r56u d

issue 7

september 2021

BATTLE LIKE ‘I TAKE SATISFACTION FROM BEATING EVERYBODY MORE THAN ANYBODY KNOWS’

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Editor’s Letter

Tee-Time Scarcity by max adler

’ve received only one death threat in my career. As it goes, working in golf involves a lot of pleasant interaction with folks in collared shirts who are happy to meet you.

But back in 2009, leading up to the U.S. Open at Bethpage, I went undercover to investigate a shifty concierge service that let golfers skip the notorious ritual of camping overnight in cars to get on the Black course, now No. 8 on our newest ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses (see page 78). An exorbitant markup above the green fee (I paid $850) included black-car transportation to and from Manhattan. My story detailed how a cadre of locals coordinated to flood the dial-up phone system, booking, canceling, then rebooking tee times for clients in the wee hours of the morning. After it was published, the leader rang my office with some choice words regarding the degree of physical harm he might inflict.

Why dredge this up more than a decade later? Only to illustrate how quaint this scheme was compared to what’s going on elsewhere today. At Singapore Island Country Club in Singapore, police recently investigated the “millions” of booking attempts the private club’s online-reservation system was receiving daily. The suspicion is certain members hired computer programmers to build automated software that scooped up roughly half the tee times in seconds.

Some of these bots were even designed to block other members’ bots.

“There are more golfers than tee times available in Singapore at the moment,” writes our International Editor Ju Kuang Tan via email. “Pre-COVID, golfers without club memberships went to Batam and Bintan [Indonesia] by ferry to play, and they drove across to Johor, Malaysia, to access the many golf courses there. All of this is impossible now [because of travel restrictions].”

Are such shenanigans coming to a

I

2 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

course near you? I’ve set my alarm for midnight more than once this season to reserve a tee time. Contrary to the expectations of many, golf’s surge in popularity during 2020 has experienced no letdown. As we welcome all the new golfers that boost the vitality of our great game, we might also think about protecting the dignity of how we make plans to play with each other.

Bethpage now uses the CAPTCHA feature to block automated usage of its booking system, but bot operators are smart people who are constantly looking to expose a weakness. Most golf courses use old software that would be easy to target. Not to be a fearmonger, but it’s possible “hackers” might replace its primary context in golf someday soon.

Earlier this summer, rumors of a “dark site” where the booking window opened a few crucial minutes earlier circulated at one public course in Connecticut. Accusations of golfers selling tee times was followed by a stern email from the men’s club administrator regarding dubious last-minute changes and general circumvention of the rules and spirit: “So no more, ‘I forgot’ or ‘I didn’t know’ or ‘We made a mistake.’ Be forewarned: The course is going to start cracking down.”

Lakeside Park Club in Virginia is

stemming the tide by simply having members make requests for weekend golf directly to golf-shop staff. Let humans with accountability be the final arbiters of who plays and when.

The club where I play in New York never had tee times until the pandemic.

Large clusters of eager golfers gathering around the first tee jockeying for position used to be part of the social fabric. But, of course, the order now coenforced by the ForeTees app was the safe and correct move. We’ve since shifted back to a hybrid system.

Ballots, lotteries, blocks allocated just for walk-ups—there are a variety of methods courses use to grant golfers a fair and equal opportunity. But some are growing outdated. As technology continues to change the way we live and schedule life, the game is going to have to adjust to ensure the traditional essence of a tee time remains: That is, a sacred covenant between friends that is not to be broken, except for true medical or family emergencies.

Invest all you dare in cryptocurrencies. I’m putting my money in tee times.

max@golfdigest.com Illustration by Madison Ketcham

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GIFTER’S GUIDE TO

golf digest editor-in- chief Jerry Tarde gener al manager Chris Reynolds c r e at i v e editorial director Max Adler editorial director, digital Sam Weinman executive editor Peter Morrice executive producer Christian Iooss managing editors Alan P. Pittman, Ryan Herrington (News) chief designer David Schlow (Magazine) senior editors Ron Kaspriske (Instruction), Tod Leonard (News), Mike Stachura (Equipment) deput y managing editor Stephen Hennessey equipment editor E. Michael Johnson senior writers Alex Myers, Matthew Rudy, Joel Beall staff writer Daniel Rapaport art director Chloe Galkin visuals editor Ben Walton supervising producer Michael Sneeden producers Mason Leverington, Greg Snedeker architecture editor Derek Duncan associate editors Keely Levins, Brittany Romano, Coleman Bentley (The Loop) associate producer Will Fullerton assistant editors Madeline MacClurg, Christopher Powers contributors columnist Jim Nantz chief digital instructor Michael Breed architecture editor emeritus Ron Whitten contributing editors John Barton, Tom Callahan, Bob Carney, David Fay, John Feinstein, Peter Finch, Marty Hackel, John Huggan, Dean Knuth, Mike O’Malley, David Owen, Steve Rushin, Roger Schiffman, Cliff Schrock, Dave Shedloski, John Strege, Brian Wacker, Guy Yocom writer-at-l arge Alan Shipnuck photogr apher-at-l arge Walter Iooss Jr. contributing photogr aphers J.D. Cuban, Dom Furore chief pl aying editor Tiger Woods pl aying editors Phil Mickelson, Francesco Molinari, Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, Bubba Watson, Tom Watson teaching professionals Rob Akins, Todd Anderson, Mark Blackburn, Chuck Cook, Hank Haney, Butch Harmon, Erika Larkin, David Leadbetter, Cameron McCormick, Jim McLean, Renee Powell, Dean Reinmuth, Randy Smith, Rick Smith, Dave Stockton, Josh Zander professional advisors Amy Alcott, Bill Mallon, Gary McCord, Randy Myers, Nick Price, Judy Rankin, Lucius Riccio, Bob Rotella, Ben Shear, Ralph Simpson, Dr. Ara Suppiah, Frank Thomas technical panel Martin Brouillette, Tom Mase, John McPhee, David Lee, Dick Rugge, George Springer e d i t o r i a l o p e r at i o n s senior director, audience development & marketing Meredith Bausback senior manager, audience development & marketing Nicole Rae director, product management Amy Hartford director, business development & partnerships Greg Chatzinoff senior product designer Lauren Occhipinti senior product manager Peter Slavish senior project manager James Alarcon senior producer, digital content Hally Leadbetter producer Gregory Gottfried (Web) social media coordinator Liam Byrne manager, crm Jonathan Jacobino audience development manager Courtney Kyritz audience development manager Patrick Andrews editorial oper ations manager Tanya Schubring production manager Robyn L. Cohen executive assistant to the editor-in- chief Caraline Gonzalez executive assistant Daria Delfino fact checker Roger Beall copy editor Michael Augsdorfer

6 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

d i s c ov e ry g o l f president & gener al manager Alex Kaplan global head of str ategy & content Jerry Tarde senior vice president & gener al manager, golf digest Chris Reynolds senior vice president & gener al manager, golft v Jeff Geels senior vice president, legal Suzanne Underwald senior vice president, communications Fiona McLachlan senior vice president, human resources Kit Herrera vice president, business development & partnerships Agatha Yerbury vice president & editorial director Max Adler vice president & editorial director, digital Sam Weinman vice president & executive editor Peter Morrice vice president, studio & video content Stina Sternberg vice president, product Vishal Parikh senior director, finance Szymon Szczepranski sales & m arketing vice president, commercial Jonny Haworth vice president, marketing Joshua Stern senior sales director Terry Katz sales director, golf digest Pete Nelson sales director (west coast), golf digest Tom Stiles sales director (east coast tr avel), golf digest Rick Hall sales director (west coast tr avel), golf digest Noel Lucky sales director, golft v Charlie Buck senior sales manager, equipment Michael Smyth senior sales manager, golft v Chris Bullen sales manager, golft v Matt Kearsley director, marketing Carley Strauss senior managers, marketing Nicole Riccardi, Kaitlin Schnepf manager, marketing Lizzie Pinkney art director Bill Specht director, creative services Lance Hertzbach director, ad revenue & partnerships Robert Lutin ad revenue & str ategy manager Jono Phillips digital sales pl anner Allison Kelly sales pl anner Grace Wayne executive assistant to the president Lauren Fauci g o l f d i g e s t i n t e r n at i o n a l international editor Ju Kuang Tan editors-in- chief Brad Clifton, Steve Keipert (Australia/New Zealand), Echo Ma (China), Robin Drahonovsky (Czech Republic, Slovakia), Jere Jaakkola, Sami Markkanen (Finland), Lawrence Yip, Polly Wong (Hong Kong), Rishi Narain, Nikhil Narain (India), Linton Walsh (Ireland), E.J. Sohn, Kent Gray (Middle East), T.J. Chen (Taiwan) licensees GolfMagazin (Germany), Golf & Turismo (Italy), Golf & Country (Switzerland) p u b l i s h e d b y d i s c ov e ry i n c . president & chief executive officer David Zaslav chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels president & ceo, discovery net works international Jean-Briac Perrette chief development, distribution & legal officer Bruce Campbell chief people & culture officer Adria Alpert-Romm chief corpor ate oper ations & communications officer David C. Leavy chief u.s. advertising sales officer Jon Steinlauf gener al counsel Savalle Sims president, affiliate distribution Eric Phillips chief technology officer, direct-to - consumer Avi Saxena discovery inc. is a global leader in real-life entertainment, serving a passionate audience of superfans around the world with content that inspires, informs and entertains. discovery golf is a division of Discovery Inc. that includes golf digest and golft v powered by the pga tour. customer service 1-800-PAR-GOLF or golfdigest.com printed in the u.s.a . Golf Digest is a member of the National Golf Foundation

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Printed in the U.S.A. Volume 72, Issue 7. GOLF DIGEST (ISSN 0017176X) is published eight times a year by Discovery Golf, Inc. Principal office: Golf Digest, 230 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y., 10003. Discovery Golf, Inc.: Alex Kaplan, President and GM; Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer.

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Tee Sheet SEPTEMBER 2021 ISSUE 07

▶ into the mystic Sheep Ranch, the seaside sixth course at Oregon’s Bandon Dunes Resort, debuts at No. 15 on our list of America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses.

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

2 Editor’s Letter Hackers. A.I. Cutthroat answers to tee-time scarcity. by max adler

Mind 10 Undercover Caddie Life as a looper on the LPGA Tour.

Features 20 Rock the Float Brooks Koepka sits down (in an inflatable pink flamingo) for his most significant interview yet. by matthew rudy

32 The Ryder Cup File Everything USA captain Steve Stricker must know to whip the Euros.

with joel beall

12 Journeys Scot Robert MacIntyre fears no one.

by daniel rapaport

with john huggan

15 The Other 90 Percent There’s always time for late bloomers to grow.

42 The Ryder Cup Dossier What European captain Padraig Harrington must do to spank the Yanks.

by dr. bob rotella

by john huggan

18 The Next One’s Good Big Momma and the year of big returns.

52 Case of the Mondays The tragedies and triumphs of PGA Tour qualifying rounds.

by jerry tarde

by ryan french

Body 102 Tour Technique Ten putting tips from the Olympic Gold Medalist.

68 Get Your Swing Back Replace quick fixes with long-term solutions. by erika larkin

by xander schauffele

cover: MichaeL SchwartZ • Sheep ranch: ben waLton

105 Golf Digest Schools Five drills to improve consistency. by katie detlefsen dahl

78 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses Has a course you’ve played made the list? by derek duncan

108 What’s in My Bag The clubs of Sam Burns. with e. michael johnson

110 Tee to Green Downhill blues? Here’s how to hit it flush.

88 The Munys Strike Back The revival of these courses is an inspiration for public golf. by derek duncan

112 The Loop College football trips for golfers this fall.

96 Game Recognizes Game David Leadbetter interviews legendary coach Nick Saban.

by coleman bentley

by ron kaspriske

by butch harmon

issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

9

Mind On Tour

Undercover Caddie Life as a Looper on the LPGA Tour ou won’t have job security, and you’re not going to make much money. That’s what a caddie told me when I started looping on the LPGA Tour a decade ago. I thought he was joking or perhaps trying to weed me out. Within a month I realized he was just telling it like it is. ▶ Well, mostly. You can build tenure and make a living as an LPGA Tour caddie. If you do it right, you can have a good time in the process. But, boy, you’d better be ready to hustle. ▶ Let’s start with the dollars. In the last full season in 2019, 14 players made $1 million or more. For context, 112 PGA Tour players earned more than a million that season. Forgive me for laughing at my fellow PGA Tour caddies anytime I hear them talk about financial hardships.

Y

10 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

You don’t have to work for one of those 14 LPGA Tour players to make a living, but it has to be a top-50 performer. That’s roughly the cutoff for players making more than $400,000.

By commission (assuming 8 percent of winnings), that translates to $32,000.

We also have a weekly fee of $1,000 to $1,300, and we work 25 times a year.

You won’t have a deep retirement fund, but if you’re rooming with other caddies and not having steak dinners every night, you can get by.

As for job security, yes, caddies on the LPGA Tour get fired with greater frequency than the caddies on most men’s tours. Some say these firings have coincided with the influx of international players, that they are quicker to get rid of caddies when things go

If you’re drawn to finesse and strategy, this is where it’s at. south. It does happen, but I don’t attribute this to cultural differences. It has to do with parenting.

Many of these players are in their teens and early 20s. No matter what country you’re from, you’re going to lean heavily on your parents at this age. With fewer agents and managers in the women’s game, parents have a larger role. When players are struggling, agents aren’t as quick to blame us, but parents are; clearly their child has never failed until we were paired with them. It’s not unusual for some LPGA players to go through three to five caddies a year.

However, I’ve noticed that when players get to a certain level, they tend to show the fledgling stars the ropes, and part of that education is how to treat caddies. Veterans, and especially league officials, know LPGA Tour players have a reputation of being caddie killers, and they’re doing their best to combat it.

Aside from money and security, there’s also the socialization aspect, or lack of it. Players and caddies on the PGA and European tours don’t hang out as much as you might think, but on the LPGA Tour, that socialization is almost nonexistent.

I’ve been lucky to work for several women with whom I’ve had an offthe-course rapport, but I’m the exception. It makes sense when you think about it: Most caddies are men, ranging in their late 20s to early 50s. The players are women in their late teens to early 30s. Look at your workplace; I’m guessing the cliques are more age-related than you might think.

If you want socialization, look to your fellow caddies. There are two groups—golf nerds and pub crawlers. Those are your two options after work: Find a local course to get some swings in or find the nearest tap, preferably near a TV. Maybe because we’re all in the same situation more so than our PGA Tour colleagues, everyone gets along really well.

Another important point: You must be professional. I was told this unequivocally when I started, and I remember being offended. Did my fellow caddie think I wasn’t taking this seriously? I did my homework on the course, got my players’ numbers dialed in. But I quickly found out what he was talking about. The PGA Tour occasionally resembles what you see in your weekend game—dirty jokes, horseplay, “boys-will-be-boys” stuff—but the LPGA Tour is more like an office environment. You have to be on your best behavior. The LPGA prides itself in being a family experience, and that includes us.

So why do I do it? Frankly, being on the LPGA Tour is more enjoyable. There’s pressure but no real spotlight. The women are easier to deal with than PGA Tour players.

The egos aren’t there. We travel to as many cool and exotic places as the men, and the LPGA Tour really does its best to make everyone— players, caddies, officials, fans— feel like part of a family.

The game is also purer. There’s more strategy than just bombing it 350 yards. Don’t get me wrong— these women hit it farther than 98 percent of male amateur golfers.

But if you’re drawn to finesse and strategy, this is where it’s at.

Selfishly, caddies have a bigger role here. Because the players are younger, they’re more willing to listen, more eager to seek help.

I’ve had wins on major tours with men and women, and I swear on my 7-iron, winning with my LPGA player was more fulfilling. You hear “we” a lot now in the professional game, and often that’s overblown.

But on the LPGA Tour, it really is a team. Forget money and security; I want to feel like I’m part of something that matters. Isn’t that ultimately what everyone is chasing?

—with joel beall joel@golfdigest.com Illustration by Juliette Toma

Journeys

Mind

“I played Dustin Johnson next. . . . I knew I had him worried.”

Robert MacIntyre The young Scot who fears no one ’ve heard golfers say they “lived” on their local course when they were kids. Well, I literally did. My childhood home is next to Glencruitten Golf Club in Oban, Scotland. My dad is the greenkeeper and played off a plus-1 handicap at his best.

From my bedroom to the 12th tee is 18 yards. It was easy for me to play a few holes late in the evening when I was growing up.

I

Glencruitten is 4,471 yards, par 62.

But it’s a course you need to know.

There are blind shots up, over and around hills. It’s the reason iron play is my strength. You can be 160 yards out and hitting a 6-iron that has to be high, low, hooked or sliced. You need a great imagination to do well there. ●●●

My parents have fostered young kids for a long time, a home life that has given me perspective. I remember the first time we fostered, a wee boy and girl. When my mother went to give the boy a hug, he backed off, which shocked me. He had obviously been abused. At first, he and his sister would “steal” food from the fridge and store it in their rooms. They clearly hadn’t been fed properly. That opened my eyes. Before that, I used to be stroppy on the course—not much anymore. ●●●

Shinty is a cross between field hockey and legalized violence. It’s a stickand-ball game played mainly on the ground. You can take full swings and use both sides of the stick. It’s a Highland sport played first by the clans. My papa played until he was in his 50s. I stopped at 17 only because I was worried about my hands. If I could earn a living playing shinty, I’m not sure I’d be a golfer. ●●●

From an early age I was good at golf.

In 2013, I won the Scottish Boys Stroke Play Championship and the Scottish Youths Championship. Two years later I won the Scottish Amateur. In 2016, I lost in the final of the British Amateur.

When I was 16, I played in the Dunhill Photograph by John Loomis

Links Championship as an amateur.

That gave me a taste of what tour golf was like, and I realized I wasn’t far short.

I knew then I wanted to be a pro golfer. ●●●

I went to college at McNeese State University in Louisiana. I wasn’t keen at first. Going to America was too big a step for a wee boy from Oban. But coach Austin Burk had watched me play for Scotland in the European Team Championship and liked what he saw. I told him I’d need a full scholarship, which he offered. That made it real. My mum told me to go for it. She said I’d regret it if I didn’t give it a shot. She was right. It was a brilliant experience. ●●●

I was homesick, but my golf was improving. I made friends. I learned how to survive by myself. But after three semesters I felt like I had hit a wall.

I wasn’t getting to play in big enough tournaments. It was nothing personal, but I was chasing something more.

I told the coach I wouldn’t be back after Christmas at home in Scotland. ●●●

The 2017 Walker Cup at Los Angeles Country Club was my last event as an amateur. I played Cameron Champ and couldn’t believe how far he hit it. One drive must have been 100 yards ahead of me. But he lost the hole when I stiffed my approach. I won 6 and 4. We played again a day later and halved our match. ●●●

I shot 79 in my first event as a professional, in a mini-tour event. That night I texted my manager, Iain Stoddart: “We’ve all got to start somewhere.”

That message is still in his phone. The next day I shot two or three under, then I broke the course record in the third round. I ended up missing a playoff by a shot. Then I won the next week. ●●●

At European Tour Q school, I couldn’t keep my driver on the planet. I was slicing everything, so I went with it. The ball was traveling 340 but going only 280. It was the only way I could keep drives in play. I made the cut, which got me status on the Challenge Tour. The next year I finished 12th on the money list to get my European Tour card. ●●●

For a practice round at the 2019 Open at Portrush, I put my name on the starting sheet. When I looked at it again, Ian Poulter had signed up next to me. Playing with someone of Ian’s stature would have placed me outside my comfort zone. It’s fine not being comfortable in the heat of battle, but when it’s something I can control, I want to be comfortable. If I’m not, I’m not going to prepare well. So I pulled out. It was me taking a step back to take two forward.

I ended up finishing sixth. It is still the best week I’ve ever had on a golf course. ●●●

When I beat Kevin Na at the World Match Play, I felt I had arrived. I played Dustin Johnson next. I was up early, but I knew he wasn’t going to go away. It actually gave me a boost when he holed a putt for birdie to win the 17th hole and made a fist-pump. I knew I had him worried. We ended all square. ●●●

Before the Masters, everyone was telling me how much I would love Augusta National. They were right. It’s a course where you have to “see” shots. I grew up doing that. I wasn’t surprised I finished T-12 to earn a Masters spot next year. I could have done better. It’s a place you have to know. Now I do.

—with john huggan issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

13

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The Other 90 Percent

Make the Commitment There’s always time for late-bloomers to grow by dr. bob rotella with roger schiffman Illustration by Santino Calvo

Mind

hen you look at three of the greatest athletes of the modern era—Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady—only one was destined to be dominant in his sport from an early age. Tiger was a child prodigy: He was shooting par at age 5, and he was winning tournaments soon after. He continued to win early and often, capturing three U.S. Junior Championships and three U.S. Amateurs before winning the NCAA individual title at Stanford and then turning professional. He seemed a lock for greatness almost from the beginning because he combined his giftedness with passion and ambition. Now in his 40s, he has amassed 15 major championships and 82 PGA Tour victories.

W

issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

15

Mind The Other 90 Percent

Jordan didn’t make the varsity basketball team as a sophomore, then he started getting good his junior year in high school. Coach Dean Smith was criticized for taking a chance on Michael and offering him a scholarship at the University of North Carolina, where he became a star.

While playing for UNC, he made a shot that ended up being the deciding basket in an NCAA Championship game. MJ said that really lit his fire and helped him realize he could become great. And he truly dominated the NBA for more than 10 years.

Then you have Brady. Unheralded in high school, he was barely decent enough to get to the University of Michigan, where he hardly got any field time the first two years. He improved enough in his last two seasons to catch the attention of the pro scouts, but even so, Brady was only the 199th pick in the NFL draft. Six other quarterbacks were drafted before he was that year, not exactly something to cheer about. His first season with the New England Patriots was nothing special, either—the team finished 5-11. He had to be patient, and he had to have faith that his day would come. It finally did, but it took a while. Things started to fall into place for Brady during the next season. It was a grueling year with five losses, but the Pats pulled it together in the playoffs and managed to make it to the Super Bowl. There, Brady didn’t have his best game against the St. Louis Rams, but it was good enough. New England squeaked out a win, 20-17, on a 48-yard field goal on the final play of the game, and the victory launched an amazing career for

Brady. During the next 18 years he went on to play in nine more Super Bowls and collected a total of seven Super Bowl rings.

Whether you are a late bloomer or a late starter, you would do well to keep Brady’s story in mind, as well as Jordan’s.

It is possible to get really good at golf, or reach whatever goals you’ve set in the game, at just about any age—if you put your mind and soul into it. Others certainly have done it. One of the great qualities about golf is that it’s not necessarily a young person’s game. It’s truly a game for all ages.

There are numerous examples of top golfers who took a very long time to get to the top.

Many late starters are people who have been successful in other endeavors. Whether you are getting into golf later in life or haven’t had much success so far, you are ready to make a major commitment now. You need to sustain a commitment. Ideally, your practice will be efficient, and you’ll put the most time and energy into the parts of your game that are the most important to lowering your score. For many, that means concentrating on your short game and spending quality time rehearsing all the short shots on and around the green—pitches, chips, bunker shots and, of course, putting.

Legendary player Paul Runyan understood the importance of mastering all the shots around the green and wrote a book about it. One of his two PGA Championship victories came against Sam Snead, who was outdriving him by 50 yards in their 36-hole match-play final in 1938. I worked with Paul for years in the

It’s possible to get really good at golf at almost any age.

Golf Digest Schools. He had big dreams well into his 90s and amazingly played in the Par-3 Contest at the Masters at 91! “Ninety-nine percent of the time, I beat my age,” he once said when he was in his 90s.

“I can still have a terrible game and beat my age.”

According to Golf Digest, Bob Charles holds the record for most strokes under one’s age in a tournament. He shot 66 at age 76 in a European senior tour event. The record for a non-tour event is held

by John Powell. At 86, Powell shot 64—22 strokes better than his age—in a Southern California PGA section senior tournament in 2017.

Walter Morgan is the youngest player on record to shoot his age in a tournament. He shot a 60 at age 61 on the Champions Tour.

These feats point to the fact that you can always keep aspiring to lofty goals in golf. Take the story of Larry Nelson. The three-time major champion and Ryder Cup star didn’t even touch a golf club until he was 21. He was busy playing other sports in high school, going to college and serving in the Vietnam War. He started playing golf after returning to his native Georgia from Vietnam. While finishing up classes at Kennesaw State, he fell in love with the game—there was a golf course right next to campus.

He never played junior golf, never played collegiate golf, didn’t even play much amateur tournament golf. He taught himself by reading Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, worked on his game with a fellow veteran and golf instructor, and practiced long and hard every day. Though he broke 70 within nine months, he didn’t qualify for the PGA Tour until he was 27. (By comparison, Tiger had won 39 PGA Tour events and eight majors by age 27.) But Nelson became one of the game’s most feared competitors, winning the 1981 and ’87 PGA Championships and the ’83 U.S. Open. In his first two Ryder Cups, in ’79 and ’81,

he compiled an unprecedented 9-0-0 record. Later, on the Champions Tour, he won 19 times. Nelson didn’t care that others had a massive head start in the game.

He set his sights high, dreamed big and believed in his destiny. Then he decided to do what was necessary to make it happen.

As you can see, some athletes and a few golfers who made it big were prodigies from an early age, but many struggled and got good later in life. The point is, it’s never too late. It’s about where you go with what you’ve got and finding a way. These players all found a way.

To do that you have to go on a mission. But it’s important to have fun on your mission, finding out what you can do with your talent at a game that you love.

Understand that there are expectations you put on yourself and those that other people put on you.

You should care only about the goals and expectations you’ve set for yourself. If you’re a late bloomer, you have to believe you could beat some child prodigy who maybe beat you for years in an earlier life. But now you’ve improved your skills, and part of it is realizing and telling yourself, Hey, when they play you, they have unbelievable pressure because they think they’re supposed to beat you, and they’re going to really look bad if they don’t.

Sure, they might have had success against you and others, but they also have pressure now. Remind yourself that the pressure is really on them, not on you. It also goes back to remembering to be process-oriented and not outcomeoriented. Make sure you’re living your own expectations and not the expectations of others.

From Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot: The Secret to Playing Great Golf

by Dr. Bob Rotella with Roger Schiffman to be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 2021 by Robert Rotella.

Printed by permission.

Mind The Next One’s Good

Big Momma and a Change in Direction by jerry tarde

his has been a season of comebacks. The sport got an assist from the pandemic as new and old golfers doubled down on their play—it started in 2020 and continues this year. The industry has benefited in every metric of participation and consumption. I give you two examples: If you invested $1,000 in Callaway stock last March, you could have sold it for about $5,000 this spring. TaylorMade was purchased from Adidas for $425 million in 2017 and sold for more than $1.7 billion this year.

On course, the most dramatic comeback was in the 36-hole final of the Amateur Championship at Nairn, Scotland, when Laird Shepherd found himself 8 down after 17 holes. He was still 4 down with four to play, won them all, and then triumphed on the second extra hole. A year ago, Laird and his girlfriend, Chloe Goadby, were working in a call center for Tesco, the British supermarket. She went on to win the 2021 Women’s Amateur Championship, too. How’s that for a power couple turnabout?

Another type of comeback could be credited to Jon Rahm, who WD’d with a six-stroke lead after three rounds of the Memorial Tournament, testing positive for COVID. Two weeks later, after testing negative, he won the U.S. Open. (A month later, he had to withdraw from the Olympics after another positive test.)

Not to pick on anyone, but golfers should be first in line to get vaccinated and boostered if necessary. Let’s keep the game’s momentum going.

Phil Mickelson’s PGA Championship could be termed a comeback of sorts, but Phil would say he never left. It’s a scientific fact that male left-handers have a life expectancy 10 years shorter than righties (five years shorter for females), but Mickelson seems to defy all

T

18 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

▶ ageless wonder JoAnne Carner, 82, is the oldest to play in a USGA championship.

credit for it, but he had a great eye. He was the first to notice my tendency to hang on the right foot and not fold my left arm coming through. Getting to my left side is still what I work on.”

Watching Annika and JoAnne at the Women’s Senior Open reminds us again how much more we could learn from the LPGA, even 82-year-olds. “All the women pros have great timing and hit it a long way now,” Carner says.

“You don’t need the brute strength of [Bryson] DeChambeau.”

“How can we learn that timing?” I ask.

The question brings her back to those days with Sam. “My best tip,” she says, “was to swing to the top of the backswing and hold it for two or three seconds before releasing down and through the ball. You do that in practice, not when you play: Pause before changing direction. It’s especially important in competition, when everybody speeds up. It even works in putting. Most poor putters rush the change of direction. That’s the key: Finish the backswing first.”

I thanked her for the lesson and for all the good memories Big Momma has given us. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed golf all my life,” she says. “I find it still amuses me, even when I play or practice alone.”

It’s one of the eternal joys of golf: No matter our age, we’re all working on a comeback. tarde@golfdigest.com

Darren Carroll/USGa

the odds. And golf is the only thing he does left-handed.

Maybe the most significant comebacks occurred at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open at Brooklawn Country Club in Connecticut. Annika Sorenstam, 50, who had stepped away from competitive golf in 2008 after 90 international pro wins, regained her dominance with a wire-to-wire, eight-stroke victory.

What Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods are to men’s golf, Mickey Wright and Annika are to the women’s game—all-time bests, the edge depending on your age.

My favorite comeback of the year belonged to JoAnne Carner, who missed the cut at Brooklawn with rounds of 8279, matching and beating her age. She had hip-replacement surgery at the end of 2019. That and the pandemic kept her out of golf for 14 months. I talked to JoAnne, who was at her condo in Florida, double-vaccinated and healthy, but still working on her game.

She plays out of Pine Tree Golf Club in Boynton Beach, which holds, she says, more pro titles than any other club— easy when membership has included JoAnne, Sam Snead, Mickey Wright, Louise Suggs, Beth Daniel, Meg Mallon and Gary Woodland. As a teenager, then JoAnne Gunderson had learned her grip from mimicking pictures of Snead, and later Sam brought her to Pine Tree for lessons. She’d stand behind him as he worked his way through the bag and let his effortless tempo wash over her. “I was always more of a slugger,” she tells me, “so his tempo was my medicine.

“Then he’d say about four words and that was all I needed. Sam didn’t get

INTERVIEW BY

MATTHEW RUDY

AN EXCLUSIVE POOLSIDE INTERVIEW WITH THE BRAZEN

BROOKS KOEPKA

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

Your bag doesn’t look like the standard tour-player setup—no big logo and an eclectic mix of clubs from several companies, including one that doesn’t exist anymore.

I’m not a guy that switches. Dustin [Johnson] says he doesn’t switch, but he switches the most out of anybody I’ve ever seen. You might not think it’s a switch, but he’ll have, like, five drivers with him for the week. He’s always switching putters, or a 3-iron and 5-wood combo.

I still have a Nike 3-iron. That’s five years old. I still play an SM4 Vokey wedge. What are they on now? SM8? My putter has been in for a year and a half, but I’ve had the same model since 2008.

22 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

Is that part of taking variables out?

If it works, why mess with it? I haven’t tested a driver or 3-wood shaft in seven years. Here’s a funny story: At Oakmont the year Dustin won, I took a practice swing with my Nike driver and took a chunk out of the turf. It was a terrible practice swing—and graphite gets weak over time— and the shaft snapped under the grip. I call Blake [Smith, Koepka’s agent since Koepka turned professional in 2012] and say, “I need you to go in my locker and grab another driver.” I hit 3-wood off the tee, and I’m walking, and I see a kid up there, and I say, “Here you go,” and give him the driver. My dad starts talking to him and makes friends with this kid and his dad. I didn’t think of it at the time, but you can just unscrew the head, and I had made like $3 million using that driver. Claude [Harmon III, Koepka’s coach at the time] says, “You have to get that driver back.” My dad chimes in, “No, no, no, we gave it to that kid.” Claude says, “That driver is perfect” and basically goes and snatches it from the kid. We tell the kid, “We swear we’ll send you another driver.” It gets shipped out, and the day after that, Nike stopped making clubs. Claude did the right thing because let’s be real, not every head is the same. I used that driver head for the rest of the year.

Do you think there’s still an artistry to this sport? Is the tour filled with mostly bombers, or can players control spin and trajectory like in the olden days?

There’s both. Modern architects want to make courses longer to defend against length, but I always laugh because the best par 3s in the world—the hardest par 3s we play— are the ones that are around 150 yards, where you give us choices. Perfect example is No. 11 at Royal St. George’s. It’s a massive green with a little back shelf. Difficult hole when the wind is blowing. From the back tee, it’s 235 to the middle, and the front tee is like 170 to the middle. The wind was pumping in pretty much every day, and the harder shot was the shorter shot. From the back, it’s 3-iron all day.

A 3-iron isn’t affected by the wind that much. Let’s be real.

With 3-iron, I can’t tell you if I’ve hit it five yards too short or five yards too far. But with a 7-iron? If it comes in with a little too much spin, or not enough spin, there’s a big gap there. You’re trying to do more with that shot.

It’s a shot that entices you to take a risk.

The best designs are the ones where you must control your spin and control your flight. Like 12 at Augusta. When I hit it into the water on Sunday the year Tiger won, I hit a good shot with a hair too much spin. It probably went eight feet higher than a normal one. What does that wind do? It just eats it up. I mean, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t aiming at the center of the green. I was three shots back, and I had to make a move. Second place isn’t very good for me. I gotta go at it, Wardrobe stylist: Emily Bess • Locations by: locationresources.com

Jacket: kenzo • t-shirt: emporio armani • pants, shoes: nike • watch: rolex • neckl aces: stephanie gottlieb • previous pages: shirt, shorts: nike

Brooks Koepka doesn’t look like a stonecold killer. The 31-year-old four-time major champion comes in all smiles, wearing a t-shirt and shorts and has a collection of formal clothes on hangers over his right shoulder. His right knee is puffy, misshapen and has a prominent scar—a leftover from a freak accident in March when a bad step turned into a dislocated kneecap, and his lower right leg turned unnaturally to the side. Then again, maybe it would take an assassin to do what Koepka did when he looked down. He straightened his leg and jammed the kneecap back in place, shattering it in the process—which required surgery to reconnect his patellar tendon to the bone remnant. His matter-of-fact recounting of that event before the photo shoot for this story is consistent with the player who has let his clubs do most of the talking for 15 top-10s in majors since 2015. If you aren’t paying attention, he says, that’s on you.

In a wide-ranging conversation that represents his most substantial interview as a pro, Koepka discusses the emotional makeup of the modern professional athlete, the physical and mental skills necessary to win, being in the fray during iconic wins by Tiger Woods at the 2019 Masters and Phil Mickelson at the 2021 PGA and the unique challenges presented by the Ryder Cup.

shirts and pants: hugo boss

and I can live with the result. That’s the beauty of the artistry in that design process that was created years ago. But it’s less about creativity now and more about length.

When you have stretches where you aren’t playing well, is missing a cut a tragedy?

There have been times when I’ve walked off the course and thought, Hey, this ain’t a bad cut to miss. People aren’t going to agree with that. When you’ve played three or four tournaments in a row, you can sense when you’re tired.

Everyone around you can sense it because the atmosphere trickles down. [Missing the cut] saves you a little bit. You can take Saturday off and clear your mind.

You’re 31. You’ve had wrist surgeries and a big knee surgery this year. You’re physically not the same guy you were when you were 20. Is the future coming faster than you might have expected?

Mentally, I still think I’m 21. But the past three years, there’s the realization I’m not that young person anymore who can go Jet Ski or wakeboard or whatever. Getting out of bed now takes 30 minutes to get going. You have to change your lifestyle. I probably packed on 10 to 15 pounds after the knee surgery because I can’t be as active as I was. I can’t go run. I’m never going to be able to run again. You’re parking closer to the door than before and all that. I’ve had to switch up the way I eat and train. When I was 25, my metabolism was a hell of a lot faster than it is now. I could eat anything. Now I eat more anti-inflammatory foods so that I can feel better. There are certain meals the chef will prepare when it’s early versus late because I have a long time or short time before I can eat again. I can go full speed on a bike, but I’m not going to be riding down to Miami like Camilo Villegas did back in the day.

I’ve heard you say you made dramatic lifestyle changes in the past literally on the spot—whether it was changing your diet or stopping drinking when you were in college so you could focus on your game.

Absolutely. Flip a switch. I don’t know where it comes from, but I have no problem turning off my phone or shutting certain people off. My best friends, we have this massive group chat, and I used to read all the text messages.

When I got done playing, there’d be 500, and I’d go through them all. Now I’m like, no, I’m not going to do that. Shoot, it’s easier for me when I’m on the road. The only thing I care about is playing good golf. How am I going to do it? Good sleep, rest, eat, practice and work out. That’s it.

Everything else is an afterthought. When I’m in a majorchampionship week, it’s even more amplified. I’m going to the course and getting my work done. It’s the primary reason I’m sitting here. I can separate things. When I get between the ropes, nothing else matters. Nothing.

Has that made relationships hard to sustain?

Every great athlete struggles with that compared to a normal person. My family relationships aren’t as good as they would be if I were a normal person. Sometimes I come home on an off week, and I know my parents want to see me, but for two or three days, I need to decompress and get out of that mode, or I’m going to stay in it. That makes it hard to have friends or dating or family. What makes it even harder for some players is that it’s difficult for them to say no. Over the past few years, I’ve found that because I’ve grown into myself, and I’m genuinely happy inside, it’s easier to say no. That’s hard for some people to hear,

‘IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS I’VE BEEN ABLE TO

OWN WHO I AM

AND FIND THAT HAPPINESS.’

especially my parents or my brother [Chase]. I don’t get to see my brother as much as I’d like because he’s on his own grind. I don’t have the relationships in my life that I would want, but I want to be the best golfer I can be. So for another 10 years it’s just going to be what it is, and that’s the sacrifice you make when you’re on the extreme end when it comes to the mental side.

Sounds like your circle has gotten smaller. I’d imagine it’s people who can accept the dynamic you just described.

Yep. What has really helped me is that they’re normal guys. They keep me grounded. I mean, if I go out and shoot 74, if I were to go back and read that group text, it’d be “Man, this guy can’t putt. . . . He sucks. . . . Get him off my TV screen. I’m tired of watching this shit.” You have to have those real people in your life.

Did you watch the Naomi Osaka documentary?

I did.

It made me sad because it seemed like she had the capacity to say no and exert more control over her life, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t. She didn’t have people around her telling her the truth.

To be honest, there have been times when Blake has been like, “Bro, you need to chill.” Jena [Sims, Koepka’s fiancee] is the same way. I felt bad for [Osaka] in the same way you did. I remember the scene where her trainer came to her and said, “Hey, maybe every month we as a group should sit down and voice what’s going on.” And she was like, “I don’t really have a voice.” That was interesting because you know how she always referred to herself as a vessel?

Sometimes you have to be strong enough to have that voice inside yourself and be the authoritative figure.

Sometimes you have to sit back, listen and take the criticism. I really liked what Giannis [Antetokounmpo] said: When you’re thinking about the past, that’s ego. That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard because when you start thinking of mistakes or screw ups or how you missed that shot or this shot, that’s just your ego being hurt. If you keep staying in the present, you’re fine. The other part of it is that you can’t look too far into the future.

There’s a fine little balance in there.

You’re surrounded by mechanisms—social media, this interview, television coverage—that are designed to remind you about the past and ask you about ongoing beefs with certain players or get you to speculate about the future. How do you stay balanced?

That’s sport. That’s your job. What did Marshawn Lynch say? Take care of your mentals? Your mind is just as important as your body. No athlete is ever 100 percent. But I’m there to play golf and play the best I can. There are going to be days when I suck, and there’s nobody more embarrassed about that than me. Sometimes, walking through issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

25

26 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

‘I JUST SHOW UP AND

WIN THE THING.

I REMEMBER THINKING, IT’S THAT EASY? REALLY?’

didn’t want to imitate Dustin and do things exactly the way he did, but I pulled from him and pulled from G-Mac. Now things start to come together, and it’s like, OK, I’ve figured this out. To this day, I’ll watch other guys and how they go about things and kind of snag from this guy or take from an athlete in another sport. Like, say, the step-on-your-throat mentality. There’s a small opening, and you see a sliver of hope. What do you do with it? That comes from the more athletic side, right? When you’re around successful people, it rubs off on you, and you make it your own.

Do you still get angry or just channel it differently?

It’s more about not showing it outwardly and turning it into a positive. Before, I might pull a wedge and miss the green, and I’d think, What the hell! You’re a hundred out and miss the green, but you can hit the fairway from 300 yards? And I would seethe inwardly for three holes. Now? I hit that shot, and I think, OK. That was embarrassing.

Everyone here is laughing at me. I can hear the crowd snickering. All right, well, watch this.

What was it like at Augusta in 2019, when the entire place was going crazy for Tiger on Sunday? Do you feed off that kind of energy when it’s going away from you?

There’s more noise in silence. What was that play where Auburn caught that field goal Alabama tried and ran it all the way back for a touchdown with no time left? I’m pretty sure that aside from the Auburn guys, you could’ve heard a pin drop—and that’s all they wanted. To me, that’s cheering. The fans at Augusta, they’re so respectful, but for Tiger? The cheering is 50 times bigger than anybody else.

And in the moment, I want that silence.

Tiger said something in his press conference afterward that was rare for him. He singled you out as the one name on the leader board he was watching because he knew you weren’t going to go away.

I never heard that. I’ve been around him so much, and I respect everything he’s accomplished. In my mind, he’s the best player to ever play the game, and it isn’t close. But when I’m playing, I don’t care. He’s in my way.

Does it bother you when you don’t get the same kind of energy from the crowd when you’re the leader?

It used to. I couldn’t understand it. But now I’m happy enough. Outside golf, I have everything I want. I’m on the right path. Hopefully in a few years, we’ll get to have kids.

Even if I shoot 75, I come home to people I love. I finally understand that I’m not perfect, and I’m not going to play perfect. I just need to get the most out of what I’m doing that day. Good, bad, ugly. Doesn’t matter. There’s that satisfaction that you can say, Look, I had nothing, but I gave it everything, and I can leave it on the table.

Process versus outcome.

Exactly.

koepka: Jacket: hugo boss • shirt: emporio armani • Jeans: ag • watch: rolex • neckl ace: stephanie gottlieb

the fans when they’re giving it to you, the eyes go down a little bit because you don’t want to make eye contact with anybody. At the same time, you have to be strong enough on the inside to say, that’s just one day in my whole life.

That’s not me. Your sport can’t define you. That’s something else I found interesting in the Osaka documentary: She didn’t seem to have any hobbies or friends to keep her grounded. That makes me realize even more who I am because I have those friends who just view me as me.

I wonder if Tiger had anybody like that in his life. I don’t know if he relaxed for 10 years.

I’d say that’s right. The way I’m wired, I’m all on or all off.

Maybe I didn’t understand that the first 25 years of my life, but in the past five years I’ve been able to own who I am and find that happiness. I don’t know if that’s because of Jena or because I understand more of how things work, but you mature a little more. I can’t put my finger on it. But when it comes together, and you see what works, you say, this is the program, and I’m going to stick with it.

What’s one example?

When I first got out here, I was a hothead. In college, it was always the stand bag legs that gave you away. Mine were always bent. My college coach, Trey Jones, always said the bag doesn’t represent you. It represents everybody else who has come through Florida State and everybody who is going to come through Florida State. One time I missed a green with a wedge, and I chucked the wedge at the bag, and it hit the leg. The bag leg bent. When I looked up, I’ll never forget. I see him sprint, and I’m thinking, How am I going to fix this bag in five seconds before he gets here?

Another time, we’re playing an event at our home course, and I make a terrible 5 on the first hole, and on the second hole, I plug it in the bunker. My body language is just so bad, and I’m staring down at my shoes, thinking, Why am I out here? Trey was walking with me, and he said, if you’re going to look down at your shoes, I’m going to write something on them so every time you get down you realize what a big blank you are. I mean, he gave me an earful. They were pretty tough on me, but I needed it.

How long did it take for that to sink in?

Maybe three or four years. I was like, I really need to change. At Tampa in 2014, Blake and I were talking, and I was like, “Man, I just wish I could be more like Dustin on the golf course.” My whole thing was, I was going to find out how he did it. Dustin had a shot where he had to punch it out, and it hit the lip of the curb and bounced up and kind of went back to where it was. And he laughed!

I’ll never forget that moment. I turned to Blake and said, “How does he laugh at that? I’d have gone ballistic.” Blake says, we’ll talk to him and find out. I started asking him things, and he probably didn’t even know I was watching him—because, if I’m honest, I don’t like making myself feel vulnerable. He’s maybe the best athlete in the world at letting things roll off his back. My caddie, Ricky Elliott, is best friends with Graeme McDowell, and he’d say the same things. Graeme would tell you he’s not the most talented guy in the world, but he figures out how to get the best out of his game and each shot, hit the correct shot and where to place it, and to move on to the next one.

You won your first PGA Tour event early the next season, in Phoenix.

I just started taking things and piecing them together. I

▶ match play Koepka and fiancee Jena Sims have been together since 2017.

28 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

It sounds like a demanding week.

It is. I make sure during tournament weeks that whether it be sponsors or whatever, there can’t be any distractions.

But there are meetings and team building, and you’re whisked away for a lot of things like pictures and all that.

It’s more demanding than I’m used to, and there’s a lot of emotion there, so by Sunday, you’re just dead.

What about the Olympics? You turned down a spot as a replacement for Bryson DeChambeau this year.

I’d love to play in the Olympics. But this year I would have gotten there the day before, without seeing the course and with the time change. I didn’t even have my clubs back from Europe yet. It would have been tough for me to be prepared. I’d love to represent my country. I think that’s fun.

It’s just maybe not in my DNA, the team sports thing.

You caused a stir when you showed up at the Open Championship and said you hadn’t touched a club in two weeks.

You can practice and still suck. You can get worse if you try too hard or whatever it might be. In sport, I think it’s way more mental than you can ever understand.

shirts, pants, shoes: nike

You aren’t a guy who has always said what’s on your mind. When you hurt your knee, people didn’t know the extent of it. When you look back, are you content with the amount that you’ve revealed to people?

As my personal life goes, there are snippets people see, whether from my social or Jena’s. You have to let some people in. Being out there, I’m just me. You can hate me for it or love me for it. I don’t care about your opinion of me.

For virtually all of your career, you get to set the schedule and make the rules and be responsible for your own performance. How does that mesh with the Ryder Cup experience? Is it strange being on a team?

It’s different. It’s hectic. It’s a bit odd, if I’m honest. I don’t want to say it’s a bad week. We’re just so individualized, and everybody has their routine and a different way of doing things, and now, it’s like, OK, we have to have a meeting at this time or go do this or go do that. It’s the opposite of what happens during a major week. If I break down a major week, it’s so chill. You wouldn’t even believe me. I go to the course. I play nine holes. I go work out. Other than that, I’m sitting and watching TV, taking my mind off golf with relaxing stuff. The physical part, I can handle. The mental side, you have to be able to turn it off. Sometimes, the power comes from being able to turn it on. But for me, I get power from turning it off. That’s been a huge, huge thing for me that I really haven’t understood until the past five or six years of my career.

Right about when you started winning majors.

It comes from understanding who you are.

But, as you said, at a major, you’re only concerned about yourself. At the Ryder Cup, that dynamic is different.

It’s tough. There are times where I’m like, I won my match.

I did my job. What do you want from me? I know how to take responsibility for the shots I hit every week. Now, somebody else hit a bad shot and left me in a bad spot, and I know this hole is a loss. That’s new, and you have to change the way you think about things. You go from an individual sport all the time to a team sport one week a year. It’s so far from my normal routine. I can barely see my [personal] team. It’s hard to even go to the gym. At the Presidents Cup in New York, we had to go to the gym at 5 a.m. to get it in. We went to the Equinox, and it was me, Dustin and Tiger, and we come back and go to a team meeting. Under regular conditions, I take naps a lot. I might take an hour, hour-and-a-half nap, or just chill on the couch and watch “SportsCenter,” before rounds, after rounds, whatever. There’s no time to do that at the Ryder Cup. There’s no time to decompress.

A genius-level captain would say, “We’re not changing anything from your regular routine.”

For sure. If I was ever to be named a captain, one of the things I’d do is get the caddies more involved. I thought it was weird in France that there was a sign on the door that said, “No caddies allowed.” As a captain, it might be tough to get into a player’s brain, but it’s easier to get into a caddie’s brain, and that’s the next guy in line. Like, if you want to understand how it went, go talk to Ricky [Elliott] because sometimes I can’t even articulate what I’m doing or how things are going. He’s the best guy to talk to about how I’m feeling. There are times when I respond to people asking me if I’m OK by saying, “Yeah, I’m good,” but I’m not good! I’m not feeling right. And he’ll tell you.

the brooks swing fix Plenty of players dive into launch-monitor data.

Brooks Koepka isn’t one of them. His improvement strategy comes from checking a series of fundamentals one at a time like posture, grip and alignment. “Last year, when I played bad because of my knee, I wasn’t addressing the ball well, and my weight was a little off. I compensated by changing my posture, and then I started changing things with my grip.” But when you change multiple things, he says, you’re not able to isolate what is making you better (or worse). The takeaway? Record your swing when you’re playing great, and when you’re struggling, adjust one variable at a time as needed. “If you’re standing there thinking about a bunch of different things you have to do, your odds are going to go way down.” —M.R.

Is that why you don’t have a regular swing coach?

That goes back to the last five years or so—owning who you are. I own my golf swing. I can take off as many days as I want. I can practice as long as I want, and my swing is probably not going to change.

The first Ryder Cup I covered was 1995 at Oak Hill, and walking with the singles match between Seve Ballesteros and Tom Lehman was a masterclass from Seve in gamesmanship and competitiveness. Seve didn’t have the game, so he knew he needed a different weapon to bring to that fight. Is gamesmanship a dying art?

No. How do you use it?

It’s a state of mind. A lot of times when I go to the course, I don’t know who I’m playing with or even my tee time. I just know it’s in the afternoon. A great example of gamesmanship is what Phil did to me at the PGA. I got trounced on that one. I thought it was pretty good what he was doing.

Give me an example.

His body language. I don’t want to give it away, but I didn’t

handle it well. You’ll have to ask him about it. I think he knew what he was doing. It wasn’t the reason I lost. I lost because I didn’t play well enough. It was tough for me to get into a rhythm, and the timing of how things were going.

I could see [what he was doing] because I know it. I do it.

How? I know it when I walk into a room. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. Maybe Jena comes home, and I ask her how her day was, I notice that her nail polish has changed, or she’s moved her rings or bracelets. Nuances. I’m aware of little things. Are you fidgeting over something? Are you taking a bit longer over something? Are you reacting to something maybe I said? I mean, I’ve got no problem saying I’ve done it. In the middle of the round.

We’re not talking about dirty stuff, like making noise to distract somebody.

No. That’s uncalled for. A lot of guys don’t like to say the word “shank” during a round. I don’t care. I’ve said it before. I’ll say, “Hey, didn’t somebody shank one here?” Some guys will hear that and crumble. I’m not saying that’s my go-to, but you can tell some guys are just . . .

Are you saying golfers might not be as tough as athletes in other sports?

Golf isn’t really a sport where you trash talk, but I can trash talk with the best of them. I don’t want to say gamesmanship is trash talk, but it borders the line. If I go with my buddies, what I say to them is completely different. Every bad shot, you’re going to hear about it. On tour, it’s more the little things. But the reality is, I take satisfaction from beating everybody more than anybody knows. I take so much satisfaction that there’s something wrong in my head about it. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing, it’s so intense. I might not always show it, but I’m so intense inside at wanting to beat the living crap out of you at whatever we’re doing. It eats me up inside. We could be playing pingpong or cornhole or whatever. I just want to embarrass you. issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

29

‘SECOND? SPORTS ARE MADE TO HAVE A

WINNER AND A LOSER.

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YOU’RE ONE OR THE OTHER.’

If golf wasn’t the “gentleman’s” sport it is, I would trash talk my entire way through it. I’d love to be in the NFL and just stand over you like Tyrann Mathieu does after a tackle.

But part of that is being able to take it too.

I love it. Come at me all you want. There’s a Kobe quote: “They don’t hate the good ones. They hate the great ones.”

A lot of people get pissed off at the truth, so they don’t like the trash talk. When you’re at the top, you’re going to have people hate you because you’re so good at what you do. When you dive deep into those words, you understand it’s coming from jealousy. I’ve been there. There are times when I’ve come off the course, and I’m jealous because somebody has won a couple of times, and I think, I know I’m better than them. I’m so jealous! You feel that burn and that competitiveness, and it just wills you to go farther. It keeps you going and gets you ready for the next time.

Is there a line?

One of the biggest things now is that people have the hardest time taking accountability. You hear people say they want to hear the truth. But when you tell the truth, it hurts. Most people aren’t ready for it. What was that quote I heard? Sometimes the bully is telling you the truth?

Sometimes you need to look in the mirror. I know there have been times in my life where it’s been hard to accept the truth. I know it, and I don’t want to hear it. Sometimes the things I say get misconstrued. You might hear the way I speak, my monotone, and hear that instead of what I’m saying. I’m dry, and I try to be very chill. That’s just who I am. I don’t try to get too high or too low.

David Duval changed his body, worked relentlessly, got to World No. 1 and won the Open Championship. Then he looked around and asked himself, Is this all there is? He struggled to find something else to go after. How do you find what to go after next?

I had kind of a similar moment, where it was, It can’t be this easy, can it? This was in 2018. I was playing the best in the world. I’m No. 1. I truly believe I’m the best. I go to Korea, haven’t touched a club in three weeks, and I just show up and win the thing. I remember thinking, It’s that easy? Really? And then you fall a little bit. The only difference is, I got humbled because I got hurt. That brought me back to reality. Then you see yourself fall in the world rankings, and then you say, No, I’m going to get back. Then I got it back and lost it again and then got it back and won the PGA. After that, it was tough to figure out what else to do. I understand where he was coming from with that. But I figured out it’s not being the best in the world. It’s about being the best you can be. I might be the best in the world, but I’m not the best I can be—so what’s the point? You have to find the internal fire and just light it again.

That’s what is so interesting about Tiger in 2019. He clearly wasn’t the best player in the world again. He wasn’t peak Tiger Woods.

But if you ask him, he believed he was the best player there.

He wasn’t the Tiger Woods of 10 years ago, but he extracted every bit out of the Tiger Woods that was at the 2019 Masters. That has to be satisfying. I mean, I hope when I’m 45, that happens to me. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in golf. It sucked in the moment. Don’t get me wrong. But I’m good at removing myself from the situation when everything’s done and looking at things, and that’s maybe the coolest thing that’s happened in golf besides that chip in he had on 16. To me, it’s the most memorable, aside from getting absolutely trounced on.

Where does what Phil did at the PGA rate?

I don’t know why, but it was different. Phil’s not Tiger.

We’re sitting and listening to the coverage on Saturday night, and it was Brandel [Chamblee] and Justin [Leonard], and they were talking about if Phil won, would it bring him into the top 10 players of all time. I thought, F___ that, he’s top 10 all time already. Now he’s just moved up a couple of spots or whatever. I probably have him at five. But Tiger is in a league of his own. I felt like I gave everything I have with Tiger [at the 2019 Masters], and that shot on 12 killed me, but I was three or four shots back, and I had to do something. I followed up with an eagle and almost made another eagle. I gave him everything I had, and Tiger took it. With Phil, I didn’t feel like I gave him any run for his money for 12 or 13 holes. I didn’t push him. That’s a credit to him, where I think some of his gamesmanship came into play. I have no problem looking in the mirror and saying, I gave it my all, and it just wasn’t good enough. Think about Phil, always being second fiddle to Tiger. Imagine if he had been born 10 years earlier or 10 years later. He probably has four or five more majors and 15 more wins, which is crazy to think about. Part of me feels bad for Phil, but the only reason he’s as rich and famous as he is is because of Tiger.

That’s the same thing for our generation.

That might be the one downside to the Tiger effect. You could finish 50th in money for 15 years, make enough cuts to qualify for the full tour pension and have $50 million.

That’s insane.

People would take that career.

It comes down to what you want. Do you want to have security or greatness? What makes that person happy? Do you want to be the person who plays 15 years and never misses a cut but never wins or the person who misses seven cuts a year and wins every year? Different people want different things. What satisfies you doesn’t satisfy me.

I know what I want.

Has Tiger set the bar out of reach?

In my mind, I’m going to catch him on majors. I believe that. I don’t see any reason that can stop me. I’m 31. I have another 14 years left. If I win one a year, I got Jack. People misconstrue that as being cocky. No, that’s just my belief.

If I don’t have that belief, I shouldn’t be out there. If you don’t think you can win, why the hell are you teeing it up?

Yeah, I’m just going for second place this week. There’s a lot of that on tour. Even elite players are very happy with that. Second? Sports are made to have a winner and a loser.

You’re one or the other. issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

31

in ated Rory McIlroy Patrick Reed defe singles match. a drama-filled 2016

RICAN E M A G N I H T Y R E EV UST M R E K C I R T S E CAPTAIN STEV R OS U E E H T P I H W O KNOW T

27 Established in 19

iel Rapaport Compiled by Dan

wa r no mo re

Mark O’Meara, Payne Stewart, Dave Stockton and Corey Pavin celebrate at Kiawah in 1991.

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AZINGER GROUPED HIS PLAYERS BY PERSONALITY TYPE: THE AGGRESSIVES,

MAKE IT FEEL HUGE The kids won’t remember, but for a while no one really gave a crap about the Ryder Cup. Remember, Tom Weiskopf decided he’d rather go biggame hunting than play in 1977. It wasn’t until Jack Nicklaus got beat at his own place, Muirfield Village in 1987, that we really started to take things seriously. The War by the Shore in ’91 took things to a new level. Now it’s the biggest spectacle in our sport, and it’s your job to make it feel even bigger than that.

That’s how you get the players to buy in without offering $2 million for first place.

Everything has to be first class—including the gifts you give the players. Stewart Cink still talks about the bike Tom Lehman gave him in ’06. We’ve had so many cool speakers come into the team room that guys have come to expect it now, and it contributes to the grandness of it all. One priceless moment that jumps to mind is when Michael Phelps was giving the boys a pep talk in ’16, and Matt Kuchar pops up and puts his arm around him and goes “Not everyone knows what it means to be an Olympian!”

One of the other boys called out: “Hey, Michael—that thing Kuch has on, it’s called a

38 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

bronze medal.” Said Phelps: “I think I might have one of those—in a relay.”

We’ve had Coach Mike Krzyzewski in there, and even uber-chill Dustin Johnson was fired up after that one.

Lehman set us up with the New England Patriots ahead of Hazeltine. The guys got a priceless lesson by watching Tom Brady interact with his teammates. Davis Love III brought in both president Bushes, which brought Amy Mickelson to tears. You won’t have to beg Michael Jordan to come around. Trust me.

Still, the best moments come organically from the Ryder Cup fraternity—not some athlete or celebrity’s planned speech. Before the flight over to the Belfry in ’93, Tom Watson looked at his team and told them, “You’re about to go on one of the great golfing adventures of your career.” The simplicity of it struck a note. The team was ready to run through a wall, and no U.S. team has won in Europe since those boys did.

You’ll have access to Tiger, whether or not he’s there in person. He loves to help, and the guys idolize him. Anything he says is going to inspire them. Keep that in mind.

Oh, and one more thing about the team room: The pingpong table is a nonnegotiable amenity.

power couple

Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus propelled the U.S. team to victory in the 1971 Match.

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40 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

s m il e s

and shu s

hes Ian Poulter and Tomm y Fleetwood celebrate E urope’s 17½-10½ v ictory in th e 2018

E V E R Y T H I N G E U R O P E A N C A P TA I N PA D R A I G H A R R I N G T O N M U S T KNOW T O S PA N K T H E YA N K S Established in 19 27

Compiled by John

Huggan

ha ndl e wit h car e

Captain Paul McGinley deftly managed his players’ egos in winning the 2014 Cup in Scotland.

Stuff happens at Ryder Cups, stuff you often can’t plan for, even when things are going well. As far back as 1957, when the then-Great Britain side last beat the Americans, preparations for the singles were disrupted by team member Harry Weetman. The big Englishman took exception to being dropped by skipper Dai Rees and publicly announced he would never again play under the wee Welshman’s captaincy. Cue negative headlines and distractions at the wrong time.

Twenty years later, the final Great Britain and Ireland team captain, Brian Huggett, fell out with former Open and U.S. Open champion Tony Jacklin. The key, however, is that their problems were kept from the rest of the side. Only afterward did they hear that there was an issue.

No good can come of disputes within the camp.

They happen though. In 2014, captain Paul McGinley was careful not to take sides in a lawsuit featuring teammates and fellow Irishmen Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell on opposite ends of the argument. Follow McGinley’s lead. Be Switzerland when things like that crop up.

Most recently, of course, there was the case of Danny Willett’s older brother, who penned what can only be described as an anti-American column in a magazine just before the 2016

46 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

matches at Hazeltine. It was a diatribe that saw captain Darren Clarke’s pre-match planning descend into disarray. Meant to play in the opening foursomes, the younger Willett was benched and then a long way from his best form when he did appear.

As for those things you can control, perhaps the biggest is not allowing the members of your team to get caught up in all the “other stuff” that goes on in Ryder Cup week. There are a few don’ts to take note of here.

Don’t “over team” things during Ryder Cup week. Don’t bond too much. Don’t have too much craic. Don’t have too many games of pingpong. Don’t all have dinner at the same time. Don’t create too much of a pally atmosphere. That’s not what goes on from week to week on tour. That’s not the sort of environment in which everyone has excelled to make the team. So why should it happen at the Ryder Cup? The players are individuals playing an individual sport. They are trained to be selfish.

You want that. Any softening of that approach, and you can lose the dynamic that got them there in the first place. Preserve the selfish attitude they have in tournament play.

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ALL FOR ONE? NO, ALL FOR 12 ACTUALLY As the owner of one yourself, you’ll be aware of the need to gently massage the collection of large egos. To be fair, European teams have done a great job on the bonding front.

Any of the almost inevitable personality clashes have been papered over nicely.

It’s all about a simple principle really: No stars. Treat everyone the same. Ah, but not necessarily. The real key is finding the right ways to treat each player.

Collin Montgomerie was a perfect example. As you know, even in his pomp the big man was a notoriously fragile character. But he was also one of the best players for the Old World squad. So everything was done to get him feeling like a million dollars. If he was feeling good and making all the right noises, it would trickle down to the rest of the team. He ended up playing great on five winning teams.

It was important to get him going. The feeling here is that Jon Rahm is your guy to fill that role.

Another common issue is the possibility of a captain’s pick feeling like he hasn’t really merited his place on the team. You need to watch

48 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

out for the warning signs here. Back in 2010 at Celtic Manor, assistant captain Paul McGinley flagged up the fact that Luke Donald wasn’t really engaged in practice. So he was given a bit of TLC. On the eve of the Cup, captain Monty walked a par 5 with his arm on Luke’s shoulder. It was made clear to him how important he was to the team. Luke ended up the top-scorer on the European team that week.

So forget this “12 equals” nonsense when dealing with your players. Treat them all as individuals, but don’t include any of them—even your best performer—in any of your selection decisions. They don’t need that responsibility.

Think about it. If you ask three people who you should pick or pair, you are more than likely to get three different answers.

There are other implications, none of them positive. Let’s say the guy your star recommends doesn’t play well and loses. He is then going to feel responsible.

Conversely, if you ask top players what to do and you don’t do it, their noses are going to be out of joint. They might think you didn’t have respect for their opinions.

That’s why you should tell your players you won’t be asking for any advice. Stick to your vice captains for that.

emotional leader

Jon Rahm, who defeated Tiger Woods, 2&1, in his 2018 singles match, is a vital player for Team Europe.

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FORGET THIS ‘12 EQUALS’ NONSENSE. TREAT THEM ALL AS INDIVIDUALS. JUST DON’T INCLUDE THEM IN SELECTION DECISIONS.

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▶ go low or go home From left: John Greco, Sean Goshert and Kevin Huff vie for a spot in the PGA Tour’s Barracuda Championship in August.

Greco made it through.

THE TRAGEDIES AND TRIUMPHS OF PGA TOUR QUALIFYING ROUNDS

BY RYAN FRENCH • PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK DAVIS

TODD BALKIN FROM AVERAGE JOE TO THE SHOW

As a kid, I was a golf nerd.

I pored over the scores and prize-money lists in newspapers and golf magazines. The Internet only expanded my nerdiness.

After I finished college my dad and I took annual trips to caddie on a minitour. I became friends with some of the players, and it led to other caddieing opportunities on the now Korn Ferry Tour and at Monday qualifiers. I love seeing what the players go through—the sacrifice they make to chase their dreams is astounding.

Three years ago I started @acaseofthegolf1 on Twitter to tell those stories, and I’m lucky to have turned it into a living at The Fire Pit Collective. At age 44, I’m living my dream. When Golf Digest asked me to share some of my favorite Monday-qualifier moments from covering them the past three years, I was happy to oblige. I hope you enjoy them. —R.F. 54 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

Todd Balkin has managed a pizza restaurant and served as an assistant pro at a club in Texas giving lessons and picking up range balls. Now he sells insurance. Once he teed it up in a PGA Tour event.

There is nothing in professional sports quite like a Monday qualifier.

There isn’t a free-throw contest each Monday to see if you can suit up for the Los Angeles Lakers for a game.

Major League Baseball doesn’t conduct a home-run derby to give fans a chance to play for the Yankees for one night. There has never been a stickhandling competition to line up at center for the Detroit Red Wings. In golf, a Monday qualifier is essentially the equivalent of those things.

If you have a Handicap Index of 2.0 or better and are willing to pay $450 to play a mediocre course, you can play in a Monday qualifier. On the PGA Tour, you have to get through a pre-qualifier to play in the Monday qualifier, but that’s not the case for the Korn Ferry Tour. No one checks your résumé, and you don’t have to be a former college All-American. Once you are entered, just shoot one of the best four scores of the day, and you’re on the PGA Tour for the week, playing for a million dollars. You can be an everyday Joe. You can be Todd Balkin.

The Sunday before the Monday qualifier for the 2019 Byron Nelson, Balkin could not play a practice round because he had to open the golf shop to give a few lessons. Like most assistant pros, he was working 50-plus hours a week. It’s not an ideal way to prepare to play against former PGA and Korn Ferry tour winners. Balkin had shot 69 in the pre-qualifier (the minimum that usually gets a player through) to advance to the Monday.

The next morning, he headed out to play, hoping the caddie he brought who had played the course could help.

He did, and Balkin birdied two of the last three holes. The final putt was a 15-footer that curled in for a 67, and when he turned in his card, he was in a qualifying position. The last few groups came in, and no one matched the 67. He was in the Byron Nelson.

“No matter what happens, I’ll always have the practice round with

▶ working for the weekend Qualifiers are generally played at a course near the PGA Tour site on the Monday before the tournament begins.

Sendo [John Senden], Rafa [Rafael Cabrera-Bello] and Tom [Tom Hoge],” Balkin said. “They were great.”

Balkin shot 75-74 and missed the cut by nine but said he isn’t sure it mattered. “The whole thing was an amazing experience,” he said.

“I soaked up every second of it.”

Balkin might never tee it up in a PGA Tour event again and probably doesn’t have the talent to play professionally, but he can show his kids his player credentials and tell them about the week he walked the same fairways as golf’s best.

JAY AND REYE MCLUEN TWO NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

In Jay McLuen’s journey to the PGA Tour, both he and his wife, Reye, have been clinically dead.

On Oct. 7, 2017, Jay was watching TV with his two young children.

Another trip to Q school was days away when his heart stopped. Jay went into cardiac arrest. Fortunately Reye was home, and she called 911.

The paramedics revived him. On the way to the hospital, his heart stopped again. It would take seven tries with the defibrillator to revive him, but he survived and ended up needing a pacemaker. “I’ve yet to be in an event where I’m not the leading pacemaker,” Jays jokes.

After a recovery of about six months, he slowly resumed his dream of playing on the PGA Tour.

But then tragedy struck again. Jay was out on his brush hog in May 2020 when he ran over some barbed wire, and it wrapped around the machine’s blades. After notifying Reye and putting the tractor up on hydraulic jacks, they climbed

under the machine to cut the barbed wire away. Then one of the jacks gave way, leaving Jay and Reye pinned underneath.

Jay screamed for his 7-year-old daughter, Miller, to get the neighbor.

The neighbor used his tractor to lift the brush hog off of them. Jay was not injured, but Reye was purple. She had stopped breathing. The neighbor was trained in CPR, and with Jay’s help, they revived her. An ambulance transferred her to the hospital. Reye had a collapsed lung, and there were moments when the medical staff wasn’t sure she would make it.

In September 2020, during a practice round for the Sanderson Farms Monday qualifier, Jay walked off the course, frustrated with his game. The range session that followed didn’t produce better results. Expectations for the next day were low, and then golf happened. Jay shot a 66 that ended

THERE ISN’T A FREETHROW CONTEST EACH MONDAY TO SEE IF YOU CAN SUIT UP FOR THE LOS ANGELES LAKERS. with a spot in the Sanderson Farms Championship. He made the cut and finished 63rd, but with no status he continues to chase Mondays.

For Jay, 41, and Reye, life seems normal again, and everything they have been through has tempered Jay’s outlook. “When you’ve performed CPR on your wife,” he says, “10-footers for par don’t seem as important.” issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

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COREY CONNERS AN UNLIKELY CHAIN OF EVENTS

Corey Conners became the first player since 2010 and only the fourth in PGA Tour history to win after Monday qualifying at the Valero Texas Open in 2019, but that is only a part of the story. His career highlight to that point almost didn’t happen.

At the Corales Puntacana event the week before the Valero, Conners was near the cut line on Friday. The course was playing relatively easy, and he just needed to play the closing nine holes in one under. He had some opportunities, but his putting cost him, and he shot one over, miss-

ing the cut by two. It was the most critical missed cut of his career. If he had made the cut, he would not have been able to catch a flight to get to the Valero Monday qualifier. (He had conditional status on the PGA Tour at the time, so he would try to Monday qualify for any tournaments for which he wasn’t exempt.)

Conners quickly changed his flight to make it to Texas. Chase Hanna, another player in the Valero Monday qualifier, had hit a second shot on the par-5 13th that left him about two feet for eagle, which would put him at five under. This was the first year you could leave the flagstick in while putting, and Hanna went to finish with the pin still in. The flag must

have been leaning toward him, and somehow his eagle putt stayed out.

A player in his group after the round said, “I couldn’t believe it happened.”

Hanna took the flag out, tapped in for birdie and finished at four under par.

Conners came to the last hole at three under needing a birdie to get into a playoff. The 18th at The Club at Sonterra is a difficult 416-yard dogleg par 4. Only seven players birdied it, and 20 made bogey. An average drive and approach left Conners 30 feet downhill for birdie. Miss the putt, and it was on to the next Monday; make it and join five others in a playoff. He made it.

The six would tee off together with only one getting the final spot, hardly

▶ only the lonely You won’t find many fans or caddies at Monday qualifiers.

56 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

great odds. On the first playoff hole, Conners hit a wedge to six feet. He watched as each of the other five players missed their birdie tries. Conners then stepped up and made the putt, ending the playoff.

That Sunday, Conners, then 27, became the first player since Arjun Atwal at the 2010 Wyndham Championship to win on the PGA Tour after Monday qualifying. His final-round of six-under 66 included 10 birdies to offset a string of four straight bogeys.

Reflecting on his wild week, it was a missed cut, a missed tap-in and an unlikely 30-foot bomb that changed his career. The week after his victory, Conners teed it up at Augusta National for the Masters Tournament.

▶ fire at the flag It takes a score of 66 or better, on average, to Monday qualify for the PGA Tour.

BRADY SHARP RULES-INFRACTION HEARTBREAK

Brady Sharp had finally made it back.

After three surgeries in 10 months for Crohn’s disease and another to remove a non-cancerous tumor in 2016, Sharp had Monday qualified for his second Korn Ferry Tour start. It was about to end a few holes in when he had to call a rules official.

Sharp, now 35, turned professional 15 years ago after playing two years of community college golf. He took a job at Walla Walla (Wash.) Country Club and worked in the golf shop and didn’t think playing full time was a possibility.

“It just seemed that something was always in the way; mostly it was financial,” Sharp says. Some members at Walla Walla funded him for three years, and after enduring the struggles that almost all professionals go through, he finally broke through in 2018 at the Monday qualifier for the Korn Ferry Tour’s Utah Championship. He would miss the cut, but it was an encouraging step.

Then Sharp got sick. Crohn’s disease causes inflammation of your digestive tract and can result in severe pain, weight loss and malnutrition. After a long recovery, Sharp returned to Walla Walla and slowly got his game back.

Eventually he felt confident enough to play some mini-tour events. Then in 2020, he shot a 64 to once again qualify for the Korn Ferry Tour’s Utah Championship.

In almost every developmentaltour tournament that pros play, range finders are allowed. They are even permitted in Monday qualifiers. Sharp reached for his on the first hole of the Utah Championship and used it again on the second hole when it hit him.

Range finders are not allowed in Korn Ferry Tour events.

“I just had a brain lock,” he says.

“I play in so many events that allow them—it was just automatic.”

Although no one saw him use the range finder, Sharp called for a rules official, and they discussed what happened. The penalty for using it?

Disqualification. Six holes into his second-ever Korn Ferry Tour start, it was over.

Sharp is still chasing the dream of making it to the tour.

OF THOSE PLAYERS WHO MONDAY QUALIFY FOR THE PGA TOUR, LESS THAN A THIRD MAKE THE CUT.

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ANDRES ECHAVARRIA THE DESPAIR OF FALLING SHORT

On one side of the green, Donnie Trosper and his caddie were screaming, hugging and celebrating that they had just earned a chance to play his first PGA Tour event in his home-

town. On the other side, Andres Echavarria was distraught.

Only four players leave a Monday qualifier happy, and the closer you get to succeeding, the worse it feels to not make it. Echavarria doesn’t have any tour status. The only way he can get into a PGA Tour event is to qualify. His 67 was good enough to

▶ sweating it out Mondays are all about posting a low score and hoping it holds up.

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get him into a four-for-one playoff for a spot in the Rocket Mortgage Classic in July 2020. The playoff was exceptional. Echavarria made a 15-footer— punctuated by a fist pump—on the first hole and then had an amazing up and down from a dirt patch on the second hole to extend the playoff.

Then Echavarria had a five-footer for par to extend the playoff to a fourth hole, but this time he missed. Echavarria bent over and covered his face with his hands. The chance to tee it up for more than a million dollars just slipped by. As with most Monday qualifiers, there are few fans; during the pandemic there have been even fewer. Only five saw this drama unfold, and the third hole, a short par 4 over a small creek at Katke Golf Course in Big Rapids, Mich., is a long way from the clubhouse. It is even farther after missing a putt that ended a chance to play in a tour event.

Trosper and his caddie were shouting and high-fiving. Trosper turned on his phone, and his screen lit up with congratulatory texts.

Echavarria, 33, was walking with his caddie; he was hanging his head and shaking it. Neither said a word.

Playoffs for Monday qualifiers are a place of two extremes. Win? Play for the opportunity of a lifetime. Lose?

Wonder where professional golf will take you tomorrow. I approached him, and before I spoke a word, he said, “Not now, Ryan.”

I watched him walk to his car, silently load his clubs and climb into the driver’s seat. There was no plan.

Maybe he would fly home and play a mini-tour event. “I’m sorry I walked past you; I was just so upset—still am kinda.” That was the text message I got from Echavarria a few hours later.

He didn’t need to apologize.

CHASING QUALIFIERS IS EXPENSIVE. INCLUDING TRAVEL AND ENTRY FEES, IT’S MORE THAN $1,000 FOR 18 HOLES.

▶ youth and experience Monday qualifiers are a mix of newcomers like Akshay Bhatia, 19 (right), and former tour pros like Andrew Yun, 30 (middle).

MATT SHORT MAKING A CAREER OF MONDAYS

Matt Short was recruited to play basketball at Lees-McRae, a small Division II school in North Carolina.

There was just one problem: The coach Randy Unger was out of basketball scholarships. However, turns out Unger was also the golf coach, and he asked Short if he had ever played.

Short had but only a few times before turning 17, when he started to take it seriously. Parts of his game were good, but when you pick up the game at 17, the chances of being competitive in college are slim. The odds of playing professionally are even slimmer, although Hall of Famer Larry Nelson, who took up golf at 21 and won three majors, is a notable exception. The plan for Short was to play both sports in the first year and switch to basketball full time when a scholarship became available.

Then Short fell in love with golf.

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Instead of sticking with basketball after his first year, he focused on golf and dedicated his life to getting to the PGA Tour. Short found a swing coach, refined his action and beat thousands of range balls weekly.

If you were to name a mini-tour in the southern United States, Short has probably played it and more than likely won on it. For 13 years, he drove the backroads of the Carolinas playing on the GPro Tour, Carolina Mountain Tour, SwingThought Tour and playing Monday qualifiers.

In a podcast with Short, 37, I asked him how many Monday qualifiers he had played before the PGA Tour’s 2019 Wells Fargo Championship.

“I try not to count,” Short says. “I really have no idea—probably over a 100, and I had never made one.”

That would change on that Monday.

A long putt for birdie on the final hole gave him a 68, not often good enough for a Monday qualifier, but the course was playing difficult that day.

When you have waited 13 years for

your first PGA Tour start, the hourslong wait for scores to come in at a Monday qualifier can be excruciatingly nerve-racking.

“Probably the longest wait of my life,” Short says. But the 68 held up, and Short got his first start, and then he made the cut.

Short went to his next Monday qualifier on the Korn Ferry Tour, got through and made the cut. Two weeks later, another Monday and another success. These are the moments that keep the dream alive, a glimmer of hope that he can play with the best.

Short had a lot of success on the minitour circuit, enough to eek out a living, but it wasn’t easy.

Today you can still find Short driving to mini-tour events in the Carolinas.

“I’m like a poker player: I’m all in,” Short says when asked if he has ever considered giving up his dream.

Look at the field for an upcoming Monday qualifier, and Matt Short is probably there.

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▶ opportunity lost Justin Warren missed an 18-inch putt to get into a playoff for the final qualifying spot of the Barracuda Championship.

DOC REDMAN REDEMPTION AFTER A SLOW START

There are advantages to being a U.S. Amateur champion. PGA Tour exemptions await once you turn pro.

Doc Redman, the 2017 champion, received six but wasn’t able to play well in them. Then came four starts and three missed cuts on the Korn Ferry Tour. The benefits started disappearing.

Redman would go on to miss at qualifying school for the Korn Ferry Tour. Next was Q school for PGA Tour Latinoamérica. Heading into the third round, he was in position to get his card. But on the par-5 17th, he made a 10 that included a ball outof-bounds. It resulted in a back-nine 43 that added up to a 78. The final round wasn’t much better, and he had missed again. Redman was in danger of not having status on any major tours a year after turning pro.

Monday qualifiers take place far off the professional golf path, often at courses in small towns near that

62 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

week’s tour event. Outside of a few girlfriends or parents, there are almost no fans. The Rocket Mortgage Monday qualifier in 2019 was no different. It was being played in Washington, Mich. Redman did not have a single fan follow him that day.

I had caddied in that Monday qualifier and was hanging around the

scoring area with 10 or so players as we watched the head pro handwrite scores on the leader board. Redman walked up, and his two-eagle, sevenbirdie and one-bogey 62 was posted.

Nobody clapped; some players left, knowing his score bumped them out.

Redman talked quickly with the official on-site, made a few calls, picked

up his bag and walked to his car. With no fanfare, Redman had just earned a chance to change his career.

He then shot 68-67-67-67 in the Rocket Mortgage Classic to finish second and secure his PGA Tour status.

One round had given the former U.S. Amateur champion a path back, and he took advantage of it.

BRUCE (B.J.) DOUCETT THE INSURANCE SALESMAN

“I’m not paying to play Torrey [Pines].

I’m only going to play it if I get into a tour event,” is what Bruce (B.J.) Doucett told his friends. At the time, he was a financial advisor and an in-

surance salesman. It seemed unlikely he would ever play Torrey Pines.

Doucett had an excellent college golf career at the University of California, Riverside. The obvious transition would have been to turn pro after college. Instead, he put his clubs away and didn’t touch them for a few years.

“Life got in the way,” he says.

Then the fire returned, and he started playing again. His job allowed him to take clients out to play, sell some insurance and work on his game.

Eventually, his hard work started to show, and people at his club noticed.

He added a few course records, all while still working full time.

There are exceptional players at nearly every club, and plenty of members tell them they should turn pro.

Most of these players have no shot at making it. Professional golf has chewed up some of the world’s topranked amateurs, let alone an insurance salesmen.

Members at Doucett’s club decided to fund him if he wanted to turn pro.

The decision wasn’t easy. Doucett was married, he had a good job, and he and his wife wanted to start a family.

After much discussion, he decided he would do it. His first PGA Tour Monday qualifier would be for the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

The Monday qualifier for this tournament typically features one of the best fields of the year. In 2019, the field had a combined $177 million in career tour earnings, 47 Korn Ferry Tour wins and 24 PGA Tour victories.

Doucette did not have a one dollar of that $177 million—not even a start on the Korn Ferry and PGA tours.

Then he shot a 67 early in the day and had to wait.

“I refreshed the leader board on my phone at least a thousand times,” he says laughing. But his score was good enough, and he was one of the four to get through. Three months after leaving his job as a salesman, he was going to play on the PGA Tour.

That Thursday, Doucett got to play Torrey Pines for the first time, and he didn’t have to pay. He posted rounds of 72-75 to miss the cut.

This year Doucett, 32, is planning to give qualifying school a shot, but the birth of his first child has kept him near home. Regardless, his dream of playing the PGA Tour hasn’t wavered.

“I got to give it all I have,” he says. issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

63

CHIP MCDANIEL PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES

“Are you sure it’s Chip McDaniel?

He played in the U.S. Open yesterday at Pebble Beach.” I sent that text to a person on-site at the 2019 Travelers Championship Monday qualifier being played in Connecticut. It was McDaniel, known as Mr. Monday for

▶ mobile home Life chasing Monday qualifiers often includes living out of your car.

his success at Monday qualifiers, and how he got there was extraordinary.

McDaniel, 25, earned his spot in the U.S. Open via a sectional qualifier. He made the cut at Pebble Beach but struggled Saturday and shot 76, leading to an early tee time for Sunday. That is when he and his brother, Todd, thought they might be able to make it to the Travelers Championship Monday qualifier in Connecticut.

The plan included a shuttle, a red-eye flight, a rental car and some luck.

They weren’t sure they could pull it off, but they would try.

McDaniel’s final round at the U.S. Open on Sunday finished at around noon California time. Two hours later, he was in a shuttle headed to the San Francisco airport, roughly a two-hour drive. His 9 p.m. flight was on time, and he and his caddie were on board. McDaniel was able to get in a few hours of sleep, but as is typical of air travel, it was interrupted frequently by drink carts and seatmates. At 5 a.m. Eastern Time, the pair landed in Boston.

With his caddie driving, they made a quick detour through a McDonald’s drive-through for breakfast and then headed to Ellington, Conn., where the Monday qualifier was being played.

McDaniel squeezed in another small nap in the two-hour drive to Ellington. They arrived in time to hit a few range balls. He walked onto the first tee at 9:17 a.m., 17 hours after— and 3,130 miles away from—his final round at the U.S. Open.

After grinding through the most significant tournament of his life, flying across the country, and with little sleep, there was almost no way he was going to play well. But he was about to live up to his nickname—Mr. Monday.

McDaniel had earned the name after Monday qualifying four times, not to mention sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open. He birdied the first hole and shot 67. His reward was a spot in the biggest playoff of the year. Nine players for the final three spots. The playoff would last three holes.

“Chip is through” read the text I received from the person following the playoff for me at the qualifier.

I stared at my phone in disbelief.

Mr. Monday had done it again.

A HANDICAP INDEX OF 2.0 AND A $450 ENTRY FEE IS ALL IT TAKES TO PLAY IN A MONDAY QUALIFIER. 64 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

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▶ on to the show It takes only one great round to get in front of the cameras.

Mark Baldwin made the Barracuda Championship.

STEVE ALLAN UNABLE TO QUIT THE DREAM

“If I were playing poorly, it would be easy to give up, but I’m so close.”

Steve Allan won on the European Tour in 1998 and on the Australasia Tour in 2002. In 1999, he was ranked among the top 100 in the world. He played on the PGA Tour for parts of eight seasons. But in 2009, he missed 16 of 17 cuts and lost his card. Twelve years later, he is still trying to get it back. He played on the Korn Ferry Tour with mixed results until 2017.

After that, he has played where he could, when he could, some back home in Australia, but mostly in Monday qualifiers.

It’s expensive to chase Monday qualifiers. Including travel costs and entry fees it’s more than $1,000 just to play 18 holes. Allan, 47, and his wife have three children, and it’s difficult to spend that type of money continuously.

66 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

“It’s so hard financially, but I’m playing so well, but at some point, you have to stop; I have a family.”

Allan has played in countless Mondays. “It’s in the hundreds,” he says.

He has played well but with little success. In 2019, he went 0 for 23 and shot over par just four times; he missed in a playoff twice and by one in another three. Late last summer in back-toback Mondays he made 15 birdies, did not make a single bogey, shot 64 in both, and still didn’t qualify.

Then some hope. Allan got through three of four PGA Tour Monday qualifiers in late 2019. Unfortunately, he missed the cut each time. “Those weeks are so expensive,” he says. “You pay for a caddie, hotel and car for the week, and when you don’t make the cut, it really kills you financially.”

Players will do anything they can to save a few dollars. Last summer, Allan drove across the country with his family in their van instead of flying. They stayed at friends’ or relatives’ houses to save on hotel costs. I called Steve

STEVE ALLAN HAS PLAYED HUNDREDS OF QUALIFIERS. ‘IT WOULD BE EASY TO GIVE UP, BUT I’M SO CLOSE.’ for this story to ask him what his plans were now. Like most players without status, he wasn’t sure.

“It’s a week-to-week thing,” he says.

During our conversation, Allan was honest and realistic; he might stop now and try again for the Champions Tour at 50. Then the next week while doing some research for the first few Monday qualifiers of 2021, I noticed a familiar name. Guess who was registered for all of them? Steve Allan. His wife, Bridget, is Steve’s biggest supporter. You can often find her with the kids walking the fairways of a Monday qualifier, hoping her husband will finally realize a lifelong dream.

YOUR GET

BACK SWING STRIP AWAY THOSE ADJUSTMENTS YOU MAKE IN DESPERATE MOMENTS AND BUILD SOMETHING THAT’S RELIABLE ON A LONG-TERM BASIS

•••

BY ERIKA LARKIN

GOLF DIGEST TEACHING PROFESSIONAL WITH MADELINE MACCLURG PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN LOOMIS

i

DRIVING

SLICE AND HOOK ISSUES ARE OFTEN EXACERBATED

BY THE DESIRE FOR IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES.

If your driver shots are curving uncontrollably or you’re making poor contact with your irons, do you try to put a band-aid on it mid-round and hope the problem goes away, or do you get to the practice tee some time after the round and address the root of the problem? If you’re like most golfers, I know your answer.

It’s understandable to want a quick fix to your ball-striking issues to simply enjoy the day, but the compensations you choose often make things worse in the long run. Rather than survive another round with some makeshift adjustments, you’ll be much better off stripping those manipulations from your swing and instead making some quality changes that take care of your issues over a whole season, not just the back nine.

In this article, I’m going to identify the four most common problems I help golfers correct—slices and hooks with a driver off the tee and chunks and thins with irons off the turf—and explain why the quick-fix approach is hurting more than helping and what to do instead. If you get to the range and work on my keys and drills to improve your path, body rotation and contact, you’ll be making quality improvements to your game. larkin, Golf Digest’s No. 1 teacher, is at the Club at Creighton Farms in Aldie.

She became a Golf Digest Teaching Professional in 2021.

SLICE FIX SET UP SO YOU SWEEP IT Slicers usually swing down too steeply on an out-to-in path, so they tee the ball low. That’s a classic band-aid fix just so they can make decent contact—but they still slice. To make good contact and correct the slice, what they should do is tee it higher—half the ball above the driver. This encourages an in-to-out swing path and allows you to hit up on the ball—two key ingredients to driving it straighter, or even drawing it. Also, to help ensure you catch the ball just as the driver begins to ascend, address it so it’s aligned with your lead heel (right).

70 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

SLICE FIX

STAY WIDE AND CONNECTED Another misguided slice fix that almost always leads to poor contact is to try to steer the clubhead into the ball as straight as possible, which typically causes the lead arm’s elbow to bend through impact— the classic chicken-wing look.

Squaring the clubface at impact is important, but it needs to be the result of a swing with good body rotation and no collapse of the lead arm. To get a feel for it, tuck a glove under the lead armpit and make a few swings without dropping it. You should feel like your arms are more connected to your body and moving in sync with its rotation.

This will help square the clubface without having to steer it.

Use your through-swing as a checkpoint. As you’re turning through your shot, ensure that the butt of your club is pointing back at your belly button (left).

HOOK FIX

HOOK FIX LEAD WITH YOUR HEEL PAD

LET THE BODY WIN THE RACE

Golfers who hit hooks often aim way right of their target hoping to get the ball to curve back into the fairway. Instead, they should aim straighter and reduce their hook by quieting overactive hands. The heel pad of your trail hand should lead the fingers through impact (above) to prevent the clubface from shutting. As you practice this, note how that palm seems to mirror your clubface. You want them both facing the target at impact.

Just like slicers who try to steer their way to straighter shots, hookers do it, too. But an armsy swing will promote a shut clubface, not prevent it. Instead, think of your body as your engine and the arms as followers. Don’t let your engine stall. Keep your core turning through impact, and feel your upper body guiding your arms and club down the target line (above).

When the arms follow, the path and clubface will be more neutral.

issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

71

IRONS

POOR CONTACT WITH IRONS IS ALMOST ALWAYS THE RESULT OF TRYING TO HIT THE BALL INSTEAD OF SWINGING THROUGH IT.

CHUNK FIX GET BACK TO THE BALL WITH GOOD POSTURE When golfers dig behind the ball with their irons, they start standing taller at address as a quick fix. Unfortunately, a posture that’s too upright brings the feet closer to the ball, encouraging a steeper swing plane and even more fat shots. To get into good posture that lets you swing in balance and not crash the club down behind the ball, use this drill: Grab a club in your lead hand and stand tall with your knees slightly bent. Hinge at your hips and let your trail hand slide down the trail leg until it reaches the knee (above). Now take your grip; you’re in good address posture.

72 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

CHUNK FIX

STAY IN BALANCE Golfers who chunk their irons often try sitting back into their heels to avoid lunging at the ball. The only way to hit the ball from that position, though, is to lunge toward the ball through impact, and then you’re right back to digging. The proper weight distribution for cleaner contact can be trained by putting alignment rods under the balls of your feet (left). The rods will give you awareness of where your weight is, and how to maintain a sense of balance between the toes and heels. You’ll also notice that I’m hitting my iron off a high tee here. This is another drill to help cure digging by helping you manage the low point in your swing. By hitting off a high tee, you have to shallow your swing to the level of the ball or you will swing right underneath it.

THIN FIX

THIN FIX

FEEL MORE ON TOP OF THE BALL

DRIVE DOWN AND THROUGH FOR BETTER CONTACT

Players who skull the ball often slide away from the target in the backswing, which causes them to try to find an unorthodox way to get the ball airborne while swinging from the back foot. Instead, set your weight more on your front foot and keep it there throughout the swing. This allows you to feel more on top of the ball, so you can compress it and take a good divot. Imagine the target side of your body is against a wall, so you form a straight line with that shoulder, hip, knee and ankle. Then hit shots rotating around your lead side, keeping it pressed on the wall (above).

Many players who thin it start to move the ball back in their stance to make better contact—and that might work briefly, but the shots fly too low. Over time, the golfer will then try to scoop the ball up to raise the trajectory, and then it’s back to the skulls. Instead, let’s do the opposite.

To help your contact, practice hitting shots with the ball off your lead heel at address. You’ll soon realize you have to shift your weight forward and drive down and through to hit crisp irons (above). Practice this way, but play the ball in a more centered position after you groove this move.

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73

DRILLS

HERE ARE THREE OF MY FAVORITE WAYS TO PRACTICE BALL-STRIKING, NO MATTER IF YOU SLICE, HOOK, CHUNK OR THIN YOUR SHOTS.

CHECK YOUR PATH AND ADJUST IF IT IS CAUSING THE CURVE Along with the orientation of the clubface, the path your driver takes through impact greatly influences how much the golf ball curves. That’s why I love this drill. It not only tests your current path to see if it’s too out to in or in to out in relation to the target, it also improves it over time, getting it a lot closer to neutral if you keep doing it.

After teeing up a ball, use a handful of other tees to create guideposts—a neutral swing arc—about a clubhead inside your target line. Note how the tees are arcing (left and above). Your goal is to miss the tees as you swing the club and hit drives at your target. If you do hit the tees, you’ll receive immediate feedback on your swing path.

If you strike the tees ahead of your ball, you’ll know it’s because you were swinging out to in. If you strike the tees behind the ball, you’ll know you’re coming too far from inside the target line. The club should travel on a slight arc.

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JAWS TOE PAD + VARIABLE WEIGHT PORT SYSTEM

DRILLS USE YOUR BODY TO SEQUENCE A QUALITY THROUGH-SWING For better rotation and sequencing in the through-swing, create an extension of your club’s shaft with an alignment rod tucked under your lead arm at address and then start a half-speed swing (above, left). Keep swinging—all the way down into the ball. If your body stops rotating or your swing is out of sync, the rod will bump your ribs around impact. If you keep rotating, feeling like the arms and club trail the rod (above, right), you won’t get struck. That feedback should help you remember to keep turning through the ball when you are out on the course.

GET THE BOTTOM OF THE ARC IN FRONT OF THE BALL Using two alignment rods, form a small gate about six inches wide to swing your club through as you hit shots, making sure the rods are in line with your ball (above, left). After you strike it (above, right), note where your club bruised the grass or started a divot hole. That spot is the low point of your swing, and it should be in front of the alignment rods or you’re not getting the most out of your iron shots. Good iron players hit the ball first, and the club continues to move downward a few more inches after impact. If you can routinely do that, you’ll become a great ball-striker.

76 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

• tobacco road, sanford, n.c. (No. 49) Strange twists and turns make this layout play like a golf hall of mirrors.

GREATEST PUBLIC COURSES 2021-2022

AN OPEN INVITATION TO PLAY AMERICA’S BEST PUBLIC-ACCESS COURSES

BY DEREK DUNCAN // PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN OAR

ublic can mean different things when it comes to golf. Does the word refer to primarily municipal courses and straight daily-fee operations? Do resort courses count, where an accompanying room night might be required to play? What about college and military courses? The answer as it relates to the biennial Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses is all of the above. The ranking this year comprises, to be precise, public-access courses. This includes several traditionally private clubs that now offer limited stay-and-play packages—if you really want to play them, there’s a way. ▶ When it comes to architectural impact, high-end resorts, destination properties and upscale facilities continue to dominate the ranking. Only three municipal courses—Bethpage’s Black Course, Chambers Bay and Torrey Pines (South)—finished in the top 100, and these don’t exactly offer muny prices for nonresidents. Several new courses made impressive entrances, notably No. 15 Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes, Golf Digest’s 2020 Best New Course, and Ozarks National (No. 30), both designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, as well as Pinehurst’s No. 4, remodeled by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner in 2019. ▶ Overall, it was a year of movement with 17 courses debuting or returning after an absence. The Gold course at Golden Horseshoe in Williamsburg, Va., vaulted 24 places to No. 43, reaping the rewards of a 2017 renovation, and Jack Nicklaus’ Great Waters course at Reynolds Lake Oconee, Ga. (also recently renovated), and the Links/Quarry Course at Bay Harbor in Michigan each jumped 17 spots. After laying fallow for a year, Yale Golf Course, which expects to allow outside play once COVID-19 mandates relax, is in the ranking for the first time since 2003 at No. 46.

16. (15) BLACKWOLF RUN (RIVER) Kohler, Wis. Pete Dye (1990) 7,404 yards/Par 72 Score: 61.1407

1. (1) PEBBLE BEACH (CALIF.) G. LINKS Jack Neville & Douglas Grant (1919) 7,075 yards/Par 72 Score: 67.3675

6. (6) PINEHURST (N.C.) RESORT (NO. 2) Donald Ross (1935) 7,588 yards/Par 72 Score: 63.9639

21. (29) MANELE G. CSE Lanai, Hawaii Jack Nicklaus (1993) 7,039 yards/Par 72 Score: 60.5232

2. (2) PACIFIC DUNES Bandon, Ore. Tom Doak (2001) 6,633 yards/Par 71 Score: 64.8645

7. (7) BANDON (ORE.) DUNES David McLay Kidd (1999) 6,732 yards/Par 72 Score: 63.3123

3. (3) WHISTLING STRAITS (STRAITS) Haven, Wis. Pete Dye (1998) 7,790 yards/Par 72 Score: 64.5043 4. (4) THE OCEAN COURSE Kiawah Island, S.C. Pete Dye & Alice Dye (1991) 7,849 yards/Par 72 Score: 64.4146 5. (5) SHADOW CREEK North Las Vegas, Nev. Tom Fazio & Steve Wynn (1990) 7,560 yards/Par 72 Score: 64.1319

8. (8) BETHPAGE STATE PARK (BLACK) Farmingdale, N.Y. Joseph H. Burbeck & A.W. Tillinghast (1936) 7,468 yards/Par 71 Score: 63.1529 9. (9) ERIN HILLS G. CSE. Erin, Wis. Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry & Ron Whitten (2006) 7,731 yards/Par 72 Score: 62.8534 10. (10) SPYGLASS HILL G. CSE. Pebble Beach Robert Trent Jones (1966) 6,960 yards/Par 72 Score: 62.5718

80 america’s 100 greatest public golf courses 2021/2022

11. (11) TPC SAWGRASS (PLAYERS STADIUM) Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Pete Dye & Alice Dye (1980) 7,245 yards/Par 72 Score: 62.5002 12. (12) OLD MACDONALD Bandon, Ore. Tom Doak & Jim Urbina (2010) 6,944 yards/Par 71 Score: 62.3008 13. (14) BANDON (ORE.) TRAILS Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (2005) 6,788 yards/Par 71 Score: 62.0223 14. (13) ARCADIA (MICH.) BLUFFS (BLUFFS) Rick Smith & Warren Henderson (2001) 7,300 yards/Par 72 Score: 61.5764 15. (NEW) SHEEP RANCH Bandon, Ore. Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (2020) 6,636 yards/Par 72 Score: 61.5402

17. (16) PASATIEMPO G.C. Santa Cruz, Calif.

Alister MacKenzie (1929) 6,495 yards/Par 70 Score: 61.0755 18. (18) SAND VALLEY Nekoosa, Wis. Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (2017) 6,938 yards/Par 72 Score: 60.6800 19. (17) THE PETE DYE CSE. AT FRENCH LICK (IND.) RESORT Pete Dye (2009) 8,102 yards/Par 72 Score: 60.6000 20. (19) STREAMSONG (RED) Streamsong, Fla. Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (2012) 7,110 yards/Par 72 Score: 60.5785

22. (21) CHAMBERS BAY University Place, Wash.

Robert Trent Jones Jr., Bruce Charlton & Jay Blasi (2007) 7,585 yards/Par 72 Score: 60.1416 23. (22) KAPALUA (PLANTATION) Maui, Hawaii Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (1991) 7,596 yards/Par 73 Score: 59.9800 24. (20) KARSTEN CREEK G.C. Stillwater, Okla.

Tom Fazio (1994) 7,449 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.9734 25. (23) HARBOUR TOWN G. LINKS Hilton Head Island Pete Dye & Jack Nicklaus (1969) 7,099 yards/Par 71 Score: 59.9078

* = Traditionally private clubs that offer stay-and-play packages.

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26. (24) STREAMSONG (BLUE) Streamsong, Fla. Tom Doak (2012) 7,176 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.7721 27. (26) MAUNA KEA G. CSE. Kohala Coast, Hawaii Robert Trent Jones (1964) 7,370 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.7482

31. (25) OMNI HOMESTEAD (CASCADES) Hot Springs, Va. William Flynn (1923) 6,873 yards/Par 70 Score: 59.5748

36. (33) SEA ISLAND G.C. (SEASIDE) St. Simons Island, Ga. Charles Alison (1928)/Joe Lee (1971) 7,005 yards/Par 70 Score: 59.2018

32. (NEW) PINEHURST (N.C.) RESORT (NO. 4) Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner (2019) 7,227 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.4574

37. (34) THE GREENBRIER (THE OLD WHITE) White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. C.B. Macdonald (1915) 7,246 yards/Par 70 Score: 59.1852

28. (30) THE HIGHLAND CSE. AT PRIMLAND Meadows of Dan, Va. Donald Steel (2006) 7,053 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.7283

33. (28) FOREST DUNES G.C. Roscommon, Mich.

Tom Weiskopf (2002) 7,116 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.4566

29. (27) MAMMOTH DUNES Nekoosa, Wis. David McLay Kidd (2018) 6,988 yards/Par 73 Score: 59.6886

34. (32) STREAMSONG (BLACK) Streamsong, Fla. Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner (2017) 7,320 yards/Par 73 Score: 59.3133

30. (NEW) OZARKS NATIONAL Hollister, Mo. Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (2019) 7,036 yards/Par 71 Score: 59.6256

35. (31) THE QUARRY AT GIANTS RIDGE Biwabik, Minn.

Jeff Brauer (2003) 7,201 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.2455

38. (35) GAMBLE SANDS G.C. Brewster, Wash.

David McLay Kidd (2014) 7,169 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.0990 39. (NEW) BLACK DIAMOND RANCH (QUARRY) * Lecanto, Fla. Tom Fazio (1987) 7,056 yards/Par 72 Score: 59.0420 40. (37) PRONGHORN CLUB (NICKLAUS) Bend, Ore. Jack Nicklaus (2003) 7,379 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.9293

41. (38) FALLEN OAK Saucier, Miss.

Tom Fazio (2006) 7,487 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.8847 42. (36) TORREY PINES G. CSE. (SOUTH) La Jolla, Calif.

William F. Bell (1957) 7,802 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.7683 43. (67) GOLDEN HORSESHOE G.C. (GOLD) Williamsburg, Va. Robert Trent Jones (1963) 6,817 yards/Par 71 Score: 58.7427 44. (39) THE BROADMOOR G.C. (EAST) Colorado Springs, Colo.

Donald Ross (1918)/ Robert Trent Jones (1952) 7,355 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.7350 45. (41) THE PRAIRIE CLUB (DUNES) Valentine, Neb. Tom Lehman & Chris Brands (2010) 8,073 yards/Par 73 Score: 58.6244

• rams hill, borrego springs, calif. The Southern California desert course near La Quinta debuts at No. 98.

82 america’s 100 greatest public golf courses 2021/2022

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• wild horse, gothenburg, neb. Public golfers get the flavor of Nebraska’s Sand Hills at our No. 71-ranked course.

46. (NEW) YALE G. CSE. New Haven, Conn.

C.B. Macdonald & Seth Raynor (1926) 6,409 yards/Par 70 Score: 58.5922

51. (46) CORDEVALLE G.C. San Martin, Calif.

Robert Trent Jones Jr. (1999) 7,360 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.1888

55. (49) PGA WEST (TPC STADIUM) La Quinta, Calif.

Pete Dye (1986) 7,300 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.8848

60. (63) MOSSY OAK West Point, Miss.

Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner (2016) 7,212 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.7544

47. (43) WHISTLING STRAITS (IRISH) Haven, Wis. Pete Dye (2000) 7,201 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.5657

52. (NEW) ARCADIA (MICH.) BLUFFS (SOUTH) Dana Fry & Jason Straka (2019) 7,412 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.1482

56. (51) COG HILL G. & C.C. (NO. 4) Lemont, Ill. Dick Wilson (1965) 7,554 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.7972

61. (55) CROSSWATER Sunriver, Ore. Bob Cupp (1995) 7,683 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.7008

48. (40) MAY RIVER G.C. Bluffton, S.C. Jack Nicklaus (2004) 7,171 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.3870

53. (48) THE LINKS AT SPANISH BAY Pebble Beach Robert Trent Jones Jr., Tom Watson & Sandy Tatum (1987) 6,821 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.1383

57. (42) WILDERNESS CLUB Eureka, Mont.

Brian Curley & Nick Faldo (2009) 7,207 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.7787

62. (59) THE CLASSIC AT MADDEN’S RESORT Brainerd, Minn.

Scott Hoffmann, with Geoffrey Cornish, John Harris & Warren Rebholz (1997) 7,102 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.6490

49. (52) TOBACCO ROAD G.C. Sanford, N.C. Mike Strantz (1999) 6,557 yards/Par 71 Score: 58.3597

54. (NEW) POINT O’WOODS * Benton Harbor, Mich.

Robert Trent Jones (1958) 7,075 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.0066

50. (44) SENTRYWORLD G. CSE. Stevens Point, Wis. Robert Trent Jones Jr. (1982) 7,145 yards/Par 72 Score: 58.2029

84 america’s 100 greatest public golf courses 2021/2022

58. (50) PAAKO RIDGE G.C. (1ST/2ND) Sandia Park, N.M. Ken Dye (2000) 7,562 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.7663

59. (45) THE LOOP AT FOREST DUNES G.C. (BLACK) Roscommon, Mich.

Tom Doak (2016) 6,704 yards/Par 70 Score: 57.7615

63. (80) BAY HARBOR (MICH.) G.C. (LINKS/QUARRY) Arthur Hills, with Stephen Kircher (1998) 6,845 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.6225

64. (56) THE DUNES G. & BEACH CLUB Myrtle Beach Robert Trent Jones (1949) 7,450 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.6094

73. (79) PINE NEEDLES LODGE & G.C. Southern Pines, N.C. Donald Ross (1928) 7,062 yards/Par 71 Score: 57.1713

65. (53) WOLF CREEK G.C. Mesquite, Nev. Dennis Rider (2000) 6,939 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.4490

74. (57) BLACKWOLF RUN (MEADOW VALLEYS) Kohler, Wis. Pete Dye (1989) 7,250 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.1627

66. (78) RED SKY G.C. (NORMAN) Wolcott, Colo.

Greg Norman (2003) 7,480 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.4345 67. (54) MARQUETTE (MICH.) G.C. (GREYWALLS) Mike DeVries (2005) 6,828 yards/Par 71 Score: 57.4242

75. (60) OLD WAVERLY G.C. West Point, Miss.

Bob Cupp & Jerry Pate (1988) 7,088 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.1303 76. (64) PINEHURST (N.C.) RESORT (NO. 8) Tom Fazio (1996) 7,099 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.1251

82. (71) TETHEROW G.C. Bend, Ore. David McLay Kidd (2008) 7,293 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.7729 83. (NEW) THE PFAU COURSE AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY Bloomington, Ind. Steve Smyers (2020) 7,908 yards/Par 71 Score: 56.7416

92. (81) POPPY HILLS G. CSE. Pebble Beach Robert Trent Jones Jr. (1986) 7,002 yards/Par 71 Score: 56.4317

84. (73) THE VIRTUES G.C. Nashport, Ohio Arthur Hills (1999) 7,243 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.7315

93. (91) MID PINES INN & G.C. Southern Pines, N.C. Donald Ross (1921) 6,732 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.4297

85. (77) CALEDONIA G. & FISH CLUB Pawleys Island, S.C. Mike Strantz (1994) 6,526 yards/Par 70 Score: 56.6737

94. (74) BULLE ROCK Havre de Grace, Md. Pete Dye (1998) 7,375 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.4285

68. (58) THE G. COURSES OF LAWSONIA (LINKS) Green Lake, Wis. William Langford & Theodore Moreau (1930) 6,853 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.4062

77. (94) GREAT WATERS AT REYNOLDS LAKE OCONEE Eatonton, Ga. Jack Nicklaus (1992) 7,436 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.0965

86. (NEW) EDGEWOOD TAHOE G. CSE. Stateline, Nev. George Fazio (1968) 7,529 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.6713

69. (72) THE WILDERNESS AT FORTUNE BAY Tower, Minn.

Jeff Brauer (2004) 7,207 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.3412

78. (47) THE LOOP AT FOREST DUNES G.C. (RED) Roscommon, Mich.

Tom Doak (2016) 6,805 yards/Par 70 Score: 57.0169

87. (75) TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL MIAMI (BLUE MONSTER) Dick Wilson (1962) 7,608 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.6385

70. (62) CASCATA Boulder City, Nev. Rees Jones (2000) 7,137 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.3001 71. (68) WILD HORSE G.C. Gothenburg, Neb. Dave Axland & Dan Proctor (1999) 6,955 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.2343 72. (66) NEMACOLIN WOODLANDS RESORT (MYSTIC ROCK) Farmington, Pa. Pete Dye (1995) 7,550 yards/Par 72 Score: 57.2019

79. (76) RED SKY G.C. (FAZIO) Wolcott, Colo.

Tom Fazio (2002) 7,116 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.9939 80. (NEW) FIRESTONE C.C. (SOUTH) * Akron, Ohio Robert Trent Jones (1959) 7,283 yards/Par 70 Score: 56.9599 81. (65) PRINCEVILLE MAKAI G.C. Kauai, Hawaii Robert Trent Jones Jr. (1971) 7,223 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.9212

86 america’s 100 greatest public golf courses 2021/2022

91. (NEW) THE BULL AT PINEHURST FARMS Sheboygan Falls, Wis. Jack Nicklaus (2003) 7,354 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.4385

88. (84) QUINTERO G.C. Peoria, Ariz.

Rees Jones & Steve Weisser (2000) 7,208 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.5957 89. (NEW) TPC COLORADO Berthoud, Colo.

Art Schaupeter (2019) 7,249 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.5501 90. (82) WORLD WOODS G.C. (PINE BARRENS) Brooksville, Fla. Tom Fazio (1993) 7,237 yards/Par 71 Score: 56.4991

95. (NEW) GRIZZLY RANCH Portola, Calif.

Bob Cupp (2005) 7,411 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.3960 96. (NEW) KINGSMILL RESORT (RIVER) Williamsburg, Va. Pete Dye (1975) 6,831 yards/Par 71 Score: 56.3763 97. (88) THE PRAIRIE CLUB (PINES) Valentine, Neb. Graham Marsh (2010) 7,403 yards/Par 73 Score: 56.3727 98. (NEW) RAMS HILL G.C. Borrego Springs, Calif.

Tom Fazio (2008) 7,232 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.3556 99. (NEW) THE MCLEMORE CLUB * Rising Fawn, Ga. Bill Bergin & Rees Jones (2020) 7,005 yards/Par 71 Score: 56.3342 100. (NEW) SPRING CREEK G.C. Zion Crossroads, Va. Ed Carton (2007) 7,348 yards/Par 72 Score: 56.2808

P RO MOT IO N

June 6 - 9, 2021

Eighty players from coast to coast gathered at one of the most highly coveted golf resorts in the U.S., Bandon Dunes, to celebrate the timeless tradition of links golf. During this three day tournament, two-person teams played a four-ball competition at the world-class Bandon Dunes, Sheep Ranch and Pacific Dunes courses. At the end of each day, players enjoyed fun activities, including the opportunity to show off their shot-making skills at the Horse Race on the stunning 13-hole par-3 course Bandon Preserve, and put their short game to the test in a putting challenge on Bandon's famed Punchbowl putting green. Thanks to our sponsors, Heaven's Door and Blaze Grills, participants enjoyed specialty cocktails and tastings, locally sourced BBQ fare, and exclusive prizes throughout the event.

Presented by

2021 Golf Digest Open Overall Champions: Jason + Ken Lund

Photography by Chris Tran Media

THE MUNYS THESE COURSES DIDN’T MAKE OUR RANKING THIS YEAR

88 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

STRIKE BACK BUT THEIR REVIVAL IS AN INSPIRATION FOR PUBLIC GOLF BY DEREK DUNCAN

• city park golf course, denver The 108-year-old layout is integrated into the neighborhood in more ways than one.

The course is simply run down.

Rows of twisted cypress, frozen in wind-whipped postures, clog the golf holes. White clover grows in most of the fairways, sprinklers sometimes fire at odd intervals and trash bins overflow with debris, waiting to be emptied by volunteer golfers. Averaging close to 35,000 rounds a year, the course has been chronically underfunded by the city of San Francisco, leading to deteriorated playing conditions and a broad sense of golf anomie.

Legislation was introduced in 2011 to shutter the course after outside groups sued because of the presence of two endangered frog and snake species, freshwater animals that migrated to a former saltwater lagoon after Sharp Park had been built. The San Francisco Public Golf Alliance, a group co-founded by Harris and attorney Bo Links in 2007 that advocates for the well being of the city’s municipal courses, led efforts to successfully defend the course against four lawsuits and preserve its existence. That fight for Sharp Park stayed execution but also led to severe restrictions on how the grounds could be maintained.

90 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

“San Francisco is not an easy town,” Harris says. “It has a very strong and very proud golf culture; the U.S. Open comes to the city about every 10 years, and it has nationally ranked clubs.

But the politics are difficult.” With the exception of Harding Park, renovated in 2003, the political and cultural willpower San Francisco authorities exhibit in protecting its most notable historic landmarks doesn’t extend to its golf courses, even a rare and cherished site like Sharp Park.

Although the environmental issues at Sharp Park are unique, its economic and existential story is similar to that of many municipal courses.

During the golf boom of the late 1950s through the early 1970s, when hundreds of courses opened each year in response to popular demand, cities and counties eagerly financed the construction of golf courses. The game was embraced as a healthy outdoor activity, an important amenity that fostered a sense of community and offered attractive settings for social gatherings. Even into the 1980s and 1990s, courses were generally considered important civic utilities

like parks, libraries and swimming pools, with the bonus of being sources of revenue.

But during the past generation, municipal courses in many localities have come under attack. Governments have begun to question the rationale of subsidizing such large and expensive properties given the relatively small number of people that use them, particularly as golf rounds in the United States declined overall during the past 20 years (2020 and 2021 being exceptions). City councils and other elected officials often look at their municipal courses with mixtures of bewilderment, resignation or even hostility, and environmental groups and other opponents brand them as 150-acre money pits that waste taxpayer dollars and wreak ecological damage. In every part of the country, from Seattle to Atlanta to Houston to Detroit, municipal courses have endured ongoing threats of closure and redevelopment, often only saved through the actions of vocal citizens’ groups.

Recently, however, a number of cities have found innovative ways to recapture the promise and optimism of municipal golf, offering new prospects for the game in the public sphere. Just across the bay from Sharp Park, the city of Alameda knew it needed help managing the 36-hole Corica Park Golf Course, a complex that once hosted nearly as many golfers a year as Torrey Pines. Conditions and rounds had declined for most of the 2000s, and rather than allow the courses to limp along with no prescription, Alameda outsourced the operating contract to Greenway Golf, a company that specializes in turf and course maintenance.

Municipalities that hire companies to oversee their courses often continue losing money if they fail to remedy underlying infrastructure issues.

At Corica Park it was drainage—the North and South courses sat below the water level of San Francisco Bay. Greenway agreed to invest $14 million to essentially create two new courses in return for a 45-year lease. Partnering with golf architect Rees Jones to reconstruct the South course, Greenway’s chief agronomist Marc Logan, who has undertaken much of the construction work personally, negotiated an agreement to receive shipments of

city park: tanner gibas/denver golf

R

ichard Harris stands on the 16th tee at Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica, Calif., and gestures west toward a high embankment, a sea wall that separates the course from the Pacific Ocean. People stroll and jog on it, daubs of color moving in each direction, taking in views of golf holes on one side, the crashing water on the other. Harris is indicating where a proposed green might go, that of a par 3 playing to the base of the sea wall. ▶ The hole would be part of a long-imagined recreation of the greens and bunkers architect Alister MacKenzie designed, just before he began work on Augusta National, that have been worn away in the decades since the course opened in 1932. A pure restoration is not possible—a number of magnificent beachfront holes were demolished in the early 1940s, replaced by the barrier that protects the property from storm surges. Although the sea wall prevents the design from being what it once was, its presence isn’t the biggest obstacle to a rebirth of Sharp Park, one of only two municipally owned MacKenzie courses in the United States and one of the few anywhere the public can play.

brad knipstein

• corica park, alameda, calif. A new drainage system has changed the fortunes of this muny. more than 390,000 tons of sand that was being excavated in San Francisco to cap the entire site to a depth of 12 inches. Beneath it, Logan designed a complicated network of drainage and irrigation, installing it with a skeleton crew of workers (rather than contracting it out). Every drop of water that hits the grass is captured and recirculated, meaning nearly incalculable long-term savings as water becomes an expensive and strictly regulated resource.

The dry, sandy sub-soil and selected grasses, including an old, seldom used strain of drought-tolerant California Bermuda known as Santa Ana that shows beautiful golf hues from yellow to gold to lime, accentuate the “magic” of the South course’s fastrunning turf, designed to emulate the Sand Belt courses of Melbourne.

“I knew back in 2011 that [capping with sand] was the only way this site was going to work,” says Logan, a native of Australia. “Quality is the only way to ensure success. You still have to work hard at it, but it gives you an advantage in the market-

place if your product is exponentially better than the competition.”

The South course now tallies more than 70,000 rounds a year and costs residents $52 or less to play. Logan is applying the same sand-and-turf recipe as he builds the North course, a shorter but more sporty and heavily contoured layout designed in consultation with Ron Whitten, Golf Digest architecture editor emeritus.

Another encouraging revival is Charleston Municipal, completed in December 2020 after a thrifty but artistically ambitious renovation.

The 92-year-old working-class golf course has always been popular, but flooding, wet turf and excessive tree growth negatively impacted playability. Between an allocation of funds from the city (which continues to oversee operations) and private donations collected through an organization called “Friends of the Muni,” approximately $3.5 million was raised, enough to enact significant upgrades without raising green fees.

Residents can walk for just $20, and out-of-town players—projected to

be about 10,000 a year—can do it for $60, if they can get a time.

In addition to new grass and drainage, architect Troy Miller rebuilt the green complexes and bunkering according to the template holes developed by C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor in the early 20th century.

Raynor had spent time in Charleston in the 1920s building Yeamans Hall and the Country Club of Charleston, so his angular, identifiable features and shot strategies have a history in the area, even if Charleston’s public players haven’t had the opportunity to experience them. Now they can.

Miller’s renditions of the Raynor concepts—including gorgeous Redan and Punchbowl greens, among others—are loyal and adventurous. For Miller, it was especially gratifying to bring this new identity to Charleston Municipal because he grew up playing the course and lives in the neighborhood across the street. A youth tournament was being played the day I visited early in the year—Miller’s young son was playing in it—and 8- to 10-year-olds carrying their small bags

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filled up the course. It’s unlikely many knew who Seth Raynor was, but they were all getting accustomed to solving the problems of his particular architecture. The golf course looked like a park, or better yet, a playground.

The same is true at Belmont Golf Course in Henrico County, Va., now managed by The First Tee of Greater Richmond. For years, the county didn’t know what to do with Belmont—the A.W. Tillinghast design that once hosted the PGA Championship had become dilapidated and logged about only half the rounds it once did. Henrico considered converting it into parkland.

Two grassroots groups—Preserve Belmont and Friends of Belmont— campaigned to save the course.

Around that same time, Brent Schneider, CEO of The First Tee of Greater Richmond, was traveling with a potential donor and mentioned the thought of converting Belmont to a 12- or 14-hole course with extra amenities. “He almost stopped the car and said to me, ‘Are you kidding? I’ve been telling my friends for years I want to build a good 12-hole golf course,’ ” Schneider recalls. “I think 12 is the perfect number based on where society is going.”

After securing more than $5 million in donations, including one major gift (the county contributed another $750,000), the design firm of Davis Love III and lead architect Scot Sherman faithfully restored 12 Tillinghast holes and converted the remainder into a fun, six-hole short course, a 31,000-square-foot Himalayas putting green and expanded practice range. Since opening in the spring of 2020, the response has been “crazy, just crazy,” Schneider says. As a nonprofit, he says The First Tee’s return on investment is measured by “how many kids we reach,” and by that standard Belmont is already profiting: The historic Tillinghast holes attract die-hard architecture fanatics, and the low-stress culture appeals to a cross-section of children, families, new players and even young executives who want to learn the game.

Serving an array of community needs has always been municipal golf’s purpose, Richard Harris said

• papago, phoenix A family destination

with spectacular course vistas.

as we spoke of Sharp Park. But civic leaders need to be willing to search for the right combination of ways to make courses work.

“Public courses, and I would argue muny courses, carry the biggest burden of youth programs, First Tee programs. It’s the place where high school teams are, and they’re where beginners come into the game,” he said. In addition to providing jobs for all ages, “they’re the most culturally and ethnically diverse places in golf.”

They’re also the largest green space provider for many communities, oases amid the surrounding urban heat. Far from damaging nature, golf courses can be a city’s greatest expression of it.

“We try to explain to the general

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public that golf courses are good for the environment—it’s open space, which is grass and trees,” says Scott Rethlake, director of golf for the city and county of Denver. “We have stringent requirements on water usage—we use less per square acre than a park does. We do things for the environment that go beyond our borders, like creating bee pollinators or using non-playable areas for habitats or to plant vegetable gardens and donating up to 500 pounds of produce back to charities in the area.”

In the case of City Park Golf Course, it also protects surrounding property values. The entire course was renovated beginning in 2017 as part of a $46-million stormwater project to miti-

gate flooding (funded by normal water utility fees). The century-old neighborhoods around the course, where golfers have played since 1913, regularly took in water during major storms.

Now, after reconstruction, the low areas of the western half of the course serve as collection basins that can temporarily hold more than 200 acre-feet of water before draining out at a rate the below-ground infrastructure can manage (tees and greens are elevated above the waterline). Architect Todd Schoeder cleverly re-engineered the golf holes to accommodate the dual usage (City Park’s entire acreage, including practice area, is only 138 acres) and crafted vintage features that recall original designer Tom Bendelow. The

courtesy of papago/Jim frenak • sharp park: brad knipstein

• sharp park, pacifica, calif. Alister MacKenzie’s design near San Francisco remains in a fragile state.

MANY CITIES ARE FINDING NOVEL WAYS TO RECAPTURE THE PROMISE AND OPTIMISM OF MUNICIPAL GOLF.

earth excavated to deepen the basins was moved to the center of the property where a new clubhouse stands, providing beautiful views of the Front Range. Local residents, including many who don’t play golf, gather there to meet, eat and watch sunsets, something that didn’t happen before.

A similar synergy between golfers, non-golfers and the city takes place at Papago Golf Club in Phoenix, the result of an arrangement between public and private entities. In 2014, after years of financial struggle at Papago, the city entered into a management contract with Arizona State University, which needed a home for its men’s and women’s golf teams after deciding to redevelop the existing

campus course. The university enlisted the help of Gregg Tryhus, developer of Grayhawk and Whisper Rock golf clubs in Scottsdale, to create the non-profit Arizona Golf Community Foundation. Tryhus and city and ASU representatives serve on a board that oversees administrative and financial obligations, and OB Sports is the daily operator. The Foundation and ASU also raised donations for the construction of a new clubhouse.

This private-public initiative has reenergized Papago and led to increased rounds, improved course conditions and the addition of a state-of-the-art practice and short-game facility used by the public and the ASU golf teams.

But the main attraction at Papago might be the clubhouse and Lou’s Bar & Grill, a bustling restaurant and outdoor space that breaks traditional barriers by attracting a diverse range of customers who don’t play golf.

“We didn’t design the clubhouse for the golfer,” Tryhus says. “We designed it—and the back yard—for the community.” On any given day or night, the restaurant is crowded with families, couples and kids dining, taking in the views of Papago Park and listening to live music. The revenues created by food and beverage in turn elevate the entire golf operation.

“Families don’t look at it as if they’re going to a golf course,” Tryhus says.

“They’re going to a really cool destination, an outdoor restaurant—any restaurateur in town would want to be in that back-yard space.” It all comes back to golf’s willingness to share land and connect with the community and residents. “Isn’t St. Andrews used as a community park on Sundays? Maybe we’ve come full cycle.”

The non-profit, public-private model might be the way forward for most municipalities (this is the approach being used at the restorations of Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia and three historic Washington, D.C., courses

operated by National Links Trust).

“This doesn’t work if we have to make a profit,” Marty Elgison told me. He was referring to Bobby Jones Golf Course, a remarkable re-imagination of an exhausted and dangerously tight course in Atlanta, where I live. Elgison, a longtime attorney for the Jones family, created the Bobby Jones Golf Course Foundation with former Georgia State Golf Association president Chuck Palmer a decade ago to elevate the standard of golf that bears the Jones name. It became much more.

Fueled by $28 million in donations and naming rights, Bobby Jones now offers a reversible nine-hole course, elite practice facilities, weekly camps and clinics for kids, instruction and clubfittings and a restaurant with striking skyline views. To see the participation—women and men of all colors, kids and adaptive golfers taking lessons and millennials using robotic caddies—is inspirational. After all, transformations don’t matter much if they don’t fulfill municipal golf’s ability to expand the dynamics of who plays and how many.

The common thread in these and other successful revivals is support— municipal golf must have it. It can originate organically, later inspiring municipalities to solicit investments in the name of better golf and neighborhood connections, or it is the city or county that initiates improvements through private partnerships and smart management arrangements.

But no renaissance can happen without the bottom-line advocacy from a community of golfers and officials in high places. This brings the topic back to Sharp Park, one of the great unrealized municipal course revivals in the country. For now, its fate is “to be determined,” with only one party—golfers—willing to take up the fight.

“But we’re going to do this,” Harris says. “It’s Alister MacKenzie—you don’t give up on that.”

96 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

DAVID LEADBETTER INTERVIEWS LEGENDARY FOOTBALL COACH NICK SABAN ABOUT THE ART OF GETTING BETTER P H O T O G R A P H S BY WA LT E R I O O S S J R .

ick saban is arguably the greatest college-football coach of all time, leading teams to seven national championships, including his most recent in January for the University of Alabama. He describes himself as a golf fanatic, and during the offseason you can find him working on his 11.2 Handicap Index at the Coral Creek Club in Placida, Fla., or his other retreat, the Waterfall Club in Lake Burton, Ga. Saban and Golf Digest Teaching Professional David Leadbetter recently became acquainted and have become friends thanks to their passion for the pursuit of athletic excellence (not to mention the Hall of Fame instructor might get Saban’s handicap into single digits more regularly). “If his game is a small fraction as good as his coaching ability, he’ll have no problem,” Leadbetter says. We listened in as the two legends in their respective sports sat down for a chat about golf, football, life, and most importantly, what it takes to be an effective teacher. —by ron kaspriske leadbetter: Even after all these years, I’m still picking up things from other coaches, and it makes me wonder whether you’re still learning? saban: Absolutely. You never stop trying to find a better way. Whether it’s how to teach, how to develop, how to evaluate, how to help your organization be more consistent and successful, you’re always looking for a better way. But, of course, the game changes, technology changes, the rules change, so you have to change with it.

I’ve been told that whenever you’re not coaching, you’re on the course.

How’s your game?

I never play during football season, and so I kind of have to re-learn it

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every year. When you show up to play golf where I play, and you don’t have any tan on your legs, they line up to get your money. They know you haven’t been playing. Seriously, I’m not a natural, and I didn’t have good coaching when I was younger. So I have a lot of bad habits to break, but if I can break 80, I played well.

You never master any sport, but which sport would you say is more difficult to get to the highest level— golf or football?

It’s hard to make comparisons in sports. But I find that after being a basketball player, a baseball player and a football player and not starting to play golf until later in life, it’s much more

difficult to be consistent at golf. With other sports, if you were willing to play hard and put in the extra effort, you could overcome some deficiencies. In golf, you can put in extra effort, but if you can’t maintain consistency in your technique, you’re going to struggle.

Do you see similarities between how you prepare your team and how a golfer prepares for competition?

There’s different stages of preparation to get your team ready to play, which I’m sure every golfer goes through, too.

You don’t just go out and hit driver.

How you approach it depends on the wind, and all the different shots you must make, and if you have to work the ball—which I’m not capable of doing any of those things.

If you go back and look at Gary Player versus Jack Nicklaus, there was no question who was superior from a physical-talent standpoint. But the fact that Player had that determination, that grit, to get to the top helped him compete with Jack. When recruiting, do you like to find a great natural talent, or do you like a grinder?

You’re going to have all different types of players on your team, but ideally, you’d like a combination of the two.

One of the most important things we do in an evaluation is define the critical factors to play the position. If you look at someone swinging a golf club, there’s got to be several factors crucial to that player being successful, regard-

© 2021 PGATOUR, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLAYER APPEARANCE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

less of that person’s grit or determination. Character and attitude are very important to reaching your full potential. You can say Jack Nicklaus was more talented than Gary Player, but Nicklaus had determination and grit, too, or he never would have been able to achieve the potential he had. We’re looking for character, and do these players have the critical factors to play their positions. There are plenty of people who know what they want to do and even understand the process of things to do it, but they don’t have the discipline to execute it every day.

When you lose a game, and your team’s down, how do you go about motivating? Do you use the TLC approach or the big-stick approach?

The best time for athletes to learn is when they make mistakes. I always say, don’t waste a failure. Whether you got beat on a play, lost a game or lost a golf match, that’s the best time to learn. That’s when people are going to be more receptive to the critical eye.

I have a little more compassion and subtle approach to the players when we lose, and when we win, I have a much more aggressive approach toward pointing out the corrections that need to be made. Just because you win the game doesn’t mean you played perfect. The worst thing you can do is play poorly and win. If you play poorly and win, you made a lot of mistakes that need to be corrected, but now the players don’t have the disposition to work. Complacency creates a blatant disregard for doing what’s right.

Has golf made you a better coach?

It’s good conditioning for me to be able to stay focused, even when things don’t go well. Golf is a metaphor for life. Whether you hit a great shot or a bad shot, you still gotta play the next shot. That’s how life is.

In your career, you’ve obviously seen a lot of changes—technology, quality of athletes, etc., right?

Everybody’s gotten bigger, stronger and faster. But the style of play has changed, too. Football used to be played in what I call a box, a small area—a lot of running, not a lot of passing. Now the game has evolved to be spread out, play fast, make it difficult for the defense, create a lot of run-pass conflicts. You got to change with it, or you get left behind.

I’ve heard one of the biggest parts of your job is preparation, true?

100 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

No question. When people hear preparation, they think it’s just for the game, having a good plan on offense, defense and special teams. But it goes all the way back to what is the mind-set of the people in your organization, what is the mind-set of your team? How can they focus? How can they stay resilient and overcome adversity? All these things are part of preparation that people don’t really look at.

What is your definition of discipline?

It’s a little bit different than what a lot of people talk about: what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it. We make hundreds of decisions a day based on self-discipline.

There’s something I’m supposed to do

that I don’t want to do, and you make yourself do it. Over here there’s something that you’re not supposed to do, and you want to do it. Can you keep yourself from it? That’s self-discipline, and it goes a long way toward the decisions you make as a football player and on a golf course—like Tin Cup. He knew he should have laid up. I do that sometimes, too, you know? I’m in the woods, and you know you should just punch it out and take a stroke, but instead you try to hit it to the green and end up making an 8.

Have you had players who worked hard to become superstars?

I think of Mac Jones, our quarterback this past year. He’s an example of that.

The guy was in the program for three years, played behind some really good players. He worked hard and waited for his chance and succeeded. Today, a lot of people look for an easier path than that. They transfer and go someplace else because they are very outcome-oriented. I think back to our

generation. We were more processoriented. What do I have to do to get the outcome that I want? Today I ask a receiver, what is your goal? Well, I want to catch 50 passes. But that’s not a goal; that’s an outcome. Just like you ask a golfer, what is your goal? I want to shoot two under today. Shooting 70 is an outcome. It’s not a goal. Trying to get people to be process-oriented is the biggest challenge that we have.

You’re one of the greatest collegefootball coaches ever. What keeps you motivated?

I enjoy coaching because I like to see players reach their potential—personally, academically and on the football field. Each group of players is a new challenge. We’ve coached at Alabama for 14 years, but a lot of people didn’t think we’d stay for three because I moved around a lot. I came to the realization later in my career that every year is a new challenge. That keeps me motivated. The second thing is, very simply, I hate to lose.

I oversee a junior academy, and our goal is not only to develop the athlete but to develop the youngster as a good person. Is that a factor for you?

Our No. 1 goal with all the players we’ve ever recruited is to help them be more successful in life because they were involved in the program. Most want to be good players in football, but if you can transfer that desire to other parts of your life, they have a much better chance to be successful.

Coach Lou Holtz is a golf nut, like you. He once told me he used to get so angry on the golf course. One day, he was playing in a pro-am, and the pro said, “Hey, Lou, you’re not good enough to get mad.” How do you take what you apply in coaching to your golf game?

Getting angry is not the best way for me to coach successfully, and getting angry from a bad shot or circumstance on the golf course is not the best way for me to play well. I tell players regardless of what happened on the last play, you have to play the next play.

I try to tell myself that when playing golf. You’ve got to be prepared for the next shot regardless of the situation you put yourself in. It’s good for me.

It’s a practice in patience, which I’ve never been accused of having much of. It’s a practice in the ability to stay focused even when things don’t go well. It’s helped me as a coach.

Rattle the Bottom My top 10 tips to help you hole more putts by xander schauffele

still think arm-lock putting is like cheating. Yes, I tried it in competition (resting the shaft against my left forearm) before going back to my old grip at the Olympics in Tokyo. I might even try it again, but this story is not about how you hold the putter. It’s about the simple things anyone can do to really increase the chance of holing out. My putting coach, Derek Uyeda, and I compiled these 10 tips to help you when you practice and play. Give them a shot. — with ron kaspriske

I

schauffele, the gold-medal winner at the Olympics, is eighth in total putting on the PGA Tour in 2021.

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1. If you only read putts right behind the ball, you might not be in the best position to see the break.

Farther back often reveals more detail about the putt.

2. A good way to start to get the read is to ask yourself, If I hit this putt right at the hole, where would it end up? That distance from the hole is the amount of break you need to play on the opposite side.

3. Whether your stroke arcs, cuts across the ball, or is fairly straight back and through, what matters most is that the putterface is square to your line at impact.

4. I putt left-hand low, so it looks like my shoulders are a hair closed in relation to my putting line, but they’re really parallel with it. Squaring up is something to keep checking. Calibrate for consistency.

5. You might have been told to set your eyes directly over the ball at address, but I see the line better with my eyes over a spot nearly an inch inside of it. If you’re missing short ones, give it a try.

6. Feel like you move the putter with your midsection, not your shoulders or your hands. It makes your stroke a lot easier to repeat.

7. Hit up on the ball ever so slightly to get the best roll.

8. No matter the putt, one constant in my through-stroke is acceleration—it’s light. There’s no big collison with the ball.

9. Your practice stroke is almost always better than your real stroke. The lesson? Make your real stroke like the ball isn’t there.

10. Your last look? Don’t just picture the ball going in before you putt—picture where it goes in and at what speed. Now you’re ready to pull the trigger.

CHANGE YOUR WARDROBE

CHANGE YOUR GAME The Jim Nantz by vineyard vines collection is a curated line of timeless styles in modern performance fabrics designed for those who truly love the game. and The Shops at Pebble Beach.

Discover the collection at

Pebble Beach, Pebble Beach Golf Links® and its respective underlying distinctive images and hole designs are trademarks, service marks and trade dress of Pebble Beach Company. Used by permission.

Photographs by Jensen Larson

issue 7 . 2021 | golf digest

105

Body GD Schools

coil like a spring

T

he length of your backswing is not nearly as important as feeling fully wound. The more you’re able to coil your body while remaining in a stable posture, the more momentum and clubhead speed you can generate on the downswing.

In addition to having a stronger windup, your hands and arms will be more behind your torso and in a better position to correctly deliver the club to the ball on a path inside the target line.

To get what being “fully coiled” feels like, take your normal stance and lay a club down on the ground midway between your heels.

Then place your pitching wedge across your upper chest in line with your shoulders. Now mimic a backswing, turning your shoulders in posture until your back faces the target and the grip end of the wedge points to the club on the ground. Bonus points if you can get it past the club like I am here (below).

What you should feel is that the muscles across your back are really stretched and the trail hip and glute are flexed. This drill will help you hone the feeling of a powerful, complete backswing. It’s really beneficial to go back to this drill or to think about it in those nervous moments on the course when tension starts to shorten your swing.

propel your swing with a good pivot

W

hat’s a pregnant woman like me doing throwing a medicine ball (above)? Don’t worry, it was fairly light. I use it to train my students to make the proper pivot and forward motion needed for a repeatable swing. Too many golfers get fixated on the ball, instead of focusing on the target, and get stuck on their back foot too long.

Instead, think, Coil back, clear and toss through.

If you have access to a med ball, give this drill a shot: Start by getting in your normal golf posture while holding the ball in front of your stomach. Then coil back and turn through, throwing the ball against a wall or to a partner. You should have the feeling that your hips and torso are rotating toward the target and that your arms are extending as you release the ball. The forward momentum of the toss should carry you into a full finish.

Another exercise to put more athleticism and efficiency in your motion is to make some medium-length swings using your core muscles to power the movement. End each swing with the club pointed toe up and the grip pointed at your baby (photo, previous page). Sorry, pregnancy humor. This will help keep your club and body connected throughout the swing, improving your path and ability to square the clubface. Engage your core and try to add more speed and momentum with each pass while keeping the length of the swing concise.

106 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

get control of the face

O

ne of the most common flaws I see among amateurs occurs on the takeaway—they roll the club to the inside and fan the face open, a bad position that usually leads to crooked shots.

To take the club back with the face in a much better position to hit the ball straight, try this drill: Swing back with your pitching wedge until the shaft is parallel to the ground. Now check the position of the clubface like I am here (left). What you want to see is that the angle of the clubface matches your spine angle, meaning it should be tilted slightly toward the ground as if looking at the ball.

This slightly closed look puts the club in position to strike the ball with a square face.

You won’t have to make any hectic compensations during the downswing to make that happen. To groove this move, check the clubface on a rehearsal swing when the shaft is parallel to the ground, and then try to recreate that position as you hit a short wedge shot. Then keep repeating this twostep process until it feels automatic.

use your feet to improve flexibility

S

o many of the golfers I teach, particularly senior men and women and those who have desk jobs, have limited range of motion in their pelvis.

That can become a major power leak if you don’t make adjustments.

An easy way to create more mobility in the pelvis and train a better motion is to make some half-swings with your pitching wedge, picking up your lead heel on the backswing and trail heel on the downswing (right). You might recall that legends such as Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan would lift their lead heel to facilitate a greater turn off the ball. Bubba Watson does it, too. It’s an effective way to regain flexibility lost by time or inactivity. And lifting the trail heel helps encourage a more natural transition on the downswing. It helps you plant your front heel back down and properly shift into your lead leg, so you can rotate your body around it and rip the ball.

baby on board

▶

Golf is a great way to stay active while pregnant. My mom played well into her pregnancy with me, and at the time these photos were taken last spring, I was less than four months away from giving birth and still playing once or twice a week.

Being pregnant does create swing challenges, however. Besides dealing with the baby bump, there is more of the hormone relaxin present in the body, which causes muscles to become looser, especially around the pelvis. As a result, the hips have a tendency to sway or slide—a common amateur problem that makes it hard to hit solid shots.

This drill can help: Start in your golf posture with your hands dangling and facing each other a few inches apart. Keeping your lead hand still, stretch your trail hand and hip up and back as far as you can while staying in a balanced posture (above).

This is similar to the feeling of stability you want as you take the club back.

detlefsen dahl, a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, is at the West Bay Club in Estero, Fla.

Body Equipment

driver specs Callaway Mavrik, 10.5°, TPT prototype shaft, 45.0625 inches. ▶ After my bag was shot for this article I switched to Callaway’s Epic Speed at the WGC-FedEx event. I was getting a little too much spin with my Mavrik driver.

The Epic Speed lets me optimize spin yet still easily work the ball both ways. fairway wood/hybrid specs Callaway Mavrik Sub Zero, 17°, Fujikura Ventus Black 8X shaft; Callaway Apex Pro, 23°, Fujikura Atmos Blue 8X shaft ▶ My fairway wood is multi-purpose. It’s really good off the tee, but having a little extra loft adds some height and spin for shots off the fairway. You need that when hitting long shots into PGA Tour greens. irons specs Callaway Apex TCB (4-9), Project X 6.5 shafts, Golf Pride MCC 58 ribbed grips.

driver

300

▶ I was playing the Apex Pro before but did some iron testing at the start of this season. These irons give me more control.

When I take speed off, I can maintain the same spin. That’s so important. A lot of times on tour I’m not hitting a lot of full shots, so the ability to maintain spin throughout the bag is very helpful.

5-wood

270

wedges

21˚hybrid

240

4-iron

228

specs Callaway MD5 Jaws Raw (46°, 50°, 56°, 60°), True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shafts.

5-iron

215

6-iron

200

7-iron

187

8-iron

173

—with e. michael johnson

club

yards*

9-iron

158

pw

144

50˚

132

56˚

117

60˚

97

* carry distance

108 golf digest | issue 7 . 2021

quiet, please ▶ Hunting and fishing are great breaks from tour life. It’s an escape from everything. To be outdoors and see God’s creations with no distractions is cool. When I go with my dad, it’s nice to be able to share that bond with him.

Callaway Chrome Soft X is great in the breeze, especially in crosswinds. I go through three or four balls a round. I mark the ball with a single black dot over the last “a” in Callaway.

▶ The 46-degree is my pitching wedge, not a matching piece of my iron set. The grinds and bounces are pretty standard, although I mess around with the 60-degree to make it more versatile around the greens. putter specs Odyssey O-Works 7S, 35 inches, 3 degrees, Odyssey rubber putter grip. ▶ I’ve been using this putter pretty much since I turned pro in 2017. It’s a club I’m comfortable with, and it sets up well for me. I’m not one to switch putters very often. Having the comfort level, seeing the line and having good results make it difficult to take this out of the bag.

keeping it clean ▶ My family is in the car-wash business in Louisiana. They were opening a new facility recently, and I conducted a putting contest.

Anyone who beat me got free car washes for a year— and there were a few people who did.

Photographs by J.D. Cuban

burns: Julio Aguil Ar/getty imAges • Hunting: Courtesy of sAm burns • bAll: e. mike JoHnson • CAr WAsH: JupiterimAges/gettyimAges

age 25 lives Choudrant, La. story Has one win on the PGA Tour, the 2021 Valspar Championship. giving back I played in a lot of American Junior Golf Association events growing up.

Junior golf is such an incredible experience. The AJGA reached out to me about hosting an event this year, and we got it done. For me, I just wanted to give back to that organization. The AJGA not only created opportunities for myself, but does so for so many young golfers around the world. It was an honor to be a part of it.

Body Tee to Green by Butch Harmon

Downhill Got You Down?

Here’s all you need to hit it flush

et me guess: You hit a lot of fat shots or drop-kicks from downhill lies. The reason is, the ground is higher behind the ball so the club tends to run into the turf too soon. To make solid contact, adjust your setup to make the downhill play like a level lie.

The first thing to understand is that the ball is going to come out lower. Figure that into your club selection, and expect the ball to roll more—and probably fade a little.

Widen your stance for more stability and sit down with your rear end, feeling heavier on your feet. Here’s the big one: Angle your front shoulder and hip downward,matching the direction of the slope. You can check the angle with the shaft of your club (below). That’s how you neutralize the downhill lie.

From there, make your normal swing because you’ve compensated with your setup. One warning: Your instinct might be to help the ball up, and that’s an absolute killer. It causes you to hang back and flip the club upward, making it more likely to catch that higher ground behind the ball. So make an extra effort to swing the club down the slope, nice and smooth (left). Do that, and those downhillers won’t be so stressful.

L

—with peter morrice butch harmon is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional

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Photographs by J.D. Cuban

The Loop

by coleman bentley

The Best College Football Trips for Golfers This Fall Game days just became golf days

9/18 auburn vs. penn state Beaver Stadium, State College, Pa. play: Penn State Golf Courses (White)

9/25 notre dame vs. wisconsin Soldier Field, Chicago play: Harborside International Golf Center

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10/9 oklahoma vs. texas Cotton Bowl, Dallas play: Cowboys Golf Club

10/20 coastal carolina vs. appalachian state Kidd Brewer Stadium, Boone, N.C. play: Linville Golf Club

10/30 florida vs. georgia TIAA Bank Field, Jacksonville play: TPC Sawgrass (Dye’s Valley)

11/20 ucla vs. usc Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum play: Rancho Park Golf Course

Illustration by Daniel Downey

There’s a level of authenticity here at NICHOLAS AIR— we know who we are, and we’ve been committed to our Members’ missions since day one and complete those missions with aircraft that are Owned and Operated by NICHOLAS AIR. No identity crisis, no changing business plans every six months, no relying on another’s brand to help build ours. We’ve kept private travel simple— skipping the 30 page contracts and spending more time doing what you wanted- enjoying the best of private aviation experiences. After 24 years, our mission is still the same: provide the world’s most refined set of private flyers with the best aircraft the industry has to offer.

Our Members come to us because they want authenticity and reliability, and for over two decades, they’ve found it right here, at NICHOLAS AIR.

NicholasAir.com • 866.935.7771 • #NicholasAir

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All aircraft are owned and operated by NICHOLAS AIR . NICHOLAS AIR and INNOVATIVE PRIVATE AIR TRAVEL are registered trademarks ®2021 NICHOLAS AIR. All rights reserved.

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