuart in Scotland, co-designed with its developer, Mark Parsinen. Hanse’s acclaimed Rio Olympic Golf Course in Brazil lacked a sufficient number of panelist votes for consideration (25 were needed to make our World 100). If the course survives the Rio economy, we suspect it will be a contender for our 2020 ranking.

Likewise, Pete Dye has one course on the list, No. 27 Casa de Campo (Teeth of the Dog) in the Dominican Republic. Same for Tom Weiskopf: No. 74 Loch Lomond in Scotland, done with the late Jay Morrish. Tom Fazio has two: No. 36 National in Canada, done in the 1970s with his uncle George Fazio, and No. 97 Querencia in Mexico, although Fazio has also remodeled No. 55 Waterville in Ireland and, with his son Logan, No. 90 Kasumigaseki (East) in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. february 2018 | golfdigest.com

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1 Royal County Down G.C. (Championship), Newcastle, Northern Ireland 2 Royal Dornoch G.C. (Championship), Scotland 3 Royal Melbourne G.C. (West), Black Rock, Australia 4 Muirfield, Gullane, Scotland 5 St. Andrews Links (Old), Fife, Scotland 6 Tara Iti G.C., Mangawhai, New Zealand 7 Royal Portrush G.C. (Dunluce), Northern Ireland 8 Shanqin Bay G.C., Hainan Island, China 9 Cabot Cliffs, Inverness, Canada 10 Trump Turnberry (Ailsa), Scotland 11 Barnbougle Dunes, Bridport, Australia 12 Sunningdale G.C. (Old), England 13 Kingston Heath G.C., Cheltenham, Australia

14 Golf de Morfontaine G.C., Mortefontaine, France 15 Royal Birkdale G.C., Southport, England 16 Ballybunion G.C. (Old), Ireland 17 Cape Kidnappers, Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand 18 New South Wales G.C., La Perouse, Australia 19 Royal Melbourne G.C. (East), Black Rock, Australia 20 St. George’s G. and C.C., Etobicoke, Canada 21 Carnoustie G. Links (Championship), Scotland 22 Royal St. George’s G.C., Sandwich, England 23 The Club at Nine Bridges, Jeju Island, South Korea 24 Cape Wickham Links, King Island, Australia 25 North Berwick G.C., Scotland

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26 Barnbougle Lost Farm, Bridport, Australia 27 Casa de Campo (Teeth of the Dog), La Romana, Dominican Republic 28 Jack Nicklaus G.C. Korea, Incheon, South Korea 29 Haesley Nine Bridges, Yeoju, South Korea 30 Kingsbarns G. Links, St. Andrews, Scotland 31 Ellerston G. Cse., Hunter Valley, Australia 32 St. George’s Hill G.C., Weybridge, England 33 Sunningdale G.C. (New), England 34 Lahinch G.C. (Old), Ireland 35 The Bluffs Ho Tram Strip, Ho Tram, Vietnam 36 National G.C. of Canada, Woodbridge 37 Kauri Cliffs, Matauri Bay, New Zealand

38 Fancourt (Links), George, South Africa 39 Swinley Forest G.C., Ascot, England 40 Royal Troon G.C. (Old), Scotland 41 Royal Porthcawl G.C., Wales 42 Valderrama G.C., Sotogrande, Spain 43 Cabot Links, Inverness, Canada 44 Yas Links, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 45 Victoria G.C., Cheltenham, Australia 46 Royal Lytham & St. Annes G.C., England 47 Diamante (Dunes), Cabo San Lucas, Mexico 48 Mission Hills Haikou (Blackstone), Hainan, China 49 South Cape Owners Club, Namhae Island, South Korea

previous pages: courtesy of evan schiller/cabot cliffs, aiden bradley/royal county down

GOLF DIGEST’S WORLD 100 GREATEST GOLF COURSES

above: joann dost • next pages: courtesy of trump turnberry

ta k e i n t h e v i e w s a n d t h e n ta k e a w h a c k at t h e p a r - 3 1 7 t h h o l e at ta r a i t i i n n e w z e a l a n d , n o . 6 o n o u r l i s t.

50 Hirono G.C., Hyogo, Japan 51 Capilano G. and C.C., West Vancouver, Canada 52 Emirates G.C. (Majlis), Dubai, United Arab Emirates 53 Castle Stuart G. Links, Inverness, Scotland 54 Mid Ocean Club, Tucker’s Town, Bermuda 55 Waterville G. Links, Ireland 56 Cruden Bay G.C., Scotland 57 Metropolitan G.C., South Oakleigh, Australia 58 Portmarnock G.C. (Championship), Ireland 59 Black Mountain G.C. (East/North), Hua Hin, Thailand 60 Hamilton G. & C.C. (West/South), Ancaster, Canada 61 Machrihanish G.C., Scotland 62 Sheshan International G.C., Shanghai, China

63 Punta Espada G.C., Cap Cana, Dominican Republic 64 Trump International G. Links, Balmedie, Scotland 65 Leopard Creek C.C., Malelane, South Africa 66 Walton Heath G.C. (Old), Walton-on-the-Hill, England 67 Rye G.C. (Old), England T-68 Ganton G.C., England T-68 Olgiata G.C. (West), Rome, Italy 70 Cabo del Sol (Ocean), Los Cabos, Mexico 71 Royal Aberdeen G.C. (Balgownie), Scotland 72 Royal Liverpool G.C., Hoylake, England 73 Siam C.C. (Old), Pattaya, Thailand 74 Loch Lomond G.C., Luss, Scotland 75 Kawana Hotel G. Cse. (Fuji), Shizuoka, Japan

76 Jack’s Point G. Cse., Queenstown, New Zealand 77 Paraparaumu Beach G.C., New Zealand 78 TPC Kuala Lumpur (West), Malaysia 79 Sentosa G.C. (Serapong), Singapore 80 Woodhall Spa G.C. (Hotchkin), England 81 Anyang C.C., Gunpo City, South Korea 82 Jumeirah G. Estates (Earth), Dubai, United Arab Emirates 83 Old Head G. Links, Kinsale, Ireland 84 Naruo G.C., Kawanishi, Japan 85 Royal Adelaide G.C., Seaton, Australia 86 St. Andrews Beach G. Cse., Fingal, Australia 87 Highlands Links, Ingonish Beach, Canada 88 Spring City Golf and Lake Resort (Lake), Kunming, China

89 Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge G.C., Canada 90 Kasumigaseki C.C. (East), Saitama, Japan 91 Four Seasons Punta Mita (Pacifico), Punt Mita, Mexico 92 The European Club, Brittas Bay, Ireland 93 Quivira G.C., Cabo San Lucas, Mexico 94 BRG Da Nang G.C., Vietnam 95 Prestwick G.C., Scotland 96 Durban C.C., South Africa 97 Querencia C.C., Los Cabos, Mexico 98 The National G.C. (Moonah), Cape Schanck, Australia 99 Banff Springs G. Cse. (Thompson), Canada 100 Western Gailes G.C., Irvine, Scotland

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the new 11th hole at t r u m p t u r n b e r r y (ailsa), no. 10 on o u r l i s t, p l ay s f r o m 1 1 5 t o 2 1 5 ya r d s .

S

hawtree’s impact ome architects deserve more attention but haven’t achieved it, at least by American standards. Consider Martin Hawtree, a third-generation golf architect, now 70, who designed one of Scotland’s most stunning new courses, No. 64 Trump International, and has remodeled several courses for recent Open Championships, including No. 4 Muirfield, No. 5 St. Andrews (Old), No. 15 Royal Birkdale, No. 21 Carnoustie (Championship) and No. 72 Royal Liverpool. Hawtree has also done extensive revisions to No. 32 St. George’s Hill and No. 33 Sunningdale (New) in England, No. 71 Royal Aberdeen (Balgownie) in Scotland and No. 16 Ballybunion (Old), No. 34 Lahinch (Old) and No. 58 Portmarnock (Championship) in Ireland. His involvement in 12 courses among our World 100 is the most by any architect.

Hawtree was also one of the eight finalists for the Rio job. Yet his name often is confused with another British architect, Martin Ebert, who with Tom Mackenzie has done several high-profile remodeling jobs, in particular No. 7 Royal Portrush (Dunluce), site of the 2019 Open Championship; No. 22 Royal St. George’s, the 2020 Open site; No. 40 Royal Troon, which hosted the Open in 2016; plus No. 10 Trump Turnberry (Ailsa) and No. 46 Royal Lytham & St. Annes, which hope to remain on the rota. Mackenzie and Ebert have also renovated No. 41 Royal Porthcawl in Wales, No. 56 Cruden Bay in Scotland, T-68 Ganton in England and No. 60 Hamilton (West/South) in Ontario.

If you believe great courses establish an architect’s bona fides, then Kyle Phillips deserves mention. Phillips served as an associate for Robert Trent Jones Jr. for more than 15 years before establishing his firm in 1997.

Since then, he has quietly produced some of the globe’s finest designs. His breakthrough course was No. 30 Kingsbarns near St. Andrews, Scotland, done with Mark Parsinen (who later developed Castle Stuart). Phillips also created No. 44 Yas Links in Abu Dhabi, long considered the best course in the United Arab Emirates, and No. 49 South Cape on rocky cliffs of South Korea’s Namhae Island. Some consider it “the Pebble Beach” of Korea.

Like many great architects, Phillips is also a student of the past, and his appreciation of the late, artistic Tom Simpson resulted in his sympathetic remodeling of No. 14 Morfontaine in France. And Phillips’ appreciation of Robert Trent Jones, an icon in golf architecture and father of Kyle’s old boss, is reflected in Kyle’s renovations at No. 42 Valderrama in Spain.

▶ For more on the World 100 and for the country-by-country rankings, please go to golfdigest.com/go/100greatest. february 2018 | golfdigest.com

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GOODTHINGS...

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOM FURORE • GD • 0218 • 75

PLANET golf

a r g e n t i n a’ s pata g o n i a r e g i o n : “ i n t o w n , t h e s i g n s a r e a l s o i n e n g l i s h , ” d o m s ay s . “ yo u ’ d t h i n k yo u ’ r e i n a s p e n . ”

IN HIGH PLACES... ...

left arel auquen’s 15th hole. r i g h t p l ay u s h u a i a g o l f c l u b o n t h e s o u t h e r n t i p o f a r g e n t i n a , t h e n j u m p o n a c r u i s e s h i p t o a n ta r c t i c a .

... GOLF

at a l m o s t 1 1 , 0 0 0

IN THE ANDES IS BREATH —TAKING, LITER —ALLY. YOU CAN’T BREATHE

...

f e e t a b ov e s e a l e v e l , l a pa z g o l f c l u b i n b o l i v i a c l a i m s to b e t h e h i g h e st c h a m p i o n s h i p g o l f c o u r s e i n t h e w o r l d .

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ll ao ll ao hotel & resort in 80t h egolfdigest.com | month 2017

argentina provides the background for the course’s fifth hole .

Photograph by First Lastname

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WHEN WE SAY Dom Furore gets around, we’re not kidding. In 33 years of chasing stories across five continents and dozens of countries—who else do you know who’s been to Bahrain, Burundi, India, Iceland, Russia and Rwanda, just for starters?—Golf Digest’s senior staff photographer has taken some of the most enduring images in the magazine’s history. ● This month he brings you Part Five of his series on mountain golf, traveling high into the Andes of South America to capture courses in Argentina and Bolivia. (His previous black-and-white essays included the Canadian Rockies, the French and Swiss Alps, the Himalayas in Nepal and China, and sharing Alaska with bears, moose and eagles.) ● “When you get to the hotel in La Paz [where the airport sits at 13,323 feet above sea level], they give you tea and a pill to help with the altitude,” Dom says. “You start to think, What the heck is this? But whatever it was, it worked.” ● As you might expect, Dom has picked up other travel tips through the years, including No. 1 from longtime Golf Digest photographer Stephen Szurlej: “Always take a pair of flip-flops,” Dom says. “On one of my first assignments, I bought a pair for about four or five bucks. They had about three million miles on them before they finally broke about six months ago. They’re the only thing I’ve never managed to lose.” ● Next stop for Dom: Is there a golf course in Antarctica? ●

Photograph by First Lastname

month 2017 | golfdigest.com

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BUL SOME PLAYERS RELY on a single driver swing. Not me. I have two: the Bullet and the Bomb. Sometimes there’s a need to get everything you can out of a drive, or there’s no real risk in airing one out— obviously, that’s when I hit the Bomb.

But more often, you’re standing on a tee box that doesn’t fit your eye, or you’re in a situation where just getting it somewhere in the fairway is important—that’s when I go with the Bullet. I’ll show you the adjustments I make to hit these two shots, so you can expand your arsenal.

1. pierce the air WHEN I WAS 13, I watched PGA Tour pro Will MacKenzie hitting these incredibly low, little chip drivers. He showed me how he did it, and, over the years, I put a twist on it. The shot has become something I rely on under pressure, especially during wins at the FedEx St. Jude Classic in 2016 and 2017, when I hit it every chance I could.

The Bullet gets its name because it’s a low, line drive. Mine fades a little, too, and carries about 260 yards before landing.

Then it scoots another 40. You might not be able to hit it as far, but the point is to keep the ball down and get it running.

To hit it: Tee it low, play the ball slightly behind your left heel, and choke up on the grip two to three inches. All three of those adjustments keep the ball down.

You also can see here that, at address, my left arm and the driver’s shaft are forming a straight line (left). If the shaft were leaning back, it’s more likely I would hit the ball too high.

During the swing, I feel as if my chest is on top of the ball (right)—there’s not a big load up on the right side. Coming

82 golfdigest.com | february 2018

...

ATTACK YOUR GOLF COURSE WITH TWO DIFFERENT TEE SHOTS

BY DANIEL BERGER

Photographs by Dom Furore

down, be careful not to get too steep. You should feel like you’re hitting a shot under a tree—except with a driver.

You’ll get the hang of it quicker if you start with slow swings. Gradually build speed until you’re getting the ball out there nearly as long as your normal drives.

2. launch it high ALTHOUGH I HIT the Bullet 70 percent of the time, there are times when I need to rip into one. The Bomb is a high-arcing draw I use mostly on long par 5s.

For this shot, I need to get behind the ball—really load up on my right side (left).

It’s a full shoulder turn. This puts me in position for an inside-to-outside swing path, which helps draw it right to left. Just be careful you don’t take the club back too far inside the target line. Then you’ll have to re-route the club coming down, and you’ll likely slice it.

Unlike the Bullet, where I’m hitting down on the ball (usually 3 or 4 degrees), the Bomb requires me to hit up on the ball 2 to 3 degrees. You can help make sure that happens with the right setup.

I position the ball off my left toe at address, drop my right shoulder lower than my left, and lean the shaft away from the ball (right). I also tee it two to three inches high. You need a launch angle of 11 to 13 degrees to hit the Bomb, and it’s difficult to get that when the ball is teed only an inch above the ground.

It’s a simple adjustment that will allow you to hit the ball higher, with less spin, and increase your carry distance.

Now you’ve got the right weapons for all the par 4s and par 5s on your course.

—WITH E. MICHAEL JOHNSON

DANIEL BERGER has two wins and four seconds since joining the PGA Tour in 2015.

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!

HIT UP TO BOMB RIGHT SETUP.’

photographs by Sandro

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gutter credit tk

THE WINNER of the NOBEL PRIZE in ECONOMICS has ideas for THE GAME Photograph by First Lastname

richard thaler

NOBEL

GOLFER

by david owen

88 golfdigest.com | february 2018

20 Questions with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler 1

8

14

What’s your idea of a perfect round?

Three good friends, nice weather, and two birdies. Second choice: out by myself on an empty course, late afternoon, hitting two balls. Peace.

What do you dislike about your golf self?

When my mind wanders, which is what it does most of the time, on and off the course.

Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus?

Arnie.

2 What’s your go-to shot, the one you know you can pull off? Tap-in from one inch.

What golfer would you most like to be like? Jordan Spieth— I like his thoughtful game. His mind does not seem to wander.

What’s the shot that keeps you up at night? Long bunker shot, downhill lie.

What’s the difference between golf and economics?

No gimmes in economics.

4

11

What’s the best part of your game?

Banter.

Why are golfers so despised by nongolfers?

Don’t know, but people don’t much like economists either.

I will say that the folks you meet on a public course like Torrey Pines are a great cross section. Not a single jerk.

5 Best tip you ever got? A bunker shot is just another golf shot.

6 Where in the world would you like to go with your golf clubs?

Augusta.

7 What is it that golfers don’t understand? Most people play tees that are too long for them.

And not everyone in the foursome should play the same tees. If skill varies, then ideally everyone has the same club in their hand on their second shot on a par 4 and on the tee on a par 3.

What golfer do you most identify with?

Jason Dufner.

9

10 3

15

16 What was your happiest moment on the golf course?

When my friend David Schkade and I couldn’t find either of our golf balls on an uphill par 3 at Steel Canyon in San Diego, and one of our playing partners (a stranger) found both of our balls in the hole.

Top that one.

17 Nobel Prize or Masters green jacket? Oscar.

18 Where in golf would you want your ashes scattered? Off the Torrey Pines cliffs.

19

Who would you most like to play golf with?

President Obama.

What song is in your head when you swing?

None! Maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong.

13

20

Favorite article of golf clothing?

Kingsbarns sweater.

Phil Mickelson told us he won a Nobel Prize in economics.

True or false?

Well, if he would like to see if his is the real thing, tell him I spend part of the year in La Jolla, and he can come see if his is a counterfeit.

12

john kascht

IN

THE MOVIE “The Big Short”—based on Michael Lewis’ book of the same name, about the collapse of the global financial system in 2007-’08—the singer Selena Gomez and the University of Chicago economist Richard H. Thaler explain the “hot-hand fallacy” as it applies to the Wall Street weapons of mass destruction known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations.

The scene takes place at a blackjack table in a casino. Gomez is dealt an ace and a 10— blackjack—and therefore can’t lose. During the filming, she at first didn’t react to her cards, and Thaler pointed out that a real player with an unbeatable hand would at least have cracked a smile. So, in the take that appears in the movie, Gomez and Thaler exchange high-fives, and the extras crowding behind them clink glasses and cheer. Thaler figures that, because of his contribution to the movie’s verisimilitude, he ought to have received a directing credit, if not gross points—and also that he was robbed at the Academy Awards. “Doubly so, in fact,” he told me recently, “since I ad-libbed all my lines, and the writer-director won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.”

In October, Thaler’s pain was assuaged, somewhat, when a different academy, in Sweden, gave him the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel—the Nobel Prize in economics. The award was in recognition of Thaler’s contributions to behavioral economics, a field he was instrumental in creating.

His foundational insight was that human beings, and therefore the markets they throw money at, are far less rational than neoclassical economic theory assumes them to be. This idea—that people are basically idiots—might seem unsurprising to anyone who’s not a neoclassical economist, but for many years Thaler’s fellow academics considered him a fringe thinker. He has gradually won over most of them, though, and he has done so with creativity and humor, as well as by finding mathematically rigorous ways to explain why mathematical rigor can’t explain everything.

Thaler is also a golfer. His regular playing companions include two other Chicago economists: Eugene F. Fama, who shared a Nobel Prize in 2013, and Steven D. Levitt, who is the co-author (with the journalist Stephen J. Dubner) of the Freakonomics books, which have introduced millions of non-economists to behavioral-economic thinking. People who win the Nobel Prize are inevitably hounded by pushy journalists and self-serving well-wishers, but an important finding from my own work in behavioral economics is that golfers are always up for golf. And, indeed, when I emailed Thaler, Fama and Levitt, they responded faster than my children usually do. After several reply-alls back and forth, accompanied by a little schedulerearranging and nervous forecast-checking, we were able to pick a date and a tee time that accommodated everyone but Fama, who had a commitment in Texas that he couldn’t think of a way to back out of.

“Things have been crazy,” Thaler said when we met. “I’ve said no to everyone but The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, PBS NewsHour and Golf Digest—the Big Four.” Levitt had already told me, by email, “I’ve dreamed about being on the cover of Golf Digest more often than I’ve dreamed about winning the Nobel Prize.”

Thaler is 72. He played a little golf when he was growing up, in New Jersey, but he wasn’t crazy about it. “Then, when I went to college, I took up tennis, and I basically played tennis until I was 60. That’s when I saw the writing on the wall. Old-man tennis is just ugly— four guys standing around—and I’m really a clay-court-singles kind of guy.” He and his wife, France Leclerc, decided to try golf instead. (She’s a retired marketing professor and a talented amateur photographer. You can see a selection of her work at franceleclerc .com.) “France and I took a three-day course, and I got hooked immediately,” he continued. “There was some muscle memory, and

t h a l e r r e g u l a r ly p l ay s w i t h e c o n o m i s t s e u g e n e f a m a a n d s t e v e n l e v i t t at c h i c a g o ’ s b e v e r ly c o u n t r y c l u b .

g o l f w o u l d b e a d i f f e r e n t g a m e i f n o b o dy h a d e v e r t h o u g h t o f t h e i d e a o f p a r . t h e r e a r e v e r y f e w 2 6 0 - ya r d h o l e s , f o r e x a m p l e . w h y n o t ? f o r a l o t o f g o l f e r s , t h at w o u l d b e p e r f e c t ly n i c e . some transfer from tennis, in terms of eye-hand coordination. And pretty soon after that, France broke her arm and never played again.”

At first, Thaler played most of his rounds at Jackson Park, on the shore of Lake Michigan virtually across the street from the university.

(The park was the site of the 1893 World’s Fair, and its golf course, which opened in 1899, was the first public course in the Midwest.

The park will be the home of Barack Obama’s presidential library, and the course is about to be redesigned and renovated by Tiger Woods.) Fama—who is six years older and had taken up golf a couple of years before—joined Beverly Country Club, which is also close to the university. “I don’t think I would have thought of joining a club on my own, because I wasn’t very serious about it,” Thaler says. “But Gene took me to play at Beverly, and it turned out to be a great place to learn the game.”

Beverly opened in 1908. Its current layout was created by Donald Ross, who redesigned the course in 1918 and took advantage of the fact that the property straddles what was once the southern edge of Lake Chicago, a sort of ur-Great Lake. Several holes play into or out of the old lakebed and among what used to be low dunes along the shoreline. Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s architecture editor, told me that the course’s routing is “a great example of how to fit a design into a long, skinny rectangle and make it work” and that the architecture is “excellent if not quite superlative enough to be ranked among America’s very best.” Francis Ouimet won a U.S. Amateur at Beverly, in 1931, and Chick Evans, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus all won Western Opens there. “The course is brutal,” Thaler said. “But one good thing about that is that it makes anywhere else seem like a walk in the park.”

Levitt—who’s also a Beverly member—had to teach a class on february 2018 | golfdigest.com

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the morning of our golf date and so wouldn’t be joining us until Fama, at first, was appalled by the idea of moving up. But one we made the turn. Thaler and I warmed up with a few practice day several years ago, Levitt told him, untruthfully, that he’d hurt his balls, then headed to the first tee, which you get to from the range knee and didn’t feel up to walking all the way back to the whites. “The by taking a cart through a tunnel that runs under all six lanes of hole was a par 5, and from the green tees, Gene hit driver, 3-wood, West 87th Street. Four younger guys were about to tee off, but they 8-iron,” Levitt continued. “When he saw his ball on the green, he said, stepped aside, in deference to the Nobel Prize and to the fact that ‘That’s the first time in five years that I’ve reached a par 5 with an Thaler is a known non-dawdler. iron’—and he’s never played the whites since. He’s a fast learner. It Thaler had described himself to me as a bogey golfer. He could be took him exactly one hole to realize what he hadn’t been able to see better if he decided he wanted to be, but he’s a very laid-back player. ahead of time. But to get him there, I had to trick him.”

We didn’t keep score, and if his ball got muddy, he cleaned it. On one Levitt’s trick was actually an example of what might be Thaler’s long hole, his approach shot ricocheted off a tree and disappeared, best-known contribution to human happiness—the concept of and after maybe a minute of searching he told his caddie to abandon the “nudge” (which also provided the title of his most popular it. “I believe that people spend way too much time looking for golf book so far, co-written with the legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein). In balls,” he said. Then: “Oh, look—here it is.” He dropped one. “We’ll Fama’s case, the nudge was probably more of a shove, but the idea try a feasible shot, one that I need to practice.” He hit a good 50-yard is the same. If humans really were as rational as most 20th-century wedge, and we moved on. economists assumed them to be, male golfers would find the green “Golf would be a different game if nobody had ever thought of tees all by themselves. But, for a variety of reasons, not least among the idea of par,” he said a little later. “There are very few 260-yard them inertia, people routinely make self-defeating decisions, or holes, for example. Why not? For a lot of golfers, that would be non-decisions, even if they’ve been offered obviously sensible perfectly nice.” He also has doubts about the diameter of the golf hole alternatives. A useful workaround, Thaler has demonstrated, is (which is 4.25 inches only because when players at what’s now Royal to use inertia as a force for good, rather than evil, by requiring Musselburgh Golf Club, in Scotland, asked a local plumber to fashion people to opt out of desirable courses of action, instead of requiring a hole-cutting device for them, in 1829, that was the size of the pipe he them to opt in. The most commonly cited example has to do with had on hand.) “You know how practice greens sometimes have those retirement funds. If a company creates a pension plan and invites tiny holes?” Thaler said. “Imagine that all golf holes were like that. employees to sign up, they often don’t; but if the company enrolls On a course like this one, where the greens are normally super-fast, employees automatically and allows them to drop out, they seldom that would be horrible. Now suppose that holes were an inch bigger do. This approach has sometimes been criticized as paternalistic, than they are now. Would that be better? I don’t or coercive, but if employees who don’t save know—although Fama would like it, because he enough for retirement suffer harm later and says that short putts ruin the game.” regret not having acted intelligently when they Levitt was waiting in the clubhouse when we had the opportunity to do so, what’s the problem? finished the first nine, and he and I chatted while Besides, recklessly ignoring human nature is a s u p p o s e t h at Thaler went to the locker room to put on an outfit form of coercion, too. that Golf Digest’s photographer had picked out for Every year, the Swedish Embassy invites the holes were an inch him in Beverly’s golf shop. Levitt is 50, and, unlike American Nobel Prize winners to a reception bigger than they Thaler, he’s deeply obsessed with the game. When in Washington before they take their trip to he was in his 40s, he entertained the delusion, Stockholm. The festivities traditionally include a are now. wo uld common among middle-age men, that if he found visit to the White House—and this year that posed t h at b e b e t t e r ? the right teacher and worked really hard on his a problem for at least some of the recipients, Thaler handicap, he would have a non-zero chance of among them. But the Swedes, with diplomatic qualifying for the senior tour. (Golfers didn’t invent irrationality, but aplomb, apparently devised a graceful solution: They scheduled the we’ve contributed to the field.) Levitt has gotten over all that now, reception for a day when the problem was going to be in Asia. although he still prefers the range to the golf course—and, of course, After our round, Levitt had to rush off to another appointment, but to the office.

Thaler had time for a drink in Beverly’s grillroom. I asked him how Thaler returned from the locker room, and Levitt told me about winning the Nobel Prize had changed his life. “Well, here at Chicago, an encounter he’d had with the economist Larry Summers, who Nobel Prize winners are a dime a dozen,” he said. “You get a little probably would have won a Nobel Prize by now if he hadn’t forsaken cred for about a week, but then it’s back to, you know, ‘You’re only academic research to become, among other things, the chief as good as your last paper.’ ” One nice thing about Thaler’s prize, for economist of the World Bank, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and those of us who aren’t economists, is that it proves a brilliant person the president of Harvard University. Levitt said, “Summers came up can be brilliant without being incomprehensible to laymen. Thaler’s to me at a conference and said, ‘Steve, I really need your help. There’s two most recent books—Nudge and Misbehaving—are immensely a question that no one else in the world can answer for me.’ ” Levitt, readable, and Thaler is often very funny. Misbehaving is worth its naturally, was deeply flattered—maybe something about interest cover price for the chapter called “The Offices” alone. rates? Summers continued, “My handicap is 18. I want to be a 13. I’m When it was time to leave, I asked him whether there was anything your pupil. Tell me what I need to do.”

I ought to have asked him that I hadn’t known to ask. “Well,” he said, Thaler and I had played the first nine from Beverly’s green tees, “why don’t you ask me whether there’s some golf course I’d really the forward-most set rated for men, from which the course—a par like to play?” So I did, and if you, too, spend much of every winter 71—measures a little more than 6,200 yards. That was plenty long dreaming about the Masters, you can easily guess his answer. “And enough for both of us, and it would be plenty long enough for the vast you can put that in your article,” he said. I told him I would and majority of golfers anywhere in the world. But Levitt told me that, as added that I was pretty sure that someone in a position to grant such far as he can tell, he, Thaler and Fama are the only men at Beverly a wish would read what I’d written and grasp the obvious benefits of who don’t play from either the whites, which are more than 300 spending a couple of days playing golf with a personable, fascinating, yards longer than the greens, or the blues, which are 300 yards longer fun-to-hang-around-with guy who also happens to be a superstar in a than that. “And I know we’re the only ones who play the greens,” he discipline that has seldom been more important than it is right now. continued, “because we never find any broken tees.”

(That’s a nudge.)

90 golfdigest.com | february 2018

PROMOTION

GOLFERS WHO GIVE BACK PRESENTED BY

JULI INKSTER

CLAY WALKER KELLY SLATER

Don’t miss the short film about Golf Digest’s sixth annual Golfers Who Give Back honorees, starring 2018 Arnie Award winners Juli Inkster, Kelly Slater and Clay Walker. Each fiercely committed to their individual causes, these three truly epitomize the charitable spirit so often found in golf.

Playing now on the Golf Digest Video Channel: video.golfdigest.com/watch/golfers-who-give-back-208

M

OST KIDS I KNOW love hitting bunker shots.

They think there’s something really cool about making this big swing, splashing the sand everywhere, and getting the ball to magically float onto the green. When adults step into a bunker, I don’t see the same joy. I do see tension, fear and anxiousness—but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can make bunker play fun again if you follow the technique of a player I coach, PGA Tour pro J.B. Holmes. Like a lot of the game’s best players, J.B. has zero fear of bunker shots. He knows it’s actually one of the easiest shots in golf if you remember these steps. —WITH RON KASPRISKE

1

Evaluate the lie. Is the sand firm or soft? Is the ball sitting up or slightly buried? If it’s sitting up and the sand is soft, skip to step No. 2.

If it’s firm sand and/or the ball is sitting down, address it with the clubface of your wedge square to the target. This will help you dig into the firm sand a little, so the leading edge doesn’t skip off the surface and blade the ball into the lip of the bunker.

2

For decent lies, address the ball with the face open (think more skyward). This allows the club to glide through the sand under the ball. You want 60 percent of your weight supported by your lead foot with your sternum aligned with the ball. Also, check your shoulders. If your lead shoulder is too high, you risk poor contact. You should be able to touch your left knee with your left hand.

3 4

As you take the club back, keep the majority of your weight on your front foot, and leave the clubface open by letting your lead wrist cup a little. As you swing to the top, keep your left shoulder at the height it was at address. Don’t let it rise.

The downswing is simple. Your goal is to make sure the clubhead is moving faster than the handle.

J.B. focuses on that. If the handle is moving faster, you’ll dig too deeply into the sand or shift to your back foot to try to avoid digging. Either way, you probably won’t like the outcome. Instead, keep your weight forward, left shoulder down, head stationary, and let the clubhead pass the hands as it enters the sand about an inch or two behind the ball. Then smile at the result. matt killen, a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, works with Holmes, Justin Thomas, Bud Cauley and Blayne Barber on the PGA Tour.

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HAVE

tk here and some

make bunker shots fun again by matt killen

m y s h ot • 4 8 • j u p i t e r • f l o r i d a

e i f L

F

o CLAUDE III

ON HIS FAMOUS FAMILY, FAMOUS PUPILS AND THE BLANK CANVAS THAT WAS TIGER WOODS WITH GUY YOCOM

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H

o

A

r M n p h oto g r a p h e d by n at h a n i e l w e lc h • 1 1 | 2 7 | 1 7 • t h e h a r m o n h o m e

U.

s.

brooks koepka is not your standard-issue golf nerd. He has all the qualities of an athlete in a pro team sport. He likes having a big team around him. He loves the training, the practice, the physicality of it, the process of getting better.

When he plays poorly, he’s like a baseball player who maybe just struck out three times—he doesn’t sulk or dwell on it, he just wants to get in the batting cage with his coach and fix it.

He’s not passionate about golf history and doesn’t watch it much on TV. He loves golf simply because it feeds his desire to

there, play your game. Be you.”

Man, was he ever him. You saw the power, the freedom, the fearlessness. He birdied the first two holes. On the back nine, he grabbed the golf course by the throat, made three birdies coming in to win by four.

I was so proud of him and took a lot of satisfaction knowing that my message to him was the right message. ●●●

we call it “the video.” It’s a

VHS tape, time-stamped Aug. 23, 1993, of the 17-year-old Tiger Woods taking his first-ever lesson from my dad. Tiger and his father, Earl, had driven up to Lochinvar Golf Club in Houston

u.s. open at pinehurst, 2014.

During practice rounds, players are asking Dustin Johnson his strategy on the par 4s and 5s.

On every tee they ask, “What are you going to do here?” His answer was always the same: “Sending driver,” he said, meaning he’s just going to bash driver everywhere. Today it’s part of the vernacular among my guys and my dad’s. Ask Rickie Fowler, Jimmy Walker or even their caddies what they’re going to do on a hole, and they say to each other, “Send, bro, send. Gonna send it.” It’s an inside joke. They all know that nobody sends it like Dustin. ●●●

for everything sport psychologists recommend but what nobody is really able to do.

After he three-putted the last hole at the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay and lost to Jordan Spieth, we all knew he’d be crushed. An hour later, I was in the garage of his rental house, loading up the cars to go to the airport. Dustin came out, looked at me and smiled.

“I played so [bleeping] good today,” he said. And that was it.

He never mentioned it again, at least not to me. ●●●

i’ve never heard dustin say

a bad word about anybody.

That’s rare for anybody. In fact, it’s the opposite. Players can get gossipy and bad-mouth each other; it’s no different than any workplace. When

say, a really slow player, Dustin always interrupts to say, “Ah, I think he’s a good guy,” or, “He isn’t that bad.” It’s impossible to make his mind drift to unproductive or unhappy places. For him to shrug off what happened at Chambers Bay and win the U.S. Open at Oakmont the next year, especially with the ruling that happened during the last round, combined with the episode at the [2010] Whistling Straits PGA, I think was one of the most amazing psychological feats in golf history.

96 golfdigest.com | february 2018

moment came with Brooks.

He began the final round of the U.S. Open at Erin Hills one shot out of the lead. Brooks might not be a golf nerd, but he knew this could be the defining moment of his career. In a moment like that the tendency is to play the way others think you’re supposed to play—tactical and a little guarded. That is not the way you want Brooks Koepka to play golf. Just before he left the putting green to go to the first tee, I locked him in. I told him, “Today you are going to be aggressive. Whatever happens out

Watching Tiger, my dad was quiet for a long time. Tiger was hitting 8-irons so unbelievably high and far, I think my dad had trouble picking up what his clubhead was doing through impact. It was just a blur. You never see Butch Harmon puzzled, so this was a first. When Tiger switched to driver, forget it. More silence from my dad, followed by a very good question: “What’s your philosophy when you swing that club?” ●●●

tiger said, “I know I hit it farther than everybody, but

painting: florilegius/getty images • frame: dea/j.m. zuber/getty images

dustin is the poster child

●●●

after the lesson broke up, we didn’t know if my dad would become Tiger’s teacher. On the drive home he was quiet again, lost in thought. I said, “So what do you think?” He said, “I don’t know if I’ll get the chance, but if I could work with that kid, I’ll make him the greatest player the world has ever seen.” One thing that impressed him was, he would tell Tiger to hit a shot he knew he’d have trouble hitting. Tiger would say, “I can’t hit that one, but if you show me how, I can do it.” My dad would give him a thought and a feel, and bang, Tiger would hit it. No matter what it was, he brought it off, first try, on command.

Tiger was the kind of blank canvas that comes along once in a lifetime, and my dad knew it. ●●●

tiger had calluses on the

insides of his forearms. Think about that. He rotated his hands and arms so aggressively through impact, kept his forearms so close together, that they rubbed against each other to the point he’d built up extra layers of skin. Over time, the skin there would crack and bleed. It’s one of a hundred ways Tiger was unique. ●●●

after tiger and my dad

decided to work together, Tiger would stay at our house in Houston. I was charged with looking after him. I picked him up at the airport. He never had any money, and I made sure he got out to McDonald’s to eat.

I had to wake him up in the mornings, which wasn’t easy.

I’d wake him up, go shower, then wake him up again. It was long before he had Lasik surgery, and he had really thick glasses. I re-

member him fumbling around on the nightstand for them when he finally did get up. ●●●

tiger was just normal, an average kid. There have been times since when he seems almost unrecognizable from the Tiger we knew in his college years and early years as a pro.

After we moved to Las Vegas, Tiger would practice during the day, then we’d all go out to dinner at night. He was inquisitive, approachable and people didn’t bother him too much. He initiated conversations, if you can imagine that. It was kind of a normal existence. But it changed, especially after he left my dad. His circle got smaller, and he became more isolated.

A bubble formed. One of his biggest strengths was the intimidation factor, and he put that part into overdrive. He adopted kind of a Darth Vader persona, always a procession in front of him and security everywhere.

Everything but the “Star Wars” music. Darth Vader is not about having fun, and the fun was gone. I started feeling when I approached him that Steve Williams might tell me to back off, which, considering how long I’d known Tiger, seemed very strange. The isolated nature of his life made me feel sorry for him. Tiger is a cautionary tale about fame and success. At the Presidents Cup last year, there were signs he’s coming out the other side, and it’s wonderful to see. ●●●

during the 2013 Open Cham-

but I’m getting better, and in a way it doesn’t matter. When I’m painting, I’m not worrying about my players, teaching and the business of golf. When I come in from the garage, I’m a new man. ●●●

when jordan spieth won the

British Open, he had six players waiting for him to finish so they could fly back to the States together. Can you imagine Tiger, Vijay, Ernie and Phil waiting for one of the others to finish so they could do that? The relationships between Dustin, Jordan, Justin, Rickie and Brooks are much friendlier, and although they might lack a certain Darth Vader-versus-Luke Skywalker drama, it’s healthier. The Europeans figured out years ago that being friends was a better way to go, especially when it came to the Ryder Cup. Over the next 10 years you’re going to see some amazing Ryder Cup performances from the Americans. Europe is facing a real problem because they’ll be playing against guys who from top to bottom truly have each other’s backs.

‘‘

pionship at Muirfield, a guy asked me what my hobbies were. I said, “I like to work out.”

He laughed and said, “Exercise isn’t a hobby.” On the flight home, his comment bothered me, because it’s true. All I did when I wasn’t at home with my wife, Lisa, and our 14-year-old daughter, was work. This needed to change. I’d taken some art-history classes in college and loved them. So I went to a local craft store, bought some canvases and oils, set up a studio in the garage, and started painting. Make no mistake, as an artist I’m a 20-handicapper,

WE CALL IT ‘THE VIDEO.’ . . . WHAT TIGER DID THAT DAY WAS HISTORIC, THE FIRST VIEW OF WHAT HE COULD DO.

imagine alabama football

coach Nick Saban making a rule stating you can’t play there if you have dreadlocks or tattoos.

He could do it, but then who would he get to play for him?

The younger generation doesn’t respond well to the old-school, father-like, do-as-I-say leadership style. That was the lesson we’ve learned from some of the past Ryder Cup captaincies.

When you enforce a regimented rule on the young guys—say, demanding they play an 18-hole practice round—it goes against a looser trend toward guys wanting to play only nine holes.

Guys start exchanging the same I don’t want to play 18 holes looks, and next thing you know, they checked out mentally. Today’s players can be pointed in a direction, and they’ll go there with all the energy and commitment you could ask for, but they want to go there in their own way. ●●●

will we ever see another Tiger Woods? No. He was a complete outlier. When you look at the nature of his dominance—the insanely high percentage of cuts made, his stroke averages, his winning percentages, the majors and all the incredible metrics over a 20-year period— it’s quite clear that no one’s ever going to do what he did.

Remember the excitement over Rory McIlroy, who at his best is the closest we’ve seen to Tiger?

Rory is turning 29 [in May], and in retrospect, the idea he could dominate like Tiger did when there are players like Dustin, Jordan, Jason and Justin on the scene doesn’t seem fair to him. ●●●

‘‘

not always very straight. I just hit it and go find it.” It didn’t seem like a great philosophy at the time, but Tiger was exactly the prototype of what the best teachers are looking for now.

Give me 15 juniors, and I’ll take the one who can’t hit the range, he’s so crooked, but who has speed and strength to burn.

You can teach a player to hit it straight and to repeat. You can’t teach speed.

but it doesn’t mean there

won’t be outliers in certain ways. Take Jordan Spieth. The player going down the stretch with Jordan has to know he’s up against it, because he’s his own intimidation factor. He’s not a freak athlete who will beat you up with the driver, and he won’t wear you out with his irons. He beats you by being Jordan, a personable kid from Dallas who won’t go away and gives off this sense of the inevitable, a feeling he’s going to pull off a huge shot

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●●●

‘‘

i’ve watched dustin johnson

spend three hours a day in the gym, seven days a week. When he’s out on tour, there are no days off. I’ve watched him pay the price. To want to roll back equipment and put him and guys like him in a box, so they’re confined to old benchmarks, drives me nuts. Is there another sport as determined to go backward as golf? Dustin is almost a physical freak to begin with, 6-4 and unbelievably strong and coordinated. When he hits a 9-iron 185, the TV commentators usually react with a laugh and an incredulous tone, as if it’s the equipment more than the unbelievable clubhead speed and technical precision.

It’s just wrong.

I TEACH A LOT OF SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS PEOPLE. . . . IF THEY RAN THEIR COMPANIES THE WAY THEY RUN THEIR GOLF GAMES, THEY’D GO OUT OF BUSINESS.

●●●

president obama has come by the Floridian for lessons a couple of times. He’s left-handed, aims a mile to the left with his shoulders way open, then comes way over the top. I told him he needed to aim his shoulders more to the left, and he said, “Claude, I’m rarely told I need to aim more left.” He’s curious, asks a lot of questions. He said that when he came into office he had to make a choice whether to practice or play, that he wouldn’t have time to do both. He’s one of those semi-serious golfers who alternates between making jokes about his bad shots and being disgusted by them. ●●●

i didn’t play golf growing up. My dad’s father was Claude Harmon, the 1948 Masters champion. He was a legendary figure in golf, as a player and club pro. He was loved and respected by outsiders. He was a convivial man and truly great golfer. But he was hard on my dad and uncles, Craig, Dick and Billy. The approaches with each varied a little, but in general he was a product of his time and took an old-school, tough-love, no-praise approach. Ultimately it got results, but it wasn’t always pleasant for them. My

tells you to go out 10 yards and turn to the right, what do you do?”

I answered him. He then did a similar thing with each of the four sports I played, asking what I did specifically when the coach told me to do something.

He said, “Here’s the problem: I’ve been telling you what to do for 10 minutes, and you haven’t done a thing I’ve told you yet. My synopsis is, you’ve got no talent, and I’m going to lunch.” With that, he put the cart in reverse and left. After a few minutes of standing there, I walked back to the clubhouse and, in tears, told my dad what had happened.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve gone through that my whole life.”

‘‘

at the worst possible time for you. With Jordan, you’re playing against more than a great golf game.

dad in particular had a complicated relationship with him. He loved him, feared him, sought approval that didn’t come and rebelled against him for a while. It got better toward the end, but I think the experience was so hard on my father that he didn’t want to push golf on me or even make an effort to put it in front of me. ●●●

one day when i was 13, my dad

arranged for my grandfather to give me a golf lesson. At the time I didn’t really play golf— I preferred other sports—but who wouldn’t jump at a lesson from Claude Harmon? So I got warmed up on the range at Lochinvar, and up he drove in a cart. He parked it directly across from me, not three feet away, and said, “Let’s see what you got.” His tone made me nervous. I began hitting, and for some reason started shanking. He gave me a couple of quick pointers, but after a few more shanks, he stopped me.

“Do you play other sports?” he asked.

“Yes sir, football,” I said.

“Wide receiver.”

He asked, “When the coach

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●●●

it’s just the way Harmons are with each other. In my early years working for my dad at the Butch Harmon School of Golf in Las Vegas, I approached him to ask for some time off.

I began with, “I’ve been working really hard, and . . . ” He cut me off and said, “Get this straight right now: I hired you to work hard. If you wait around for me to thank you for working hard, you’re going to wait forever.” Man, did that make an impression. Some years later, I was running the Butch Harmon School of Golf in Dubai.

One of our young teachers, Justin Parsons, told me I’d been pretty hard on him, that I expected too much and he needed time off to see his family. When he added, “I’ve been working really hard, and . . . ” I went into full Harmon mode, telling him word for word what my dad had told me. Today, Justin is running the Dubai school. And it cracks me up how, three times a year, he calls me to complain about the young guys always wanting time off. ●●●

back to claude harmon sr.

In 1987, I went to my first Masters. I was 17, and the game still didn’t appeal to me, in large part because of the family deal. He was still this scary guy to me, but he took me everywhere he went throughout the week. He’d

turn to make sure I was with him. Into the Champions Locker Room and onto the veranda.

All the legends—Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Seve Ballesteros— treated him with this incredible respect and affection. It really hit me what this Harmon thing was all about. He lived only another two years. I really wish he were still around, if only to see what became of his grandson who had the shanks. ●●●

i never did become a good

player, although early on I did try. It’s led to some skeptical looks. But I’ve always felt there are ways it has worked to my advantage. For one, I truly know how hard golf is. I can relate to the struggles. I never ask a player to perform some crazy-difficult movement that teachers who are good players sometimes assume anyone should be able to do. I don’t try to make them swing like I do, which would be a disaster.

My job is to teach golf, not play it, and I spent a lot of years studying closely as the best teacher in the world—Butch Harmon—taught Greg Norman, Tiger Woods, Steve Elkington, Davis Love III and so many others. ●●●

one thing i can do, though, is hit the ball equally well rightand left-handed. I learned this from Mac O’Grady when I spent a lot of time with him 20 years ago. He said learning from the other side would give me a big advantage as a teacher because it would remind me how hard the game is and show me what the pupil is going through. ●●●

one of the breakthroughs

Dustin made last year was improving his game from 80 yards and in. I wish I could take more credit for it. He owns a TrackMan, and all I did was tell him to focus on hitting them precise distances and forget the other stuff. Dustin was making more of a fade swing with his longer clubs anyway, which with the wedges translates into a slightly steeper angle of attack, better contact and dis-

tance control. Over the winter he became probably the best wedge player in the game, and he did it by himself. After making the TrackMan suggestion, I just got out of his way. ●●●

my dad doesn’t use TrackMan much, not because he’s stubborn but because he simply doesn’t need it. He’s no technophobe; he was one of the very first, along with Carl Welty, to use video. My dad’s eyes perform for him what TrackMan performs for everyone else. Beyond the precision of what he sees with ball flight, club and body movements, he has a genius for addressing the root of any swing problem. It’s especially true at the highest competitive level, where the adjustments are very small.

Bottom line, my dad is as great at teaching as Tiger was at playing. ●●●

i teach a lot of successful

business people. Golf is a game that confuses a lot of smart people, and often I’ve thought that if they ran their companies the way they run their golf games, they’d go out of business. No plan or clear picture of what they’re trying to do. Bad fundamentals. Trying a bunch of different strategies, hoping one sticks. When a 15-handicapper shoots 78, they’re more confused than if they shot 92. They have no idea how they did it. I tell them, “Golf-wise, let’s get your ‘company’ to where it isn’t losing money. Let’s stabilize things, take stock. Then we’ll tackle one thing at a time.” ●●●

increasingly it’s about the relationship. My dad has always

been the best at that. When Tiger and my dad broke up in 2002, I was secretly furious at both of them. My dad always knew far more about Tiger’s life than he knew about mine, which made me envious of Tiger and resentful of my dad.

Years before they split, I remember my dad getting me up to date on the girls Tiger was dating and thinking, He doesn’t even know if I have a girlfriend, let alone know her name. It hurt.

One day, after they split, they walked past each other without either guy acknowledging the other. I thought, You guys don’t know how good you had it. It made no sense to me. Still doesn’t. ●●●

i’ve heard teachers say,

“Tiger was so good, he would have been great working with anybody.” Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. All we know for sure is, my dad did it, and they didn’t. ●●●

teachers end up getting fired by players for the same reasons they got hired. In the beginning, they love you because you care so much about them, are always around and talk about them a lot. When they let you go, it’s because you’re after them to practice more, hover over them and talk too much. ●●●

the overwhelming reason

golfers don’t improve is obsession with the direction the ball goes. Amateurs should concentrate more just on solid contact, doing whatever it takes to hit the ball solidly. If you can improve your percentage of times you find the center of the clubface, the direction issue improves immediately.

most golfers slice. It’s always been that way and always will be. My approach is not to turn that slice into a draw. The out-to-in path that causes a slice isn’t such a bad thing with modern clubs and a ball that spins less. My goal is to make the out-to-in path less extreme, take it from 12 degrees to only 6 degrees. Turn the slice into a slight fade, and you can play darned good golf. ●●●

i’m 48, so I’ve been around a

while now. In that time, there have been three players that had an aura about them you could feel, the kind that would bring any room they entered to a standstill. One was Tiger. The second was Greg, who oozed self-confidence and a sense of being comfortable in his skin.

The most amazing was Seve Ballesteros. I remember him arriving at a tournament one time.

He was wearing a pressed white shirt with a royal-blue sweater draped around his shoulders.

Gray slacks, black shined shoes and gold wristwatch. As he got out of the car, the people gathered let out this collective “Ooh.” I have to admit, it gave me chills. ●●●

i’ve always admired Ernie Els for the way he handled having to go through the prime of his career playing against Tiger Woods. At the 2011 PGA Championship at Atlanta, Tiger had been struggling. I was on the range with Ernie early in the week, and a young player said flippantly to another, “I guess Tiger won’t be a factor this week.” Ernie turned to me, seething. He whispered so only I could hear, “They have no idea.” He’d spent the past 15 years never experiencing a week

when Tiger wasn’t a factor in a major, which was kind of a curse. The young guys didn’t know how good they had it, not having to worry about getting their butts kicked by him.

Ernie never complained, never showed any bitterness, always spoke highly of Tiger. The ultimate in class and dignity. ●●●

when brooks was on the 15th hole Sunday at Erin Hills and it became apparent he was going to win, I started crying. See, my grandfather was Ben Hogan’s best friend. My dad taught Tiger Woods. My uncle Craig taught Jeff Sluman, my uncle Billy helped Jay Haas and my uncle Dick taught Fred Couples.

I felt I had finally added my personal stitch to that Harmon quilt. I felt worthy of wearing the Harmon family uniform, which early on was maybe too big for me. ●●●

when my uncle dick passed away in 2006, it was a tough loss for me. I’d always gravitated toward him, probably because his family, his relationship with his four kids was so stable. At the funeral, my uncle Billy gave the eulogy. He said, “I know Dickie is in heaven, and that when he walked in he first gave our mom a big hug. Then he went over to my father and they hugged, too.” Everyone in the church was weeping, and Billy let the beauty of that scene sink in for a minute, then he said, “And as Dickie and my father came out of the embrace, my dad said, ‘By the way, how did Butch mess up that Tiger deal?’ ” It brought the house down, people laughing and crying at the same time. A perfect Harmon ending.

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february 2018 | golfdigest.com

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scrambles. Careful not to sabotage your tee-off order and shot-selection strategies by overdoing it at the beverage cart.

TAURUS

IT’S IN THE STARS YOUR 2018 GOLF HOROSCOPE

sistency, you can have a game plan and stick to it.

But hit, already. This isn’t the U.S. Open, bub.

CANCER

AQUARIUS

6/21-7/22

VIRGO

8/23-9/22

SCORPIO

10/23-11/21

1/20-2/18

4/20-5/20

▶ Steady and patient, you refuse to be goaded by sucker flags, which leads to wins. But trivial complications, like a rain delay or playing through, upend your tempo. Never check your email on the course.

▶ You’re a quiet competitor, your heart set not so much in the winning but the trying. Though you’re intensely loyal to those in your golf life, extending this emotion to inanimate objects is sick. It’s time to buy new golf shoes.

GEMINI

LEO

5/21-6/20

▶ You know how to enjoy life’s riches. Others leave the course smiling in no small part because of you.

Yet your wells of charm have a bottom. Try offering to cover the guest fee once in a while.

LIBRA

9/23-10/22

7/23-8/22

▶ Your emotions are visible to all, and there’s genius in how you harness blunt honesty to make a complex game simpler. But you need to apologize to the group in front right now.

100 golfdigest.com | february 2018

▶ If only everyone repaired divots and pitch marks as lovingly. But your attention to detail leads to shortsighted thinking. It’s the numbers on the scorecard, not the launch monitor, that matter.

▶ Your harmonious nature means inter-foursome scuffles seldom escalate under your watch.

But people are noticing how you play both sides.

Ditching your regular game for a better offer last Saturday wasn’t cool.

▶ You’re a shrewd negotiator of handicap strokes. Are your personal relationships being affected by this successat-all-costs attitude?

Notice the tepis effort others give looking for your lost balls.

SAGITTARIUS

▶ Regardless of skill level, you understand that a central essence of golf is to give back.

Try directing this more toward charities and children, and less to the pond on 18.

PISCES

2/19-3/20

11/22-12/21

▶ Lucky breaks—an opponent three-putting, a kind cartpath bounce, that ranger you don’t like moving to The Villages— are coming your way.

Don’t squander them by betting like a wimp.

▶ You know when your partner needs a kind word and when to keep quiet. This intuition for human emotion is wasted at work. Is this the year you quit the desk job, start caddieing and reassess?

Illustration by Christian Northeast

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