Table of Contents
Featured Stories 2.........................................................................................................................................How To Break 100 4......................................................................................................Exclusive Interview With Tiger Woods 6........................................................................................................Hot List: Best Drivers Drivers of 2022 8.....................................................................................................Brooks Koepka officially Joins LIV Golf 10..............................................................................................................................Inside Look at LIV Golf
How to Break 100 By Jaime Diaz
Power stood out as the main separator at last year’s Golf Digest U.S. Open Challenge, the event put on by Golf Digest, the USGA and NBC Sports at Torrey Pines. That’ll be the case when Michael Jordan and two other celebrities -- and maybe you -- take on Bethpage Black in the ‘09 Challenge. At Torrey Pines, where the setup required extreme length, the amateurs with more clubhead speed had a distinct advantage. A near-scratch player with tour-level swing speed, Tony Romo bit off huge chunks with drives of 290 yards and more.
From the rough, Romo could swing fast enough to significantly advance the ball. His power made Torrey manageable, and his score of 84 was the result of mediocre chipping and putting. By contrast, the much slower-swinging John Atkinson had to play close to mistake-free golf just to make bogeys. For the first few holes he did, keeping the ball in the fairway and reaching some par 4s in three shots. But when his shots began to stray, Atkinson had difficulties with the rough.
An 11-handicapper at Torrey, Atkinson shot 114. __I use a variety of weighted swing aids, some of which measure swing speed. I plant several of them around my house, and when I see one, I usually take a few rips. Using them has made me stronger, more flexible, improved my timing and helped me swing the club faster. Try some yourself. -- Vijay Singh
Tiger Woods Find a green surrounded by thick stuff, and spend a bunch of time hitting as many different shots as you can. Pay close attention to how the ball reacts and how the club goes through the grass. You’ll start to understand what’s possible, which also means accepting that some of these shots are basically impossible. -- Fred Couples
It’s helpful to think of the technique from rough around the green as similar to an explosion from sand. It’s important to keep the blade open so it goes through the grass without grabbing. You’ve got to swing harder than you think, but most of the force is to get the ball up, not shooting forward. -- Hunter Mahan
Of the four players, Matt Lauer played the most erratic golf. Like Justin Timberlake -- who shot 98 -- Lauer is a good athlete with clubhead speed in the 100 mile-per-hour range, which allowed him to reach greens in regulation and recover from the rough. Subtract the nervousness that afflicted him early, and he would have scored much lower than the 100 he shot.
Of the four players, Matt Lauer played the most erratic golf. Like Justin Timberlake -- who shot 98 -- Lauer is a good athlete with clubhead speed in the 100 mile-per-hour range, which allowed him to reach greens in regulation and recover from the rough. Subtract the nervousness that afflicted him early, and he would have scored much lower than the 100 he shot.
Vijay Singh
Rough at Torrey Pines Golf Course
Finesse from deep rough around the greens is the other skill amateurs must have to avoid big scores on a U.S. Open setup. Because even the pros have to concede a loss of precise control when the grass is high and the greens are hard, it’s easy for an amateur who lacks proper technique to repeatedly leave the ball in the rough or send it skittering across the green. Last year, Justin Timberlake exhibited surprisingly sophisticated skills, learned no doubt from his caddie and coach, Butch Harmon, whose father, Claude, was a short-game master.
Timberlake’s greenside shots popped up nicely and landed softly, usually stopping within 20 feet of the hole. By contrast, Matt Lauer’s strong grip made it hard for him to keep the blade of his wedge open long enough to properly cut under the ball. Several of his greenside shots came out hot and running or were smothered short of the putting surface, with the result a double bogey or worse. Even Tony Romo seemed a little lost around Torrey’s greens. Romo showed good technique, but he lacked the confidence to make the aggressive through-swing that distinguishes the short recoveries from high grass of Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods. The surest way to double and triple bogeys is double and triple chipping. It happens because a lot of middle-handicappers have no concept of how wedges work -- how to open the face, use the bounce and consistently produce spin.
15th Hole at Torrey Pines Golf Course
Tiger’s Road Back
Exclusive: Tiger Woods discusses golf future in first in-depth interview since car accident. In a 30-minute interview with Golf Digest, Tiger Woods opens up about a painful year, a possible return to golf, and son Charlie’s progress as a player. By Dan Rapaport
In his first in-depth interview since his February car accident, an upbeat Tiger Woods shed light on his traumatic injuries, recovery and what the future might hold. “I think something that is realistic is playing the tour one day— never full time, ever again—but pick and choose, just like Mr. [Ben] Hogan did. Pick and choose a few events a year and you play around that,” Woods said during a Zoom interview with Golf Digest’s Henni Koyack from his South Florida home. “You practice around that, and you gear yourself up for that. I think that’s how I’m going to have to play it from now on. It’s an unfortunate reality, but it’s my reality.
And I understand it, and I accept it.” “I don’t have to compete and play against the best players in the world to have a great life. After my back fusion, I had to climb Mt. Everest one more time. I had to do it, and I did. This time around, I don’t think I’ll have the body to climb Mt. Everest, and that’s OK. I can still participate in the game of golf. I can still, if my leg gets OK, I can still click off a tournament here or there. But as far as climbing the mountain again and getting all the way to the top, I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation of me.”
Woods suffered comminuted open fractures to both the tibia and the fibula in his right leg after losing control of his vehicle outside of Los Angeles on Feb. 23. He was rushed to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and subsequently transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he spent three weeks and faced the possibility of amputation. “There was a point in time when, I wouldn’t say it was 50/50, but it was damn near there if I was going to walk out of that hospital with one leg. Once I [kept it], I wanted to test and see if I still had my hands. So even in the hospital, I would have [girlfriend] Erica [Herman] and [friend] Rob [McNamara] throw me something. Throw me anything.” One of the first memories Woods has after the accident is asking for a golf club to toy around with while in his hospital bed. Such began a rehabilitation process that included three months in a hospital-type bed in his home. Next, a wheelchair. He then progressed to crutches, which allowed him to regain independence and move around at his own will. “Adding that part into my day-to-day life was so rewarding because I’d been stuck in a house. Granted, it’s a pretty nice house I’ve built for myself, but I hadn’t been able to do the one thing I love to do: I love to go outside and just be outside. Sometimes I just crutch and lay on the grass for an hour because I want to be outside.”
Woods said the prospect of playing with his 12-year-old son has motivated him greatly throughout the process. Some of the first post-accident images that surfaced were of Woods watching Charlie at tournaments around Florida. “I went to golf tournaments to watch him play, and I’m looking at some of these scores he’s shooting and I said, How the hell are you shooting such high scores? I gotta go check this out,” he told Koyack. “So I’d watch him play and he’s going along great, he has one bad hole, he loses his temper, his temper carries him over to another shot and another shot and it compounds itself. I said, ‘Son, I don’t care how mad you get. Your head could blow off for all I care just as long as you’re 100 percent committed to the next shot. That’s all that matters.
Woods’ rehabilitation has been a frustrating up-and-down ride— he says he actually expected to progress faster than he did—and, in the dark days shortly after the accident, he says he reverted to a mentality he learned from his father. “This is where dad’s teaching came into play being in the military and being SF [special forces]. Any SF operator can attest to this— you don’t know how long a firefight is gonna take. It could last five seconds or five hours and some could go on for days at a time. With that in mind, you don’t know when the end is so that’s the hard part. How do you get through that? One of my dad’s ways of getting through that was live meal-to-meal. … I just shortened up the windows of, Oh, this is gonna be nine months of hell, to It’s just two or three hours. If I can repeat these two to three hours at a time. Next thing you know it adds up, it accumulates into weeks months and to a point where here I am talking to you and walking into a room.” Once he was cleared to practice putting, Woods lengthened the famous Scotty Cameron Newport 2 putter that he used to win 14 of his 15 majors, for he couldn’t bend over the same way he used to. Next came chipping competitions with his son, Charlie, and eventually clearance to begin very limited full-swing practice. Woods posted a video of him flushing a short iron to social media last week, which fueled significant hype and speculation on a return. But Woods suggested he is nowhere near ready to compete on the PGA Tour.
Woods will make his first public appearance since the accident at this week’s Hero World Challenge, a 20-man tournament in the Bahamas that benefits his foundation. That he is upright and present this week is hugely encouraging, but Woods knows there is still a long road ahead. “There’s a lot to look forward to, a lot of hard work to be done— being patient and progressing at a pace that is aggressive but not over the top. Obviously, when I get in the gym and I get flowing and the endorphins get going, I want to go, go, go,” he said.
TAYLORMADE
Hot List: Best Drivers of 2022
STEALTH PLUS/ STEALTH/STEALTH HD TaylorMade engineers believe carbon composite’s lightweight benefits should not be limited to the body. Why not use the material for the face—the heaviest part of the clubhead? The Stealth’s composite face is 40 percent lighter than a titanium face yet 20 percent larger than TaylorMade driver faces from just two years ago.
CALLAWAY
ROGUE ST MAX/MAX LS/ MAX DRAW/◊◊◊LS The biggest driver family in Callaway’s history expands the company’s use of artificial intelligence to produce four distinct faces that don’t merely enhance power but control spin. That’s important because large clubheads can boost ball speed but often fight excessive spin.
PING
G425 MAX/G425 SFT/ G425 LST Ping’s design philosophy since its founding six decades ago has been all about managing mis-hits, and this large, perimeter-weighted driver maintains some of the highest stability on off-center hits in the industry.
SRIXON ZX5/ZX7
Two models offer two takes on ball flight. The ZX7 uses movable weights to produce a lower-spinning, flatter trajectory. The ZX5 helps you launch it higher with a draw. The two are so compatibly designed that Hideki Matsuyama won a tournament with each of them in 2021. It helps to have a super-fast, thin titanium alloy in the face, but what gives these drivers speed
COBRA
LTD X/LTD X MAX/ LTD X LS Cobra’s LTDx line features three models for three ball-flight preferences. The LTDx has an oversize shape to maximize forgiveness. The LTDx Max is large, too, but includes adjustable weights for extra draw bias. The LTDx LS positions all of its discretionary weight forward to produce the least amount of spin of the three.
CLEVELAND
LAUNCHER XL/XL LITE/ XL LITE DRAW With a focus on size, Cleveland’s mission is to make your worst hits go farther and straighter. The club isn’t merely at the volume limit allowed by the rules—almost all drivers can do that. No, this one stretches that volume to occupy the maximum distance from heel to toe and front to back.
Brooks Koepka officially announced as latest LIV Golf signee Four-time major champion Brooks Koepka said that he didn’t agree to join the LIV Golf Invitational Series until after playing in the U.S. Open. BY RYAN LAVNER
A week after a testy exchange with reporters over his future plans, Brooks Koepka was unveiled Wednesday as the latest high-profile signee with the LIV Golf International Series. Koepka will play in the first LIV event in the United States, scheduled for next week, June 30-July 2, at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon. LIV announced Koepka’s signing a few minutes into PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s news conference at the Travelers Championship. Unaware that Koepka had officially bolted for the rival league, Monahan said that he spoke to Koepka on Monday and added that he’s “been a wonderful and tremendous PGA Tour player, and I hope that continues.” Informed later that Koepka had indeed left for LIV, Monahan said that he was “disappointed” but looked forward to having a conversation with Koepka.
The four-time major champion clashed with the media last week at the U.S. Open, where he claimed in a pre-tournament press conference that he hadn’t put much thought into joining the Saudi-backed tour despite persistent rumors over his impending departure. Growing frustrated with the repeated line of questioning, Koepka blamed reporters for casting a “black cloud” over the year’s third major. “I don’t know why you guys keep doing that,” he huffed. “The more legs you give [LIV Golf], the more you keep talking about it.” After putting himself in contention through two rounds at Brookline, Koepka faded badly over the weekend and finished 55th. He has now missed the cut and posted finishes outside the top 50 in three major appearances this year. The Open Championship at St. Andrews begins in 22 days.
The top-ranked player in the world for 47 weeks, Koepka has been slowed by knee, wrist and hip injuries, the latter potentially requiring surgery. Last year he racked up three top-6 major finishes but has failed to add to his major haul since the 2019 PGA. This year he has played 11 events but only the majors over the past two months. When asked last week about his limited slate, he said, “I’ve had a lot of other stuff going on, man.” He cited both his recent wedding and trying to make sure his body was as close to 100% healthy as possible. A part of the Tour’s 16-man Player Advisory Council, Koepka re-committed to the Tour in February, saying that he was “happy to be here” and that the Tour folks are “people I want to do business with.” He was, along with Rory McIlroy, one of the first players to denounce the Saudi league, saying that he didn’t think a tour should be about just 48 players and that “money isn’t going to change my life.” His tone changed last week, however, when asked whether his past support of the Tour was a permanent decision. “There’s been no other option to this point,” Koepka said, “so where else are you going to go?” Speculation had continued to swirl about his future plans, particularly after his younger brother, Chase, appeared in the inaugural LIV event earlier this month outside London. Internet sleuths also noticed Monday night that Koepka wiped any mention of his PGA Tour status on his social-media accounts.
Currently ranked 84th in the FedExCup standings, Koepka has repeatedly stated how much trouble he has ramping up for the non-majors, even famously saying a few years ago that he doesn’t practice before regularseason events. This year’s LIV schedule features seven more events through the end of October, six of those offering 54-hole, no-cut events with $25 million purses. The additions of Koepka and Abraham Ancer, who was announced on Tuesday, give the rival tour eight of the top 50 players in the world, joining Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Bryson DeChambeau, Kevin Na, Patrick Reed and Talor Gooch. “There’s no understating the impact that Brooks Koepka has had on the game of golf in the last five years,” LIV CEO Greg Norman said. “He carries a championship pedigree and record of success as one of the most elite players in the world.” Koepka was still listed in the field for the Travelers but withdrew from the event late Tuesday night. Monahan has already suspended 17 Tour players for competing in the first LIV event without a release, and he has said that any player who tees it up in future LIV events will receive the same punishment.
An inside look at how the money works on LIV Golf By Alan Shipnuck
NORTH PLAINS, Ore. — LIV Golf is about many things: disruption, sportswashing, vengeance (in the case of frontman Greg Norman) and, uh, golf. But more than anything, it’s about cold, hard cash. As with many other issues surrounding this upstart tour, the details around all the money are shadowy. In an effort to get more granular, the Fire Pit Collective spoke with four agents who represent LIV golfers; they were granted anonymity to facilitate candor. “What you have to understand about professional golfers is that they are all whores,” Agent A says. “That is the starting point.” Touched off by a recent Brandel Chamblee tweet in which he said prize money is being applied to signing bonuses, there has been discussion this week about how the money is distributed on the LIV tour. The lower-wattage players in the field at Pumpkin Ridge have to kill what they eat, guaranteed nothing beyond the last-place money of $120,000 in the 48-man field. The more established players who jumped to LIV from the PGA and European tours have received guaranteed money that, contrary to Chamblee’s tweet, is in addition to whatever the player claims from the tournament purses, which this week is $20 million plus an additional $5 million for the concurrent team competition. “The prize fund is the prize fund,” says Pat Perez, who is making his LIV debut this week. “Whatever you win you get to keep. That’s why guys are taking this seriously.” As with team sports, the guaranteed money on LIV varies from player to player, based on age, starpower, current form and projected performance. “Every deal is different,” Ian Poulter says. “There hasn’t been a lot of talk about the money [among players] because that’s personal.” Some of the numbers that have been floated in media reports have been fantastical: $200 million for Phil Mickelson, $150 million for Dustin Johnson, $100 million for Bryson DeChambeau.
“You have to take that with a grain of salt,” Agent B says. “Who does it benefit to inflate those numbers? LIV, obviously, because they’re trying to generate buzz and recruit more players. But it also benefits the agents who are trying to sign new players or nudge other clients to make the jump.” Though it is subject to negotiation, the standard arrangement in professional golf is that players keep all of the money they win on the course but agents take 20 percent of appearance fees and endorsement deals. LIV’s upfront money is treated like the latter, and as a result, the player representatives are getting a fat cut. (Because there is no cut in the events and players are guaranteed a check, some agencies are taking a commission on the first $120,000 of a player’s winnings, treating it as a de facto appearance fee.) One veteran caddie to a top player who has remained loyal to the PGA Tour says in a text message, “I honestly think that one of the backstories to this LIV thing are agents who desperately want the biggest payday of their lives.” A key player in the building of LIV Golf is GSE Worldwide, a New York-based outfit that represents seven players who have made the jump: DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen, Brendan Grace, Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz and Eugenio Chacarra (who just turned pro). On Thursday, Norman told me, “We still have some big announcements coming.” Speculation has centered around another GSE client, Sam Burns. (Andrew Witlieb, the head of the company’s golf division, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.) GSE’s aggressive business model dovetails nicely with LIV’s desperate need to sign players. “We call it pushing paper,” Agent A says. “Those guys buy clients. They go in and say, ‘We’ll guarantee you X millions of dollars in income to sign with us.’ That means if [GSE doesn’t] land some big deals, they get their ass handed to them.”
But Agent C pushes back on the notion that he or any of his colleagues have steered their players to LIV despite the risks of being banned from what was their home tour, to say nothing of the blowback attached to LIV’s funding coming from Saudi Arabia. “Our job is to present all the options to the player, but they always make the final decision,” Agent C says. “If you push a player to do something that is not in his best interests long-term, you’re not going to be in this business very long.” How are players taking care of the rest of their “team” in this era of inflated purses? Most caddies and swing coaches to LIV players are getting the same percentages as always, which means 10 percent of a victory this week is worth a cool $400,000 to the looper. “I’ve heard a little grumbling from the players,” Agent D says, “but there has been so much talk about quote unquote player greed that I think they are sensitive to not squeezing anyone right now. I do expect that at the end of this season some percentages will get adjusted.” Each LIV player is given four plane tickets per tournament: one first class, one premium economy and two economy. He also gets four rooms in a luxury hotel. So caddies who used to have to pay their own way are now traveling for free. With no cut, they are also guaranteed a check every time out, and the 54-hole events reduce the wear and tear on their aching joints. “I have gotten calls from more than a dozen caddies dying for a bag,” Agent D says.
Perez signed with LIV for four years, which will take him to age 50, when he will be eligible for the PGA Tour Champions … if golf’s warring bureaucracies ever make peace. Like other players with relatively modest upfront money, he received his haul in one chunk. Every player with a long-term LIV deal is compelled to play every event on the schedule, even as it potentially expands from eight tournaments this year to 14 in coming years. There are clawback provisions should a player miss a significant amount of time for injury. Interestingly, there is also a “morals clause” by which LIV can cancel a contract and recoup the upfront money. The way LIV has quickly reshaped the landscape of professional golf has led to a lot of reflection on human nature. On Thursday, a couple of miles from Pumpkin Ridge, a dozen 9/11 families participated in a protest of LIV’s links to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. While fans, reporters, political commentators and a few professional golfers wrestle with these larger geopolitical issues, business is booming on the LIV tour. Says Agent A, “I was just talking with the guy doing all the deals for LIV, and he told me he is drinking from a fire hose right now. He is getting bombarded by agents. I think there was some initial apprehension about how this whole thing was going to play out, so a lot of people were on the sidelines, observing. Now the gold rush is on.”
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