Golf Digest T October 2019

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Contents 10/19

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

▶ core stories Small-town America is the hub for golf-ball manufacturing. 59

34

Ladies Love.Golf New Claude Harmon 3 Performance Golf Academy pro Amy Millward is on a mission to grow the women’s game. by kent gray

36

Courses: Perry Cabin Pete Dye’s final inspiring design. by ron whitten

38

The View From Pebble Beach Twenty years later, remembering Payne. by jim nantz

74

Closeout Increasingly severe penalties for slow play

Features 40

cover story Zane Scotland The Englishman with more MENA Tour titles than any other player is finding new ways to keep on winning. by kent gray

The Starter 06

Red Mountain Golf Club Welcome to the club dubbed the most exciting in Phuket.

Play Your Best 09

More Greens in Reg Make iron play a strength, like this PGA Tour rookie. by collin morikawa

by kent gray 12

Columns 04

Editor’s Letter The superstars at next’s month’s DP World Tour Championship at JGE might just be upstaged.

Living Legend The Man Who Sits by the Door: Bernhard Langer.

christopher payne

Behind the Scenes Insults for Charity. by max adler

48

by john huggan

The Golf Life 26

The Lowdown from Lowry The Open champion revels on his magical week at Portrush, and the highs and lows that led to it.

Golfers We Like WWE superstar The Miz unwinds with golf.

54

Get Your Putting Back A complete guide to regaining touch and feel. by josh zander

by coleman bentley 18

Fairway Flusher You don’t have to back off with this guide to better fairway wood strikes.

20

Tee to Green In a tight spot?

Don’t over-think it. by butch harmon

22

Crush It, Stick It Score lower with a better driver and wedges. by mike stachura

Cover photograph by Joy Chakravarty/MENA Tour

59

30

The Digest Subtle ways to flex on famous courses you’ve played.

32

Green Jacket Goals The Junior Masters Golf Tour is opening up a world of possibility for Middle East youngsters.

by josh thornton

by jerry tarde 16

What pressure?

Learn how to hole the putts that really matter.

Chips That Pop Stop it near the hole with crisper contact. by david leadbetter

by mike kinloch

by kent gray 14

24

by kent gray

If These Golf Balls Could Talk . . . . . . They would tell a story about four small American towns saved by golf. by mike stachura and e. michael johnson

68

The Most Low-Profile, High-Profile Swing Coach in Golf Denis Pugh’s unique touch moulds winners like Francesco Molinari. by john huggan

october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

3

Editor’s Letter

“When they see me rocking up to the tee they don’t mind but when I beat them, they do.”

“Just be Yourself ” s few as one in 200,000 newborns are affected by Ellis-Van Creveld Syndrome. Characterised by shorter status and limbs, those with the inherited bone growth disorder have particularly short forearms and lower legs as well as a narrow chest with short ribs. More than half of affected individuals are also born with a heart defect which can cause serious and even life-threatening health problems.

Some, like Brendan Lawlor, use a big ticker to simply get on with life.

“I wouldn’t really see it as a condition…I’m happy enough as it doesn’t affect me,” says the furniture salesman from Dundalk in Ireland. Indeed, the 22-year-old has never thought of himself as anything other than “normal”.

“To be honest, my family was a good factor because they never treated me any differently,” Lawlor said in a recent interview with Tony Bennett, the CEO of the EDGA (formerly European Disabled Golf Association).

“I’ve lived my whole life feeling normal and that was the key factor. Just be yourself in any situation and do the normal things that a normal person does… whether you’re 6ft tall or 4ft tall.”

Lawlor did all the things young Irish lads continue to do, like playing Gaelic football and soccer as a kid. It was only when adolescence kicked in and his mates started to really outgrow him that he was forced to consider a different sporting path. Thankfully he could turn to golf, a game he fell in love with after being given a cut-down driver at the age of three by his golf mad granddad Bill.

The game continues to make Lawlor feel comfortable in his own skin even if his 1.49m (4ft 11in) frame still turns heads at tournaments.

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4 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

“Golf helps me deal with it because when you’re beating people that are 6ft 6in … when they see me rocking up to the tee they don’t mind but when I beat them, they do mind.”

It’s hardly surprising Lawlor beats most able-bodied players. The Dundalk G.C. member is down to scratch and has risen as high as third in the R&A-sanctioned World Ranking for Golfers with Disability (WR4GD). He’ll arrive at Jumeirah Golf Estates next month as the player to beat at the 36-hole EDGA Dubai Finale tournament which will run in conjunction with the DP World Tour Championship.

Lawlor is coming off the biggest win of his career at the EDGA Scottish Open, held on the sidelines of the Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club in July, but won’t have it easy.

The six players thus far confirmed for JGE are all ranked in the top10 of the WR4GD, including No.1 George Groves.

The Englishman lives with Erb’s Palsy, a condition that impacts the nerves within the neck that control the motions of the arms, turning them inwards. Watch out too for Australian amputee Geoff Nicholas who spent much of his childhood standing up to bullies because of Thalidomide poisoning; he was born with the Fibula in his right leg, and both ankles, missing and would later have his right leg amputated.

Kudos to the European Tour for helping fast-track opportunities for all in our great game. DP World’s support of the Dubai finale is also especially timely as the UAE celebrates the Year of Tolerance.

Golf is, thankfully, getting better at inclusion. All the European Tour’s big guns, Rory McIlroy included, look set to reach the 50man Race to Dubai decider at JGE but I’m picking the eight-person EDGA event will wow even more.

editor-in-chief Obaid Humaid Al Tayer managing partner & group editor Ian Fairservice editorial director Gina Johnson editor Kent Gray senior art director Olga Petroff art director Clarkwin Cruz editorial assistant Londresa Flores photographers Masam Ali, Mustufa Abidi instruction editors Mike Kinloch, Jack Woods, Luke Tidmarsh, Joe Way chief commercial officer Anthony Milne publisher David Burke general manager - production S. Sunil Kumar production manager R. Murali Krishnan assistant production manager Binu Purandaran THE GOLF DIGEST PUBLICATIONS chairman & editor-in-chief Jerry Tarde international licensing director Edward Klaris international editor Ju Kuang Tan GOLF DIGEST USA chairman & editor-in-chief Jerry Tarde editorial director Max Adler executive editor Mike O’Malley, Peter Morrice general manager Chris Reynolds managing editor Alan P. Pittman design director Ken DeLago playing editors Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson, Jordan Spieth

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KENT GRAY kent.gray@motivate.ae • Twitter: @KentGrayGolf / @GolfDigestME

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6 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

Red Mountain Golf Club “The Most Exciting Golf Course in Phuket� by kent gray

culpted from the remains of an old tin mine and seemingly enveloped in lush jungle vegetation, Red Mountain Golf Club is a delight to the golfing senses. Designed by Jon Morrow and Al Tikkanen, the 6,781 yard, par-72 layout has been a beacon for golf holidaymakers to the Kingdom of Thailand since its opening in 2007. A strategic challenge enhanced by numerous risk and reward opportunities including drivable par 4s, Red Mountain cleverly exploits the dramatic land forms and elevation changes remnant of the tin mine. Few holes in this stimulating test disappoint and certainly not the signature par-3 9th with a 50m drop from tee to green. A must play. redmountainphuket.com

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Photograph courtesy of Red Mountain Golf Club

HalaThailand | www.Tourismthailand-Middleeast.org | HalaThailand

Play T’S EASY to be seduced by distance, especially out here on tour. I see guys like Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm fire balls for miles and think, Yeah, I’d like some of that.

But one of the best pieces of advice I’ve received since turning pro came from Justin Thomas. He told me to know myself and stay true to that. I got to the PGA Tour by playing a certain way, and there’s no reason to make changes simply because the courses are longer and the competition is tougher.

I listened to Justin, and in my first nine starts since joining the tour, I have a win (the Barracuda Championship in July), a second-place finish, and I haven’t missed a cut.

The strength of my game is iron play.

I didn’t get enough rounds in to qualify for the tour’s statistical rankings, but my stats in strokes gained/approach the green and greens in regulation would put me near the top in both categories. Golf Digest asked me what’s my secret to stiffing iron shots, and I’m going to share a few things I do on the following pages to hit it close.

Hopefully they’ll help you play your game a little better. —WITH JOEL BEALL

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More Greens in Reg Make iron play one of your strengths

BY COLLIN MORIKAWA

Photographs by Dom Furore

october 2019 | golfdigest.mecom

9

Play Your Best Tour Technique

dial back your swing speed

When I was in college at Cal, they said my shot dispersion with a 6-iron was about the same as the average tour pro’s with a pitching wedge.

I guess that’s a humble brag, but if you want to know why I think I hit my irons so straight, it’s tempo. Swinging with good tempo is one of the first things you’re taught as a golfer, but many players eventually forget its importance for accuracy and instead focus on club and body positions. To swing rhythmically, first focus on a good finish (right). Practice hitting shots at half speed and gradually swing faster as long as you can make a full swing back and through—no shortcuts!—and still create this poised-and-balanced finish. It’s the fastest way to improve your tempo and become a better ball-striker.

start back with the arms in close

I have a bad tendency of letting my arms drift away from my torso in the takeaway, which makes my backswing too steep and off plane. If I can stay on plane back and down, I don’t need to make compensations to create an accurate and repeatable ball flight. To maintain a better connection between my arms and body and stay on plane, a drill I use is to stuff a glove under my left armpit and keep it there as I swing. If it falls, I know my arms are separating again (above). To try it, work through a progression: First keep the glove in until your club is halfway back, then go three quarters of the way back with it and finally all the way to the top. If you’re on the course, tucking your shirt into your left armpit is another way to stay connected.

hit it through the window

I’m not a slave to TrackMan numbers.

What’s more important is that the shape and trajectory of the iron shot I just hit are the same as what I visualised.

Ideally, the ball is moving through a window I imagined in the sky as I stood over the ball. Try it. Instead of worrying about hitting the ball or controlling distance, make a swing that can produce the shot you see. You’d be surprised how your body reacts intuitively to make that happen. It frees you up.

10 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

Photograph by First Lastname

“If you can pose in balance, you’ve got good tempo.”

A Rookie Right at home on Tour Morikawa made the most of his starts 72.6

55.4

LASER SHARP ▶ morikawa hit 72.6 percent of greens in regulation from 175-200 yards in 2019 on the PGA Tour.

The tour average was 55.4 percent.

T TOOK LESS THAN two months on the PGA Tour for Collin Morikawa to go from welcomed guest to full member. He earned his PGA Tour card by winning the Barracuda Championship in just his sixth start after turning professional.

“It happened fast, but that was the goal,” says Morikawa, 22, a native of Los Angeles.

It was fast. Morikawa, the former No. 1-ranked amateur in the world, debuted as a pro at the RBC Canadian Open in early June and finished T-14.

After making the cut at the U.S. Open and the Travelers Championship, he had an amazing July. Over a 21-day span, he finished T-2 at the 3M Open, T-4 at the John Deere Classic and first at the Barracuda.

“You certainly have hope of pulling something like that off,” Morikawa says.

“But to do it, that’s something else.”

Perhaps Morikawa’s early success as a pro was inspired by a performance he had as an amateur. At 19, playing in the thenWeb.com Tour’s Air Capital Classic—his first professional event—he nearly won, losing in a playoff to Ollie Schniederjans.

Despite the temptation to turn pro after that performance, Morikawa did not waver in his commitment to the University of California Berkeley. “Going all four years and earning a degree was a big deal to me,” he says. Morikawa became Cal golf’s first four-time AllAmerican, and graduated from the Haas School of Business with multiple honours.

Initially, Morikawa’s pro transition was largely unnoticed, overshadowed by the debuts of media favorites Matthew Wolff and Viktor Hovland of Oklahoma State.

But Morikawa didn’t mind.

“I grew up with Matt in junior golf, and Viktor is extremely talented,” Morikawa says. “They warrant attention.”

Politeness for the competition aside, Morikawa is not shy about where he fits into the mix. “From my first shot at the Canadian Open, I knew I belonged out here,” he says. —JB

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Play Your Best Putting Practice with Michael Kinloch

“Drills and games are a great way to recreate a competition feel.”

What Pressure?

Make the ones that count like Solheim Cup starlet Suzann Pettersen

ROUND (AND ROUND) THE WORLD Choose a relatively flat part of the practice green and position four balls 4ft (1.2m) from the hole in North, South, East and West positions. Then place a second series of balls 6ft (1.8m) away on the same line. Start with the 4ft putts and try to hole each ball. As soon as you miss a putt, reset the balls and start again.

The drill is complete after all eight putts are holed without missing. As you go from ball to ball holing putts, you’ll begin to feel a little pressure as you get closer to finishing, especially if you have had a few unsuccessful attempts. If this drill is too easy and you complete it regularly, add another four balls, this time positioned 8ft (2.4m) away. After that and you’ve gone beyond the Pettersen zone!

– with kent gray

Michael Kinloch is Head Professional at Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club’s Peter Cowen Academy Dubai. For more information, visit dubaigolf.com

to nail the putts when they really count. The problem is, putting practice can quickly become tedious. Incorporating drills and games is a great way to recreate more of a competition feel and beat the boredom. Here’s a couple of fun options: PUTT WITH DOUGH Measure a two meter putt and place a dirham coin under the ball, then position a tee on either side of the putter head, one just outside the toe and the other just outside the heel, leaving only a 0.5cm gap at either side. The tees on either side will help to ensure a centred strike on the face and

Download the Golf Central app for the best available rates at Dubai Creek Download from

(2)getty images

earty congratulations to Catriona Matthew ’s side for their nail-biting victory at last month’s spectacular Solheim Cup. The entire three-day match came down to Suzann Pettersen who duly rolled in a nerve-jangling putt to secure a memorable boilover at Gleneagles. What was impressive about the winning seven-footer was how the veteran Norwegian kept to her routine and, of course, her very solid putting technique.

So what can you learn from Pettersen’s career-defining moment? Quite simply that hours of relentless practice are required

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also improve the putter’s path.

The putter head should not touch the tees as you are making your stroke. The coin, meanwhile, serves two purposes, the first to help you keep as still as Pettersen. After striking the putt make sure your eyes remain on the coin and keep them there until you hear the ball drop. Amateurs often miss putts by rotating the body towards the target during impact.

Secondly, you should not strike the coin with the sole of the putter head - it should be approximately 2cm off the ground at impact if you find the centre of the putter face.

A successful putt is one where you miss the tees, miss the coin and hole the putt. Give yourself 20 attempts and practice until you can match the tour average of 65 percent from this distance – 13 successful putts.

The Golf Life Legends

You can always count on Bernhard Langer.

The Man Who Sits by the Door

▶ still rolling Langer, who became a pro at 15, turned 62 in August.

BY JERRY TARDE Chairman and Editor-in-Chief ERNHARD LANGER was 15 years old when he had his first attack of the yips. Asked later how he kept up his spirits after missing two-footers, Langer replied: “I take encouragement from those rare days when I don’t four-putt.”

As a misser of two-footers, I read that sentence painfully.

Through the years, Langer would face four prolonged battles with the yips, the last in 1997, which should give all of us the solace of that famous Yiddish golf tip: gam zeh ya’avor. This too shall pass.

I asked Bernhard the same question recently. “When you go through it, it’s depressing, disheartening,” he said. “You know if it goes on, you’ll be done. Two things helped me in those times: The knowledge that I was a good ball-striker, one of the best on tour. I knew if I kept trying, I would figure it out. And second, my faith in God.” He also experimented with different putting styles, leading eventually to his embrace of the long putter.

Langer is to Europe what Byron Nelson was to the American tour: one of the co-founders, a dependable iron player, a tournament winner of enormous integrity and a God-fearing gentleman. Unlike Nelson, he came early to the tour and stayed.

Langer turned pro at 15, won his first tournament at 17, and 47 years later is still winning on the Champions Tour.

Dan Jenkins used to describe him in casual conversation as “the son of a Czech bricklayer who settled in Anhausen, Germany, after he leaped from a Russian POW train at the end of the Second

World War.” But “Fritzie” was his nickname on the nascent European Tour. He might have had the delicate look of a Nordic tennis player in those days, but right below the surface was the cold resolve of a submarine commander.

The old story that summed him up was told by our mutual friend Peter Dobereiner. After a tournament at the Aga Khan’s course on Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, there was a bus waiting to take the players to the airport in Cagliari, but two over-served pros were not to be found, and the bus left without them. Sardinia was a scary place back then, a hotbed of the Mafia, marauding pirates and kidnappers. The bus trip was long and remote through mountains and thick brush.

“A bandito could crouch in this maquis and be invisible to pursuers a yard away,” Dobereiner told us. This was the old European Tour that bred killers the likes of Seve Ballesteros and Sam Torrance.

About an hour along, two disheveled figures appeared on the road and the bus driver stopped to pick up the missing pros, barefoot, with torn and bloodied clothes. They collapsed into the back seat and

14 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

implored the driver to go like hell. With safety the paramount question, an argument ensued among the tour pros about how best to repel a boarding.

Dobers said the conclusion was unanimous: “Fritzie! Go and sit by the door.” They escaped with their lives, but it proved to be a formula the Euros used often in coming Ryder Cups. At the darkest moments, send Fritzie to sit by the door.

I was paired with Bernhard as my partner in the Rolex proam at the Senior British Open this summer, and I asked him about that story. “I think I was just naive and sat where they told me,” he said. He played beautifully in the pro-am at Royal Lytham. His swing had the same tempo as I recall from the 1980s when I wrote a couple of instruction pieces with him in Golf Digest—the backswing paused just short of parallel at the top now, but transitioned downward briskly like Tom Watson, with a short rebound of the shaft at the end.

He hit every iron at the target, just as I remembered when he won his two Masters. In the pro-am, I contributed a couple

of net birdies at the end and we finished second to Monty.

Over lunch he said, “You have a pretty good swing,” in that clipped German accent. My 12-handicap looked at him and laughed. He said, “No. I don’t say things I don’t believe.” (So now, like Bill Murray’s encounter with the Dalai Lama, I’ve got that going for me.) Langer went on to win the Senior Open by two strokes for his 40th victory on the Champions Tour, just five behind Hale Irwin’s record. Bernhard attributes his longevity to taking breaks from the game. Soccer used to be his getaway recreation; pickleball and pingpong are it now.

Naturally the day we spent together I paid close attention to his putting, which has come under scrutiny by some fellowcompetitors who think the butt end of his long putter touches his sternum in violation of the anchoring rule. I can assure you, it’s close—maybe two inches—but it never touches.

For one thing, it would be like accusing Byron Nelson of cheating. Inconceivable. It’s Fritzie’s success that blurs the vision of his accusers. In my mind, he will always be the one you can count on. The man who sits by the door.

phil inglis/getty images

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Behind the Scenes

The goal is $100 million for disadvantaged children.

Insults for Charity Gary Player & friends spare no one for a good cause by max adler ow much does a round of golf with Thomas Bjorn, or hospitality tickets to the DP World Tour Championship, fetch at charity auction? It depends, it turns out, on how creatively the auctioneer can insult a gathering of high-net-worth individuals.

The scene is a black-tie gala in an English garden during a heat wave. Servers roam with trays of champagne and fruit-infused gin on ice. Earlier in the day, at the pro-am outing at Wentworth, Ian Woosnam impressed with one-arm push-ups, and Alvaro Quiros boasted sarcastically about winning his first event in two years. The indefatigable host of the Berenberg Gary Player Invitational, the Black Knight, remarked after pro Inci Mehmet piped a drive past his, “Boy, if you were married to her, you wouldn’t want to come home late.”

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16 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

Which is to say the atmosphere is loose, celebratory. Since its inception in 1983, Player’s foundation has raised more than $64 million to support schools and provide medical care to disadvantaged children across the globe. Berenberg is a German bank, and it’s thanks largely to its executives and clients that the goal of $100 million is in reach. For the 36 amateurs hanging tonight with 36 pros—seven major champions among them—such intimacy is the reward for their generosity.

But they are about to get roasted.

Jonny Gould, a self-described “fifth-rate British television host from another time” who found his true calling as an auctioneer, has the mic: “Remember, the only reason Gary’s people have been nice to you for the past year is to get your money.”

To one early bidder, Gould says: “You, sir, I see your wife looking at you with an expression that’s surely been absent some time. There’s a certain degree of respect, a certain degree of passion. Are you going to let her down tonight by losing?” Gould is armed with an annotated seating chart and

shames financial titans for paltry bids by reciting their holdings. He asks one youthful bidder if he needs time to call mummy and daddy for permission. In the next breath, he growls like a lion and asks an older bidder if he’s about to let the next generation take his manhood. And so Gould toys with the audience, pitting egos against egos, but the real reason prices escalate is because people want to hear what he’ll say next.

Cooling down with a beer afterward, tuxedo shirt soaked, Gould recalls his first auction, done reluctantly as a favour for a friend at a dive pub in London. He couldn’t draw a single �50 bid, let alone the tens of thousands he’s fetching per item tonight. So out of something like desperate retaliation, he started making fun of the audience. To his surprise, the people loved it, and the bidding took off.

Gould doesn’t spare himself: “If you ever watched cable TV soccer highlights between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., you might recognize me.”

With the spirit of self-deprecation in the air, I ask two Hall of Famers what they think of our cover subject this month, Max Homa, whose painfully frank Twitter account provides the structure for his interview with staff writer Joel Beall on page 52.

Fred Couples: “Nice kid. Hits it nine miles. I played with him before he won in Charlotte, when he couldn’t make a cut, and I didn’t get it. My caddie told him he wasn’t achieving remotely what he should be.”

Tom Watson: “Reminds me a bit of Mike Reid. Very smart, very honest, spoke from the heart.”

Couples: “Mike Donald was another guy who’d punish himself all day long. He’d tell you he couldn’t beat anybody, then finish third. But this was 1990. I might’ve told a friend, ‘I suck,’ but never a stranger. Telling the whole world you suck—I don’t get that.”

How much weakness should a golfer show, and to whom?

The successful German bankers getting roasted with their checkbooks out bring to mind a quote from another German, a pastor, Martin Niemöller: “If you can laugh at yourself, you are going to be fine. If you allow others to laugh with you, you will be great.”

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Play Your Best Fairway Woods with Josh Thornton

WATCH THE VIDEO â–¶ Josh brings this lesson to life at golfdigestme.com

18 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

“Your weight must move more to the front leg at the point of impact…”

Flush off the Deck Bring birdie or better in to play with better fairway wood strikes l Mouj Golf is famous for its lengthy par-5s which require several well-struck blows if you are to walk off the hole with a par or better. A problem that many of our members and visitors face when playing these long holes is the second shot where the ball is sitting on a flat part of the fairway. You’ve got the green light to have a go at the green but it’s a tough call deciding whether to sacrifice distance and play several iron/ hybrid shots safely down the middle or pull out a longer and riskier fairway wood.

If this conundrum sounds familiar, then you’re not alone.

Let’s look at what you can do to improve your ball striking with fairway woods ‘off the deck’ to bring birdies, or better, in to play.

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ground, without taking a large divot, that will send the ball sailing towards a green that once used to feel out of reach.

—WITH KENT GRAY Josh Thornton is a PGA teaching professional at Al Mouj Golf. For more information, visit almoujgolf.com

ball position ▶ To help ensure the club approaches the ball at the correct angle, nail your ball position at address. Aim for roughly one golf ball from the inside of your front foot.

CENTRE OF GRAVITY As well as the correct ball position (see insert), your centre of gravity is key to crisp fairway shots. In a golf context it’s a complicated term but can be simplified as a description of where your weight moves to during the swing. For fairway woods, your weight must move more to the front leg at the point of impact, around 80 percent (see image right). It’s critical that your hips turn to create this weight movement, not sway from side to side.

Put this all together and you have an angle of attack that allows a positive impact with the Photographs by Steve Erana

Play Your Best Tee to Green by Butch Harmon

“My only thought: Throw it over the catcher’s head.”

HIS SUMMER, I got to experience baseball’s version of the first-tee shot. As honouree of the PGA Tour’s 2019 Houston Open, I threw out the first pitch at the Astros game on July 23. With a few deep breaths and a little advice in my head (Aim high), I chucked a pretty good one, as Bob Uecker said in “Major League,” just a bit outside.

People ask me if I was nervous, and what I was thinking about out there. On the walk to the mound, I told myself, One of two things is going to happen here—a good one or a bad one— so just do it. The first thing that struck me was how high it feels to be on a pitcher’s mound.

You’re really throwing downhill. As for my nerves, I didn’t have much time to think about it. It had been a long day of meetings and media for the

No Mulligans Allowed How to get it done when you have just one shot

Houston Open, so I didn’t even have a chance to throw a few balls to warm up—exactly what I tell my players never to skip!

In the weeks before the game, I’d gone to an indoor training facility a couple of times with two ex-baseball players who live near me, Tyler and Cooper Kitrel. They gave me some pitching tips: Forget the windup. Just turn, rotate your hips and go. Release it higher. The one thought I ended up using on the mound was, Throw it over the catcher’s head. I’m convinced that’s how I got it to the plate. One thing was for sure: I wasn’t going to throw it in the dirt and get booed.

You can see me here in my honourary jersey. Why No. 75?

My age. With 38,000 fans in the stadium, I’ll tell you, I was happy with the result. My takeaway for golfers is, when you’re in a tight spot, don’t over-think it. The more you delay, trying to control the situation, the more tension you create. Like I said, a few deep breaths and a positive thought.

Try that on the first tee next time.

—WITH PETER MORRICE butch harmon is based at Rio Secco Golf Club, Henderson, Nev.

20 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

photos courtesy of houston astros

T

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Play Your Best Equipment

Crush It, Stick It Score lower with a better driver and wedges

BY MIKE STACHURA OUR PROS are better than average golfers in just about every way, but they really separate themselves with the driver and wedge. Tour pros are about a football field longer off the tee than average golfers, according to stat-tracking data from the Arccos GPS app. They also hit the fairway 62 percent of the time compared to about 38 percent for average golfers.

The difference between us and them is even greater with the wedge. Based on 20 million shots, Arccos says average golfers take three or more shots to hole the ball from off the green 70 percent of the time. On the PGA Tour, zero players average three shots or more most of the time.

How can the rest of us catch up?

Well, lessons and lots of practice, of course, but the right driver and wedges will help, too. For example, some new driver shafts are barely heavier than a slice of bread. This kind of weight savings can help some players gain more speed and control without changing their swings or spending hours in the gym. Other drivers are designed with weighting that minimises a slice, or they use offset to help you hit it straighter.

In wedges, new groove designs and sole shapes can help improve spin and contact. How much?

A GolfTEC study found that even a two-year-old wedge lost a third of its spin compared to a new model. Average golfers go about five years without replacing their wedges. (For tour players, five weeks might be a lot.) So, yeah, tour players are different than us, but these new drivers and wedges could help you close the gap.

T

22 golfdigestme | october 2019

1 call away epi c fl a sh star ▶ The face, designed with the help of artificial intelligence, gives ball speed a boost.

Also, the club weighs 50 grams less than standard to boost slow swings.

2 cl e ve l a nd c bx 2 ▶ The cavity features a hollowed-out section to expand the sweet spot. The wider sole offers forgiveness and playability options around the green.

4 to u r e d ge h ot l a un c h 4 ▶ Built for forgiveness, both standard and offset models use rear weighting and a sloped crown to lower the centre of gravity for high launch and low-spin.

3 mizuno t 20 ▶ The durability of the boroninfused steel maintains groove sharpness, and the vertical channels between the grooves divert moisture for cleaner contact.

Pros really separate themselves with the driver and wedge.

7 ca l l away jaw s m d5 ▶ There are 23 options and four sole grinds, and the new sharper grooves’ upper edges are cut at a tighter angle to provide more spin on partial shots.

5 ti t it t le iist st ts 1 ▶ It’s 45 grams lighter than other TS drivers, and its high launch yields slightly more (not low) spin, something the company says slower swingers need.

6 cle c le v e l an d l a un c h er h b tu r bo ▶ The thin, closed face mixes with deep weighting for higher flight, forgiveness and slice correction. The shaft weight is balanced toward the grip for control.

8 tay lorm ade m i l led gr in d 2 .0

9 p i ng g l i de 3 . 0

▶ The unfinished, raw face isn’t an aesthetic touch; it promotes more consistency in the sharp grooves and laser-etched surface pattern for more grab.

▶ The four sole options include a version that’s true to the venerable Eye2’s sole and high toe, and they feature a larger polymer cavity insert for softer feel.

Photograph by Ivory Serra

Play Your Best Golf Made Simple by David Leadbetter

“Give it a pop, and then stop.”

what’s with taking an open stance on chips?

Chip It Like You Mean It Getting it to the hole is all about crisp contact long, flowing chipping stroke is never a good idea if the goal is to be consistently accurate with these shots. Take the club back too far, and you’ll be inclined to decelerate through impact and dump it. ▶ Good chipping is all about acceleration, so let’s make sure your focus in on keeping your speed up as the clubhead meets the back of the ball. To do that, I want you to give the ball a pop with your wedge. The follow-through is short, ending just after contact. There’s no need to keep the club moving any farther.

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24 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

It’s ball, then turf, then stop. Focus on that short follow-through, and your club will actually be speeding up as it reaches the ball. It’s like snapping a towel. You accelerate the towel in the direction you want it to snap, then hit the brakes hard. You can reach any spot on the green this way.

—with ron kaspriske david leadbetter is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional.

▶ I get this question all the time from students: What’s the point of setting up with the body open (pointing left of the target for righthanders) when you’re hitting short shots around the green? The answer lies in the question itself. Because it’s not a full swing, the body doesn’t have ample time to rotate into an open position like it does when you’re hitting shots off the tee or full irons from the fairway.

So setting up open presets a good finish position.

Although it’s a short shot, don’t just swing with your arms on chips and pitches.

The body has to rotate toward the target. Setting up open helps promote that.

Photograph by Dom Furore

The Leading Edge by Michael Breed

Play Your Best

“Splashing a ball out of sand takes more power than you might think.”

Exit Strategy Bunker play the easy way ERE’S YOUR greenside sand lesson in two words: speed and bounce. Splashing a ball out of a bunker takes more power than you might think—that’s the speed part. And to use that speed effectively, the club has to slide through the sand without getting stuck—that’s the bounce. Focus on a few keys.

First, grip the handle more in your fingers than your palms.

This will help you hinge your wrists on the backswing—notice I have a full wrist set by halfway back (right). I can use that lever to generate speed quickly.

Second, lower the handle at address, feeling more bend in your wrists. When your hands are low, the heel of the club is more exposed, and that helps the clubhead glide through at a consistent depth. Setting the hands higher raises the heel and can cause the toe to dig, which stops the swing short.

Third, stay centred as you go back, and then swing to the left through impact. To maintain the club’s bounce, don’t let the shaft rotate counterclockwise as you swing through. Your trail hand should stay under the shaft, the knuckles on your lead hand pointing up. Use these keys to hit quality bunker shots.

H

—WITH PETER MORRICE michael breed is Golf Digest’s Chief Digital Instructor.

Photograph by Walter Iooss Jr.

october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

25

Crushing It WWE superstar The Miz unwinds with golf by coleman bentley

t’s the night after the wwe’s big SummerSlam event, and The Miz has appeared out of nowhere to add insult to his rival Dolph Ziggler’s injuries. With cameras rolling, he administers a Figure Four Leg Lock. Ziggler, still hobbled from his match with Goldberg the night before, writhes on the mat as the man they call The A-Lister performs his signature finishing move: The Skull Crushing Finale.

The crowd in Toronto goes wild. The Miz’s work here is done. ▶ This is what constitutes a 9-to-5 in The Miz’s world. It’s physical. It’s violent. It’s a long way from a desk job. But when it comes time to unwind from the pile-driving life of a WWE superstar, The Miz turns to the same outlet we all do: golf. ▶ Known to close friends and the IRS as Mike Mizanin, The Miz first picked up the game when he was 12, playing Sunday rounds with his father, uncle and cousin. Losers bought dinner.

They played public courses all around northeast Ohio, and he still remembers draining a 75-footer to seal a victory for his father and himself. Maybe not quite as impressive as besting John Cena in the main event of 2011’s WrestleMania XXVII, but still pretty good. ▶

I

26 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

month 2019 | golfdigest.com

27

The Golf Life Golfers We Like

▶ home body With one baby daughter and another on the way, The Miz takes his cuts wherever he can find them.

▶“With WWE, right before I go out to the ring, I’m focusing.

I’m getting my mind absolutely correct so I know I can do my best,” he says. “I look at golf as relaxation. But I have to have that focus so I can play well, because if I don’t play well, that relaxation goes away, and I get very pissed real quick.” ▶ For a former WWE champion who has played a heel for much of his career (wrestling speak for “bad guy”), that focus (and temper) come with the territory. But The Miz doesn’t let that get in the way of his primary goal when he gets to the course: to go out there and have fun.

28 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

The Miz’s tendency is to “swing too freakin’ hard.” played, for a U.S. Open preview.

He was moving from Austin to Los Angeles and knew his wife, Maryse—who co-stars in the couple’s USA reality series, “Miz & Mrs.”—wouldn’t want him flying off to play golf. The Miz kept the invitation a secret . . . until his dad let it slip. “She found out and wasn’t too happy about it,” he says. “You’ll see it all on ‘Miz & Mrs.’ ”

Now he plans to start traveling with his clubs—extra-stiff Callaways—so he can play on the road. He has been taking lessons at GolfTEC to help fix his tendency to, as he puts it, “swing too freakin’ hard.”

With a 1½-year-old daughter, Monroe, and another on the way, opportunities for a quick loop could become even harder. Not that The Miz is

complaining. He sees it as an opportunity to pass down his love of golf to his children, just like his father did.

“I’m going to give them every piece of knowledge that I have to help them enjoy the game,” he says. “Because for me, there’s nothing better than going out with friends and hitting the ball around.”

gutter credit tk

“I don’t even keep score anymore. I always look for the shots. Those are the things that I remember,” he says.

His Los Angeles golf buddies include Michael Fabiano of NFL Network and Jerry Cantrell from ’90s grunge legends Alice in Chains.

This spring The Miz traveled to Pebble Beach, which he calls the best course he has ever

Photographs by Peter Yang

The Golf Life Digest

you’ve just one problem: you stand too close to the ball after you’ve hit it.

SELF-HELP BOOKS (AND WHICH GOLFER IN YOUR LIFE NEEDS THEM)

a quick peek at your inbox immediately after a round From

Subject

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know how your round went

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know how our conditioning was

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know how our facilities were

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know how our on-course facilities were

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a **** ▶ For the golfer whose round implodes after one bad shot.

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know what you think of our course name

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know how our Wi-Fi was

The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up ▶ For the golfer who loses too many strokes around the greens.

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know how our hot dogs were

Ridge Pines Valley GC

Please let us know about your golf-shop experience

How to Win Friends and Influence People ▶ For the golfer who can’t get a game on Sunday.

The Power of Now ▶ For the golfer who takes too long over the ball.

I’m OK-You’re OK ▶ For the best-ball twosome that’s down on its luck.

WHO HAS THE MOST JUICE : A CLUB HIERARCHY 5 superintendent 4 head of greens committee 3 head pro 2 b club president 2 a club champion 1 the starter

30 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

snead: bettmann/getty images • reader: mark hooper • ivy: chad canfield/eyeem/getty images • sign: gerenme/getty images

—sam snead

by sam weinman + alex myers + christopher powers

augusta national divotrepair tools as forks pine valley scorecard as bookmark

CONCESSIONS TO MAKE GOLF FASTER AS DUSK LOOMS ▶ Redefine “ready golf” as “no one is standing directly in front of you so go ahead and hit.” ▶ Give any putts inside the leather.

winged foot tees as toothpicks

2020 pga tour quiz

can you spot the fake events?

▶ If there’s a backup on the next tee, just pick another hole to play. ▶ Give yourself auto pars on every hole you didn’t finish due to darkness

cypress point ball markers as tablecloth holders

1 the cj cup @ nine bridges 2 chili’s #wherebusinesshappens match play 3 qbe shootout 4 wilfred brimley diabetes awareness shootout

“why, yes, i have played there!”

5 charles schwab challenge

▶ Subtle ways to flex on famous courses you’ve visited

6 cinnabon jovi celebrity challenge

gary woodland

billy horschel

favourite “i’m a reese’s guy”

favourite dots

least favourite “i’m not a huge candy-corn guy. candy corn doesn’t even make sense.”

least favourite “that candy corn.”

brandt snedeker favourite “skittles. it has lots of sugar, and what kid doesn’t like that?”

charles howell iii

least favourite “the dentist who handed out toothbrushes.”

ryan palmer

justin thomas

favourite sweettarts

favourite reese’s pieces

least favourite “anything with coconut and reese’s pieces.”

8 windows 2000 open 9 barracuda championship

WHAT’S IN YOUR (TRICK-OR-TREAT) BAG? favourite “candy corn . . . but it couldn’t be the ones that sat out too long and got hard and stale.”

7 3m open

10 greg norman’s shark tank championship 11 the zozo championship 12 the go go gadget championship answer key real events: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11

illustration: zohar l azar • course: ascent/PKs Media inc./getty iMages • troPhy: MiKe KeMP/getty iMages • candy corn: tetra/getty iMages

ocean course bag tags as coasters

▶ Redefine “inside the leather” as anywhere inside 20 feet.

october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

31

The Golf Life Juniors junior masters open tour (2019-2020 schedule)

uniors with ambitions of playing collegiate golf and the game’s biggest amateur events are being urged to sign up for the second season of the Junior Masters Open Tour (JMOT). ▶ With Global Junior Golf Rankings (GJGR) points on offer across nine tournaments from October to April in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah, the 20192020 season is shaping up to be an exciting introduction to the golf’s elite level.

J

More than 80 players competed last season in age-groups spanning eight to 19-year-olds, including 16 girls and overseas players. Open to juniors of all skill levels, three more events have been added this season with five of the nine tournaments 36-hole affairs.

The circuit also gives players a chance to be ranked on the Junior Golf Score Board.

Together with GJGR points, it’s the best way for young amateurs to qualify for leading amateur events around the world and court potential college scouts.

2020 4. Jan 11: Yas Links (18) 5. Feb 1: The Track (18) 6. Feb 21-22: Tower Links (36) 7. March 6-7: Al Hamra (36) 8. March 27-28 : Saadiyat Beach G.C. (36) 9. April 24-25: Jumeirah Golf Estates – Fire (36) Visit Junior Masters Open Tour on Facebook and Instagram via: @golfeventmanagement

the Middle East and also the first to establish the same in Africa.

We will keep developing the tour to be one of the best and biggest junior tours, not in the region only but in the world.” golfeventmanagement1@gmail.com

▶ grinning winners Divisional champions at a JMOT event last year. Above: Mousa Shana’ah and Siti Latifah won the green jackets as overall Junior Masters Open Tour Order of Merit winners last season.

32 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

(3) junior masters open tour

Green Jacket Goals The Junior Masters Open Tour opens up a world of opportunity for players across the region

Playing for gross and net prizes in different age-group divisions, the overall Order of Merit champions are presented with Masters-like green jackets at seasons end. The JMOT also helps the more serious players navigate the “sometimes complicated and confusing procedures required to compete in professional and high-class junior tournaments.”

“The main goal of this tour is to introduce youth to the professional golf sport, encourage friendships and a life-long love for the game and provide competition for golfers of all skill levels,” said Abedallah Shana’ah, managing director of Golf Events Management, the JMOT’s organising body.

“It’s also designed to…lead juniors to the path to be a professional golfer.”

Shana’ah said further expansion was also planned.

“We began last year with one tour in the UAE which includes six tournaments only. This year we have two major tours on in UAE which have nine tournaments and the other in Egypt which has seven tournaments. This will make it easy for the juniors in the Middle East to claim more points in the ranking and get their spot to the top.”

Ali Kalbat, general manager of Golf Events Management, added: “We are so proud that we are the first we establish the golf tours with the global ranking in

2019 1. Oct 18-19: Yas Links (36 holes) 2. Nov 9: Jebel Ali (18) 3. Nov 30: Abu Dhabi (27)

The Golf Life Ladies Golf

Amy takes aim with Love.Golf The newest member of The Els Club, Dubai performance academy team is passionate about introducing more women to golf

WATCH THE VIDEO ▶ Millward’s ‘Golf Intro for Ladies’, plus a short game tip at golfdigestme.com

34 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

MY MILLWARD is on a mission to make the Claude Harmon 3 Performance Golf Academy, Dubai the hub of women’s golf growth in the region.

The 24-year-old has just joined the CH3 team at The Els Club, Dubai and arrives with a freshly minted ‘Professional Golf Studies’ degree from the University of Birmingham after coaching stints in the U.K and Switzerland.

Millward is also a Love.Golf coach and an energised disciple of a programme that is bringing ground-breaking research to women’s golf coaching.

Whereas newbies are typically plonked on the range for week upon week and run through the fundamentals of the game, Love.Golf coaching predominately takes place on the golf course (or a shortened course). This allows players “to learn how women want to learn in a group environment free from any dress codes or unnecessary rules.”

“We don’t just want to make you [new players] have a golf swing. We want to make you a golfer,” says Millward.

Seeing new and more established players improve has become more than just a job for Millward who calls the small English town of Cleobury Mortimer home. Her “passion” is now the fuel of a new initiative at The Els Club, Dubai where the CH3 team plan to turn Tuesday into an exclusive ladies day, with lessons, competitions, range time as well as social experiences spread across the day and evening.

The CH3 ladies programme will offer three types of classes – ‘Explorers’, ‘Players’ and ‘Competitors’. Millward will be on hand for two ‘Taster Days’ in October and November to run curious or intending players through the ropes.

The introduction sessions, both running from 10am to noon, are scheduled for October 15 and November 12 and will be followed by refreshments. Email Millward at amy@ch3performancegolf.com to reserve your place.

A

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The Golf Life Architecture

The 93-year-old Hall of Famer remains creative to the end. ▶ mirror image The par-3 17th looks familiar.

Swan Song Pete Dye’s inspiring final design n 2015 , when Pete Dye started work on Links at Perry Cabin, he had no idea that soon after his approval of the contours of its last green, he’d be forced into involuntary retirement by the cruelest aspect of the aging process, the dissipation of one’s memory. His fans should know that the 93-year-old Hall of Famer remains creative to the end.

Though he has routed 18s in northern Florida and Indiana that others are now building, this is his final full design, from start to finish.

It opened last year and is accessible to guests of The Inn at Perry Cabin in St. Michaels, Md., about an hour outside Annapolis.

I

36 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

Assisted by his younger son, P.B., Pete transformed a lowprofile 1971 collaboration with brother Roy, replacing it with a far more dynamic creation.

Though it’s not meant to be the “best of Dye,” there’s no mistaking its inspirations. The diagonal 4th green—with its right half racing downhill and to the right—brings to mind Pete’s 13th at Crooked Stick.

The par-5 14th, its elevated fairway curving around a long strip bunker against a lagoon, resembles the 5th at Whistling Straits. The island-green, par-3 17th is a mirror image of Pete’s 17th at TPC Sawgrass, but with a larger green and a comforting ring of rough around the collar.

Two holes are particularly engaging curtain calls. The par-3 seventh features a Biarritz green, and though it was added at the request of owner Richard Cohen, it’s fitting that a Dye course finally contains a replica of the most iconic C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor convention, given how much Dye admires their architecture.

The 487-yard 18th, a C-shape par 4 around an enormous lake, looks much like the Waterloo 13th at The Dunes Golf & Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, a Robert Trent Jones design. When Pete started his career, he said he’d do the opposite of whatever Trent Jones was doing, just to set himself apart. Can it be that Pete Dye’s final golf hole is a tribute to Old Man Jones?

—ron whitten

Photograph by Joann Dost

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The Golf Life The View from Pebble Beach

Jim Nantz Twenty years later, remembering Payne S A BROADCASTER, you’re sometimes asked to report on friends, colleagues or people you’re close to and present the story with a distant air. That’s a requisite of the job—be objective, always, regardless of the subject matter. I’m not going to lie, it’s not always easy.

I struggle to hide my feelings. That was never more the case than a day that is 20 years gone but indelible in my memory.

A

On Oct. 25, 1999, I was in a restaurant in Westport, Conn., having lunch when a waiter pointed to the TV above the bar. “What a terrible tragedy this is. That plane is going to crash with a famous pro golfer on board.” We immediately riveted our eyes to the ongoing coverage of a small jet that was flying off course, with the news anchor speculating that all onboard were unconscious.

Seconds later, I received a call from a producer friend of mine at CBS News. My contact had a mole inside the ABC newsroom who told him that one of the plane’s occupants was possibly Tiger Woods. They just needed to get it confirmed.

CBS didn’t want to get beat on

the story, so I reached out to a friend of mine at IMG, which represented Tiger at the time.

He assured me that Tiger was not on the plane.

Soon after, the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into a cornfield in South Dakota. The news was devastating: Reigning U.S. Open champion Payne Stewart and five others had lost their lives. It didn’t take long for another call to come in from the news department requesting I put a package together for Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News. Dan was going to open his newscast with the wrenching story, and they asked if I would sit next to him on the set to lead to the piece and tag it with a thought or two.

38 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

▶ smu days Payne Stewart once battled Fred Couples for a conference championship.

On the drive into Manhattan, I wrestled with how I would hold it together on the air. I recalled the first time Payne and I met, in 1979. I was traveling with the University of Houston golf team to the Southwest Conference tournament, and Payne was a star at Southern Methodist.

That year, the individual title had come down to Payne and my suite-mate, Fred Couples.

The rules stated that if there was a tie after 54 holes, there would be no playoff. The players would be declared cochampions. But there was an

important stipulation: The SWC winner would also be awarded a spot in the PGA Tour’s Colonial National Invitation. If there was a tie, that honour would be decided by a match of cards from the 18th hole going back.

Fred came to the final hole one shot back of Payne. If Fred birdied the par 5—Payne had made par—he would earn a share of the title and the invitation to Colonial. Fred knocked it on in two and made birdie. He was heading to Fort Worth.

Or so we thought. Fred decided he should give Payne a fair shot at Colonial. “He’s a senior, I’m a sophomore, and I’ll have more opportunities to qualify,” Fred said. “He deserves a chance to play off for it.” So they headed to the first hole, and Payne won it with a par.

Payne was headed to Colonial.

Of course, both players went on to compete on the world’s biggest stages. In 1999, Payne was fighting his way out of a four-year victory drought, leading the AT&T Pebble Beach ProAm by a shot going into Sunday.

That morning, I approached him on the putting green and asked him about a new putter he was using. He said, “Here, try it yourself, Jim.” I made a couple of lame strokes, which didn’t satisfy Payne. “No, line up the putt until you can’t see the red line on top of the putter,” he said. “Once you do that, you’ll have it lined up straight.” Here he was, about to tee off, and he was giving me a lesson.

Shortly after the final round started, a huge storm hit, eventually shortening the event to 54 holes. Payne was a winner again. He expressed his love for his wife, Tracey, and children Chelsea and Aaron. He just glowed. Four months later, he won that iconic U.S. Open at Pinehurst. Four months after that, he was gone.

These days I wonder where Payne would be if he hadn’t been robbed of his life. It doesn’t matter that 20 years have passed. It remains impossible to hide the feelings.

courtesty of southern methodist university

Here he was, about to tee off, and he was giving me a lesson.

GD Schools

Play Your Best

“The best part of this drill is, you get a workout, too.”

A Remedy for Weak Shots Learn to activate the big muscles by bobby clampett any golfers think hitting it farther comes down to how fast you can swing your arms and unhinge your wrists to sling the club through impact. But there’s more to it than that, especially if you want to hit solid shots nearly every time you swing.

Like any athletic activity where you have to throw or strike an object, real power

M

Photograph by Dom Furore

comes from your legs. Just visualise Major League Baseball pitchers. They’re pushing off the mound as hard as they can before their pitching arm lets go of the ball. If they didn’t push off the rubber on the mound with their back leg, and used just their arms to create speed, their careers would be over.

That’s why I love throwing medicine balls as a way to un-

derstand the role of your legs in creating powerful golf swings.

The weight of the medicine ball makes you intuitively use the bigger muscles of your legs and core—otherwise you wouldn’t throw it very far. If you try this drill, just be sure to use a medicine ball that doesn’t feel too light. And when you wind up and throw the ball like you’re mimicking a swing, keep your

upper arms in close to your body. Feel like they stay glued to your sides, so that the energy for the throw is a push off the ground with your legs and a releasing turn with your torso.

Once you can powerfully throw a medicine ball, incorporate similar body action into your swing. Without going at it any harder with your arms, your body will help you compress the ball like never before.

—with ron kaspriske bobby clampett operates the Impact Zone Golf Academy in Naples, Fla.

october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

39

mena tour

Full

Circle

40 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

Zane Scotland’s evolution from battle-scarred tour pro to player-coach makes him a rich resource for youngsters

making their way on the MENA Tour

By Kent Gray

Photographs by Joy Chakravarty/Getty Images

The Golfing Machine

owns pride of place in Zane Scotland’s golf library. The thing is, as much as he loves Homer Kelley’s classic textbook, he’s loath to recommend it for fear it might fall into impressionable hands. You’ve been warned. ▶ One of the most comprehensive, and some argue complicated, tomes on the golf swing, The Golfing Machine is meant for professional instructors. It has enlightened those with the requisite base knowledge but with it’s “simple geometry and everyday physics” has also confounded just as many well-meaning but unqualified seekers of the secrets to golf for the past 50 years.

▶ Above: Scotland was in hot demand in his heyday, including being summoned to a promotional photo shoot during the 2008 Malaysian Open. Left and right: The Englishman in action during the 2010 Open Championship on the Old Course at St. Andrews.

42 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

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“ Someone that hits 500 balls a day , a 1000 balls a day, I’m not impressed.

I’ve been there, done that and I’ve got the injuries to prove it. And you don’t get any better .”

“There’s a book from years and years ago [it was first published in 1969], that if you try and read it, it messes with your life, let alone your golf,” says Scotland when pressed for the foundation of his coaching philosophy.

“It’s so confusing because there is so much stuff going on in it but pretty much, most modern coaching is based off of that or versions thereof.

“So for me, from a technical point of view, there’s Mac O‘Grady, what Pete Cowan’s done is fantastic, a guy called Andy Plumber, almost too many to name, to be honest. So it’s The Golfing Machine but on top of that someone who I think does an amazing job is Butch Harmon who almost looks like he wouldn’t even use a camera so much, he just knows the person and can work from there.”

Just as Kelley’s fabled work doesn’t prescribe one particular style of swing, Scotland’s wide-spread coaching influences are a melting pot of the game’s best swing theorists. What’s not clouded is the 37-yearold Englishman’s growing reputation in

44 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

the field of coaching, a vocation the MENA Tour’s most successful player has fallen into sooner than anticipated.

Scotland always envisaged this route in the game but not until his mid to late 40s.

However, after competing alongside and tinkering with the games of now rookie professional Todd Clements and the Englishman’s big-hitting compatriot Joshua White in 2015, the decision to delve into coaching fulltime was accelerated when the pair sought a more permanent relationship the following season.

Now, as well as his record 10 tour wins, Scotland boasts two titles as a coach although he humbly takes more credit for MG Keyser’s victory at the Dubai Open

in March than he does for Daniel Gaunt’s emotional Troon Series-Al Zorah Open triumph the previous month.

While South African Keyser is part of Scotland’s stable alongside Clements, White, fellow Englishmen Joe Heraty, Taylor Carter and Zak Morgan and Saudi Arabia’s pioneering professional Othman Al Mulla, Gaunt merely sought remedial help after a long layoff through sheer frustration with our maddening game. The Aussie has since gone on his merry way but wander just off the M25 in Redhill south of London and you’ll find Scotland hard at work at Bletchingley Golf Club honing the games of clients at the ZS Academy, many of the MENA Tour’s biggest names regularly among them.

▶ Above: Scotland shows his style during the opening round of the 2015 Omega Dubai Desert Classic at Emirates G.C. Below: Patron Darren Clarke and tour co-founder Mohamed Juma Buamaim surprised Scotland with a MENA Tour life membership at this media conference in 2017.

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Scotland offers a holistic approach to game improvement at his “boutique academy”, from traditional swing mechanics to the perhaps more important mental side of making it in the cut-throat professional game.

“There’s the traditional swing coaching, game coaching, technical pieces which I’m good at and then the next part is like, how do you play golf for a living? Not every young golfer is going to be the next Rory McIlroy.”

Scotland knows better than most that very few young golfers will ever be the next Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods. The MENA Tour’s first life member actually won a competition to ‘find the British Tiger Woods’ in 1997 and went on to become the youngest Englishman to qualify for the Open Championship two years later, eventually missing the cut at Carnoustie the day before his 17th birthday.

But a stellar amateur career – he ascended to be Europe’s No.1 - is no guarantee in the game of life. Scotland turned professional in 2003 but a minor car accident that year proved a major pain in the neck, quite literally, to his progression in the pro game.

Scotland did tee it up in golf’s oldest major again in 2010, finishing a creditable T-55 on the Old Course at St. Andrews alongside, among others, Steve Stricker and above players the ilk of Jason Day and Ian Poulter. But the injury meant he was never healthy enough for long enough to keep a steady footing on the European Tour.

▶ Sweet Drive: Scotland at a recent Mercedes Classic corporate day in England.

Photo courtesy: TribecaMedia.co.uk

46 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

Rather selfishly, that’s been a boon for the fledging MENA Tour where Scotland has helped lift standards since the regional circuit’s inception in 2011.

Young players with big ambitious could certainly do worse than extract the choicest morsels from Scotland’s topsy-turvy journey through the game, from the highs of major championships to the lows of lugging his own bag on mini-tours playing for little more than beer money. So what wisdom would Scotland impart in such a conversation?

“Being honest with where you are. I think a lot of young guys, we’ve all done it, we hide away from the truth of what is actually happening,” Scotland beings.

“Especially in this day in age when social media is such a big part of life, everyone wants to look a certain way, to look like ‘I’m doing well’ instead of being okay with what you are not good at because then you can improve that.

“It’s about seizing your weakness or your downfalls as more fun areas that you can actually improve rather than hiding from them.”

Formulating that plan for improvement is one thing, building on it another.

“When someone is at the point of turning pro, just hitting lots of golf balls, ball beating, like, it’s lazy. It’s probably the 100 per cent easiest part of pro golf. What is difficult is trying to be smart… not many people do it.

“Someone that hits 500 balls a day, a 1000 balls a day, I’m not impressed. I’ve been there, done that and I’ve got the injuries to prove it.

And you don’t get any better.”

Scotland’s perpetual quest for improvement as a coach means he is in no hurry to hang up his sticks. While he doesn’t have the time to beat balls to even a carefully

prescribed practice formula like he once did, he’s trying to work smarter in a bid to add to his 10 wins, a legacy that included four titles in a breakout 2013 campaign where he ran away with the circuit’s overall order of merit title. Indeed, Scotland feels compelled to stay as sharp as possible inside the ropes.

“I’ve not had that much time to compete during the summer but you know, as any golfer can relate, I think to myself, if I can hit a golf ball, I could have a good week.

That never leaves you,” Scotland said eyeing the MENA Tour’s five-event autumn swing which resumed late last month.

“ Some guys won’t make a hundred grand in their career so if you can help them make 150-200 grand, that’s great isn’t it? ” “I’m around good golfers and, you know what, I still try and play and practice just to remember how hard it is when you are teaching somebody. I think this is one thing a lot of coaches don’t do enough, they don’t play enough and practice themselves. You haven’t got to be amazing at it, you’ve just got to do it to be able to empathise with somebody. If you don’t, I believe you can lose touch with reality. It’s so important, a duty to the person you coach I believe.”

While he hasn’t got rich from golf, the game continues to enrich the life of Scotland who is, coincidently, the nephew of the first woman to be appointed Britain’s Attorney General, Patricia Scotland QC, or just plain “Auntie Pat”.

Indeed, enriching lives is what makes the 20-minute drive from Scotland’s home in Banstead to the range at Bletchingley G.C. - like the regular trips to the Middle East - a breeze each morning.

“We’d like to think everybody could earn the 20 million that Rory’s going to earn this year but being realistic, that’s not going to happen,” Scotland says.

“Some guys won’t make a hundred grand in their career so if you can help them make 150-200 grand, that’s great isn’t it? If you can at least double their career earnings or their earnings over a year by thinking better…”

Smart thinking. Now there’s an idea.

Like getting someone else to decode The Golfing Machine for you. Scotland’s impressionable young chargers don’t know how lucky they are.

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The lowdown from lowry ▶ The open

champion revels on his magical week at portrush, and the highs + lows that led to it

by john huggan

3 EDITOR’S NOTE

WEEKS AFTER AN IRISHMAN won the first Open Championship played on the island in almost seven decades, Shane Lowry sat down with Golf Digest having had time to savour the enormity of his accomplishment.

Lowry, 32, was interviewed by Contributing Editor John Huggan before the BMW Championship at Medinah, and they covered a variety of topics, including tips on getting kids into the game (and what drives them away from it), what it’s like to sit on the lead with 18 holes to play in a major, the scourge of slow play, and the key to planning a perfect wedding. You’ll get a feel for the good times, but also for the doubts that dog every golfer at his level. Oh, and they shared plenty of laughs. You’ll enjoy the conversation.

48 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

ok, think back: you’ve just holed the putt to win the open at royal portrush. take us through the next 24 hours of your life. Wow.

It was a dream, really. Like so many other kids, I stood on practice greens thinking, This one for the Open. Growing up in the U.K. or Ireland, that’s what you do. So, while I’m not saying it was an anticlimax—it wasn’t—I won by quite a few [six strokes], and the feeling wasn’t quite the same. I had been able to enjoy it all for a few minutes before that last putt. When I knocked it in, it was like, What do I do?

I raised my arms. I hugged my caddie [Bo Martin]. My wife, Wendy, came out. My parents were there.

I tell you what was really nice was seeing so many others.

GMac [Graeme McDowell] was there. Paddy [Harrington] was there. Ricky Elliott [Brooks Koepka’s caddie, a native of Portrush] was there. My caddie’s wife was there. Neil [Manchip, Lowry’s coach] was there.

It’s funny, it was only last week that I started looking at YouTube videos on my phone.

That was the first time I had seen myself going up to all those people, the ones who

have had the biggest influences on my career. That was really cool. ●●●

this might sound a bit odd, but you’ve written the first paragraph of your obituary. That’s true.

is it all a bit of a blur after that? The one thing

●●●

I really felt—and I still do—was a sense of how lucky I am to achieve something like that.

And to do it in the way I did it, where I did it, is just amazing.

If I was to sit down with a piece of paper and write down all the events I’d want to win over the course of my career, then pick out the one I would most want to win, it would be an Open in Ireland. It would be in the top two, anyway. [Laughs.]

[Laughs.] . . . amazing. when did you jump in the car that sunday? It must

have been about 9 p.m., after I had done all the media stuff.

We had to go back to the house in Bushmills to pick up our stuff. My manager, Conor Ridge, drove. Wendy and my daughter, Iris, were in the car.

And my friend Alan Clancy, who owns bars in Dublin, was in the last seat. The lads had asked me that morning what

▶ ‘I remember saying, “there’s no in between today.

It’s either going to be the best day of my life, or one of the worst.” ’

Photographs by Nick Laham

‘i still want to get to a place where hitting a 7-iron in the water is not the biggest deal in the world.’

I wanted to do. I told them, no matter what, I wanted to wake up in Dublin on Monday morning. So that was where we went. Alan had organised a party. ●●●

and you went viral. Yeah.

[Laughs.] We got to my house about 1 a.m. ●●●

to me were there then. All the hangers-on had fizzled out by then and gone home. We got a taxi home—it’s only 15 minutes—and went to bed. I woke up maybe two hours later. And there was the claret jug sitting on my bedside locker.

hit you in the face when you walk into the kitchen. That’s where mine is going—in the kitchen.

●●●

i’m going to take you back 24 hours from the party. what was the time like between holing out on the 18th green saturday evening and driving off the first tee on sunday? We

has anything surprised you about the trophy? There’s

Yeah, I really enjoyed the next week. To be honest, I didn’t drink that much. I wanted to take it all in, soak it all in and enjoy everything that was going on. I did have a few drinks that Sunday night, though.

actually a mistake. I’m not sure I should say this, but when Fred Daly won in 1947, he did so at Hoylake. But on the trophy it reads Holylake. Padraig told me about that. When I showed him the trophy, he said, “Yup, that’s the one.” But the history of the thing is just incredible. When I look at it and see Tom Morris 1872, I’m thinking, Wow. That’s the first thing anyone does, I think, looking at the names.

I can’t stop reading them all.

My friends are the same. And my name is there. That’s the one thing that sticks out for me: I’m on there forever.

●●●

●●●

you must have been running on adrenaline. Exactly.

i remember going to padraig’s house. you can’t miss his two claret jugs and his pga trophy. they’re right there when you walk in.

so the party was quite short? No, no, as in from

Portrush. It took us about three and a half hours to get home.

Our baby sitter was there to take care of Iris, and we went out from there. We had a good night. ●●●

judging by the footage of you singing, that’s an understatement.

We didn’t get to the bar until about 1:30, and we were there until about 7 a.m. I actually enjoyed the last couple of hours most of all. The people closest

I always slag him for that.

[Laughs.] I go in there, and they

50 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

●●●

you get a replica trophy, right? Yes, after a year. About

90 percent of actual size. ●●●

finished quite late on Saturday.

It was mental that evening, the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on a golf course. The crowds were singing as I finished. ●●●

you did play at an extraordinary level—63 on that course. I didn’t realise how

well I had played until I finished. It was one of those days when I was on a roll. I made a great up-and-down on 14, and after that I felt like I was going to birdie every hole. And I nearly did—three of the last four.

But that little run was huge. I took about 10 or 15 guys out of the tournament by getting to 16 under par—they were history.

Anyway, I got back to the house about 8:30, and we had

dinner. We had a great chef that week—a friend of a friend.

As well as the three of us, Neil was staying there, and Alan. It was all fairly calm. The people around me were more nervous than I was. They were scared that the high of Saturday was going to turn into a low on Sunday, but I was fairly good.

I didn’t sleep well, though.

I went to bed around 11. It must have been midnight before I got to sleep. And I was awake at 6. Moving the tee times up [because of a forecast calling for rain and wind] helped me, though. I didn’t have so long to wait. I got up around 8 and played with Iris. And I watched a bit of the golf on television, trying to get a feel for the course. Again, everyone else around me seemed a bit more anxious than I was. This was obviously a big deal. I remember saying, “There’s no in between today. It’s either going to be the best day of my life, or one of the worst.” ●●●

what was your teacher saying to you? We had great chats

all week. Even that morning, we went for a walk. He was saying, “You’ll get in the car and go to the course, and before you know it, it will be over.” And he was right. I tried to keep things normal, though. I went to the course at the same time I would have done for any event. I did the same things. I marked up my balls. I did my pins. I had something to eat. I went to warm up. It was important to do what I always did. ●●●

was neil saying anything technical, swing-wise?

Nothing at all. On the Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn’t feel like my game was in great shape. It was all right. But that was just me getting a bit anxious about such a big week. ●●●

did you think the weather on the last day was a help or a hindrance? the really low score was eliminated, but the big number on any hole was a possibility.

That’s how I felt. I knew that keeping the big numbers off

my card was key. I actually said this to Neil that morning: The one thing I took away from Oakmont in 2016 [when Lowry led the U.S. Open by four strokes entering the final round but finished three behind winner Dustin Johnson] is that I didn’t play aggressively enough in the final round. So, without getting ahead of myself, I knew that if I made four or five birdies, I would be very hard to beat.

I ended up making four. ●●●

did the disappointment of oakmont linger? I feel like

I should have won, but there are plenty of top players who have led big events with 18 holes to play and not won, so I’m hardly unique. It was a big disappointment. I don’t think you can plan to peak in certain weeks. I just don’t. If you do try to peak for a certain event, you’re putting too much pressure on yourself.

Dustin Johnson played some great golf and won. But if he had not been there, I would have been playing off for the title on the Monday. So, while I maybe should have won—I was tied for the lead with five holes to go—I had three threeputts in a row on 14-15-16. But it’s behind me.

The aim is to make the results not matter, even if they do.

If I go out and finish, say, 40th, I would obviously want to do better, but there are bigger things in life to worry about.

I’m a very ambitious person.

I’m driven. And I’m competitive. I want do as well as I can.

And every week there are times when I’m not happy with what I’m doing or some of the shots I’m hitting. I get pissed off.

But I still want to get to a place where hitting a 7-iron in the water is not the biggest deal in the world. Once you’ve done it, there’s nothing else you can do other than take your drop and hit another one. I feel like I’ve got to that place over the last 12 months. I’m playing with freedom, and I’m hitting good shots under pressure. Nothing gives me more satisfaction. ●●●

what was the better score at portrush, the 63 on sat-

urday or the 72 on sunday?

The 72 was a really, really good score. We got lucky on the Saturday when the wind died down. Links golf in calm conditions is easy, especially when the greens are good and not too fast. So under the circumstances, 72 was really good. ●●●

how did the pressure of being irish in ireland affect you? I’ve struggled

at Irish Opens over the years, and I always put it down to the pressure of playing in front of a home crowd who desperately want you to do well. But I never felt that at Portrush. Going in, I felt like the event was GMac’s and Rory’s and Darren’s. [Clarke also grew up not far from the course.] Which was fine. I wanted to go there under the radar. Only when I was leading [sharing the lead after rounds of 67-67] did I get much attention.

It took the media awhile to get to me. There were other stories to write. So that helped me in terms of feeling pressure. ●●●

what were the pluses and minuses of growing up alongside rory? The

pluses are obvious: I got to play with a superstar. And when I was younger playing amateur events, thousands of people used to come and watch because of him. It was all great training for me. At the end of each round we would speak with the journalists. So when I won the Irish Open as an amateur, I was used to playing in front of big crowds and answering questions. I’d done plenty of interviews. That all helped. ●●●

was there ever a moment where you thought, i can’t beat this guy? No. I had a

great chance to win at Wentworth [in 2014]. The two of us were in contention. And he ended up beating me by a shot.

I probably should have beaten him, though. I had a great chance. And I’ve beaten him in the World Match Play. ●●●

your game has always struck me as perfect for links golf—or should be.

Yes, but it hasn’t really been that way over the years. I spent some time getting in my own way. ●●●

your short game has always been one of the best parts of your game. do you have any idea how you pitch and chip, or is it all feel?

I do it by feel. There was a point this year when my chipping wasn’t as good as it should be.

And purely by playing around with it myself, I came up with a solution. I weakened my lefthand grip. That made the clubface less strong. So, when I need a little spinny chip, I go with that grip. Even today, when Neil was out there, I was chipping away as we talked. He would drop a few balls, and I would just hit the shot I saw. That’s how I do it, and that’s how I’ve always done it. ●●●

you famously have chipping competitions with padraig.

We haven’t done that much this year. That must be why I’m doing well. [Laughs.] He isn’t knocking my confidence by beating me all the time. ●●●

how does it work? Let’s say

he gets to pick first. But whoever wins that hole gets to pick the next one. So if you’re winning, you pick the shots that suit you. We play first to 10.

ball hard. There’s not a lot of subtlety to it. I prefer it when the ball runs away from the greens.

That takes the bad chippers out of it. I like it when there are three or four options to consider.

But when I get to my ball, I usually see the shot pretty quickly.

I’m at my best then. And that’s the way I’ve been playing this year. I’ve let myself hit the shot I see to hole it. But under pressure I might not hit that shot because messing up would be too costly.

Sometimes an eight-footer for par is OK. Chipping is easier in Europe, though. It’s easier to have a good short game—the greens are softer and slower. So if you miss on the short side, you’re not in as much trouble as you would be in the U.S. Take the Memorial at Muirfield Village.

Short-side yourself there, and you have a 20-footer for par, at best. That’s after a good chip. ●●●

how important was your win in abu dhabi in january to what you’ve achieved since? did it dispel some doubts? I’m not sure I’d go

that far, even though the last few years have not been great— I lost my PGA Tour card, for example. The back-and-forth between Europe and America was just weighing on me. It was tough. The end result was

‘There are too many pushy parents these days. . . .

People see dollar signs.’

The stakes are usually $50 or €50, not enough to hurt. It’s more about the competition than the stakes. We’d fall out too much if the stakes were bigger. We play to stop being bored. When that happens, you end up hitting bad shots. And when you do that, there’s no point being out there. ●●●

do you like rough around the greens or tight lies?

Not rough. Take Medinah. There is U.S. Open-style rough around the greens, so everyone just opens the clubface and hits the

I dropped out of the top 50 in the world. So I wasn’t in the WGCs and not picking up the easy points you get from them.

But I was still maybe top 20 in Europe. It wasn’t like I was falling off the edge of any cliffs. ●●●

but you’re better than that. And that’s why there

were no alarms going off.

I wanted to do better, but I always believed in what I was doing. It’s just a difficult game we play, and sometimes you just have to wait for your turn.

I know we all say we never read

october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

51

anything in the media, but it’s almost impossible to avoid it completely. There are always critics and doubters out there. ●●●

do you tinker with your swing much? in an increasingly scientific world, you’re still a bit of an artist. That’s nice to hear.

I’ve never once made a “swing change.” There are times when I get on the range with Neil, and I’m telling him what I’ve been feeling. He needs that feedback.

But for me the game’s 90 percent setup. If I get that correct, I’m fine. Take last week.

I couldn’t hit my 3-wood as high as I wanted to. All I had was a low cut. As soon as Neil heard that, he knew my ball position was too far forward. I was

But there are guys on ranges every day who are out there only because everyone else is doing that. I know I can hit all the shots when I want to, at least most of the time. I know I can chip and putt well. So standing there hitting balls just gets in the way of that a little bit. ●●●

how much time do you spend in the gym? I do a bit

of everything, but I’m not that disciplined about it. I’ve been a similar weight for a few years.

I go through phases. Sometimes I’m going every day. On others, I’m too tired and want to save my energy for something else.

I must admit I’ve always received a bit of stick about my weight. I’ve always been heavier than average. I was pretty good

Neil has been the most influential person on my career. ●●●

the weather at portrush was a bit nasty at times, but it was even worse when you won the 2009 irish open as an amateur. That’s funny.

I’ve struggled in the Open over the last few years, and I’ve struggled in bad weather. But I recently watched video of me winning at Baltray. I could not believe how bad the rain was.

It was almost as bad as that downpour we had at Portrush.

That was brutal. But at Portrush it didn’t last. It was all day at Baltray. Which is a great course.

I think of it as a slightly easier version of Muirfield. ●●●

your mum won more money

‘i’ve never been one for listening too much to those who tell me i should lose weight or work out more.’ able to chase after the ball and hit it low, but if I tried to hit it higher, I was drop-kicking and hitting it right and left.

I always have a feeling.

I’m never trying to swing the club; I’m always trying to hit a shot. Let’s say I’m on a hole that moves from left to right.

I’ll see a fade. And I’ll hit a fade by setting up a little open and moving the ball forward a little.

It’s instinctive. And if I need a low draw, I think low draw. I’m never thinking, I need to take the club back more on the inside here. If I give clinics, I always tell people all I can do is tell them what I do. I can’t give golf lessons. Actually, I could, but I’d have to think about it. [Laughs.]

I’m very visual and feel-oriented. I’m certainly not scientific.

at Gaelic football as a kid. But I was also a bit slower than most. I wasn’t as fit or as fast.

I’ve never been one for listening too much to those who tell me I should lose weight or work out more. I have a great group of people around me who have always believed in me more than I ever have myself.

I listen to them. Only last year, I was struggling for confidence.

Maybe the best thing about Portrush is that I’ll never again be asked when I’m going to win a major. It’s hard to talk about golf when you’re not playing well.

●●●

right. Today I told him I was struggling to hit a draw last week. I was hitting them left.

And starting left and going left is not what you want to see.

But he wasn’t that unhappy with that. When I’m playing well, I move the ball left to right easier than any other shot. So he told me not to worry. “When you get out on the course and you need to hit a draw, you will.” That reassured me a lot.

but the game at your level has gone a long way down that path. That’s true. I see

all the lads with TrackMans.

I don’t use them at all. If you look at guys on the range at tournaments. the majority are out there doing “guilty practice.” I think so, anyway.

I’ve been told many times over the years that I don’t work hard enough or practice enough.

●●●

knowing what you look like when you’re playing well, is neil always moving you toward that ideal? That’s

52 golfdigestme.com | october 2019

at that irish open than you did with the bet she made on you. She did. [Laughs.]

I won nothing. I think she won over $16,000. ●●●

going back to the very beginning, you got into golf playing pitch-and-putt courses. It’s a great game.

And just about every small town in Ireland has a pitchand-putt course. The holes vary between 40 and 70 yards. And there was one in my hometown.

My cousin Gary was keen. He’s two years older than me, and I wanted to hang out with him.

But you couldn’t join until you’re 10. I lied about my age when I was 9. My dad bought me a pitching wedge and a putter from the local sweet shop. I was up there all day, every day. And there were loads of us, all young people. It was where we used to hang out.

Golf took over when I was about 13 or 14, but I played pitch-andputt until I was 16.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about golf being too slow and taking too long. But pitchand putt isn’t slow. And it’s a great way to introduce kids to the game. It’s fun, and they can

shoot low scores pretty quickly.

One problem I see is that there are too many pushy parents theses days. I have friends who are coaches telling me that all the time. People see the dollar signs. So they want their kids to be great. But if a kid wants to play, just let him go with a few clubs. Not even the best set. Let him have fun.

Let him or her go and play.

Let them find out what a great game it is. And if they start to show real promise, get them a bit of guidance from a coach.

But I wouldn’t say get them coaching right off the bat.

If you get coaching when you’re too young and you’re standing there beating balls every day, you’re going to get bored. You’ll get to hate the game because it will feel like work. When I was a kid, I played a lot of golf on my own. I loved being on my own, chipping around the greens and inventing shots. When I chipped in, I was the happiest little kid alive. ●●●

slow play: is there a solution at the tour level?

Golf courses are getting longer.

They’re getting harder. The greens are faster. And the rough is thicker. All of which slow down play. So I’m not sure we can ever make the game any quicker. It’s always going to take a long time.

At Medinah, we’re playing a par 3 that measures 250 yards.

For a start, we have to walk an extra 50 yards back to the tee.

Then an extra 50 yards back to the green. That all takes time.

So we’ll get ’round in just over five hours. And if we played speed golf, we’d probably knock maybe 20 minutes off that time, which makes no difference. ●●●

i had a walk ’round the old course a few months ago. i paced off how far it is to walk back to the championship tees, then back to where i started. that adds over 2,000 yards to the experience. to go nowhere.

I know, but I don’t think there’s a solution. Not at tour level.

Other than penalising the slow guys with added shots.

‘I always have a feeling. i’m never trying to swing the club; I’m always trying to hit a shot.’

What I do have a problem with is the player who is so slow he starts to get in the way of the guys he’s paired with.

That’s the big problem. There has been a lot of talk recently about Bryson [DeChambeau], but it’s not just him. I could name a few more, although I’m not going to. Those guys are just selfish. We’re all out here trying to make a living and do our best. And while it isn’t my right to feel like someone else is in my way, it’s difficult not to get annoyed when he’s taking 90 seconds to hit a shot, and only after he’s done is it my turn to play. Then it’s a problem for me. ●●●

so it isn’t fixable? I genuine-

ly don’t think so. At East Lake for the Tour Championship, first prize is $15 million. So if a guy wants to take 30 seconds more on a shot, he’s going to do that. ●●●

let’s talk about the ryder cup. a big ambition? Oh, yes.

I sat down with my coach and managers last December and came up with a schedule that was aimed at giving me the best chance of making the next Ryder Cup team. That’s my biggest ambition in golf. I want to be at Whistling Straits. It was all about the Ryder Cup.

I’m going to be a rookie, though. So I think I’ll have to qualify for the team; I can’t be banking on a pick. ●●●

padraig being captain works for you and against you, too. It’s like if your dad

is the manager of your team.

It can make things harder for you. I’d give anything to make it. I like to think I’ll be good in the team room. I think I’d be happy in all the formats. My short game makes me useful in foursomes, and I make a lot of birdies, which is good in fourball play. I have what it takes to be a Ryder Cup player. I should have made it in 2016. I messed up the last month when all I had to do was play half-decent. ●●●

about your beard—is it permanent? My wife loves it,

so there’s no getting rid of it. If I shaved it, people wouldn’t recognise me, which might not be a bad thing on occasion. [Laughs.]

But it’s staying for a while. ●●●

you got married in new york. take us through that process. We had a venue

booked, Mount Juliet [in Ireland] for New Year’s Eve, 2016.

But when we got into the planning, we started to realise we didn’t want all that. We could only have a certain number of guests, so that meant disappointing people. Then my wife read about an Irish couple who just went off to New York, hired a photographer and did it. So did we.

We flew from Augusta to New York after the final round of the Masters. We registered in City Hall on the Monday morning. We had the best week ever. We stayed in the Mandarin Oriental, which was unbelievable, on Central Park. We got married on the Tuesday [April 12] and stayed until the Friday.

We came home and had a big party June 10—we sent out the invitations for that the day we got married—which was the Friday before the U.S. Open at Oakmont. I think that’s the way to do it. The party was pretty much the wedding without the church. I tell all my friends to do that. ●●●

where and when did you meet your wife? In a Dublin

bar. [Laughs.] We hit it off pretty quickly. I knew she was the one almost right away. She’s a great mother and a great wife. She’s a great person to have around.

Nurses are great people. They

don’t get paid half enough. And they’re devoted to what they do.

Wendy is a psychiatric nurse, but when I met her she was doing a year in pediatrics at the children’s hospital on Temple Street in Dublin. We’ve done some charity things for them.

Wendy ran a marathon and donated over €20,000. We went in there with the claret jug after I won, which was pretty cool. ●●●

you once told me there are three photographs on the wall in your parents’ house: your brother and sister are shown in their graduation gowns, and you’re holding the irish open trophy. i’m thinking that will be replaced soon enough. I think you’re right

there; the Irish Open’s days are numbered. ●●●

last question: teacher pete cowen remembers you as “the little fat kid with the glasses.” how do you remember pete cowen?

[Laughs.] The man in black.

I love that he’s so blunt. I’m very friendly with Pete. He’s helped me a bit over the years.

He has done so much in the game. I first met him at a coaching session. Neil got him to come over. And probably had to pay huge money, knowing Pete. [Laughs.]

●●●

how are you going to balance playing in europe and america going forward? My

schedule next year will actually be pretty similar to this year.

We’ve talked about it a lot since Portrush. I’ve had a lot of offers. I could go ’round the world picking up money for playing in events. But, ultimately my goal is the same—to be on the plane to Whistling Straits. Winning the Open helps, but I got no Ryder Cup points. I still have to perform from September onwards.

But if and when I get there, I know I’ll be able to perform under the severest pressure. october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

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g e t yo u r

Photographs by J.D. Cuban

BACK! by j o s h z a n d e r

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▶ LOOKING BACK AT THIS SUMMER, ASSESS YOUR PLAY ON THE GREENS. Did you get the ball to the hole nearly every time you had the putter in your hands? Was your green-reading sharp? Did you sink most of the short ones?

Did you have many—or any—rounds when you went all 18 holes without a three-putt? If you answered yes to most of these questions, you might think this article is for the other golfer. But don’t be mistaken—there’s some useful advice for you in here, too. But what I’m really trying to do is bring the downtrodden putters back from their dark places. They need to rethink their approach on the greens, and it starts with rebuilding skills like you were rebooting a computer. I’m talking about pre-putt routine, green-reading, accuracy and distance control. I’ve got drills for all of those things. Before we get to them, let’s start with your demeanour. No matter what transpired this season, I want you to start believing you can routinely hole putts. I might be overdoing the celebration in this photo, but only to prove a point. Bring your “A” attitude to the greens, and you’ve taken the first step to a reboot. Here’s the rest of what matters.—WITH RON KASPRISKE

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“ many putts are missed before the stroke ever begins, because you make a poor read or you’re not aligned properly.”

before you putt

H

ere

are

a

couple

of

things to help you before you putt. The first is to read the greens without your eyes. Remember, your eyes can sometimes fool you, but gravity doesn’t lie. The same force affecting your ball is affecting you. So your feet tell you which way the ball will move.

When you practice, put a blindfold on, or close your eyes and feel the break (above).

Are you favouring your toes? The ball will move in that direction. Heels? Same thing.

Leaning to one side? Again, that’s where the ball will go.

Another thing to remember is that the way

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you hold the club makes alignment a challenge unless you adjust for it. Say you putt with a traditional grip, your trail hand (right for righties) lower than the other. When you grip the handle this way, your trail shoulder drops and is thrown out of alignment.

Then if you try to correct the out-of-position shoulder, you change your eye line.

You have to get into a level position with your shoulders and eyes before you take your grip. You can do that with a little symmetry to your hand positions on the club. It’s like a prayer grip (above, right). When you hold the club this way, you now know what level feels like. Then try to maintain that feeling when you shift into your normal grip (right).

putt for a brief moment—not enough time to always be accurate. You’ll putt a lot better if you can keep the putterhead moving down the line of putt longer. A great way to reinforce this feeling of having the face square to the path longer is to trace it over the top of a shaft on the green. Note what your body and hands have to do to make this happen. Copy that when you play.

plan for arrival speed

E

verything we talked about

rolling it where you want

N

ow that you can read

greens with your feet and you’re properly aligned at address, accuracy is as simple as controlling the putterface. I’ve got two drills for that, too. The first is to correct a bad habit manifested by your golf swing. When you swing, your body pivots. When you putt, your body still wants to pivot. You have to resist that urge.

This drill will help: Place your lead hand on your trail shoulder and make one-arm putts (above). Feel that trail shoulder moving back and forth, but never outward.

Great ball-strikers like Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson and Rory McIlroy sometimes struggle with the putter because they have too much arc in their strokes—just like their full swings. But if the putter stays square to its path, it’s only square to the line of

so far is wasted if your distance control is shoddy. To get the ball to the hole, make sure you stay in balance from address to impact. If your weight favours your toes or heels at address, you’ll subconsciously move into balance when you putt, and that correction will make you miss the centre of the putterface. There goes the energy needed to reach the cup.

You want your weight evenly distributed along the length of both feet at address. To improve balance, stand on something that challenges it like a half foam roller (above).

Get used to knowing what true balance is at address, and your body won’t make corrections as you swing.

Now let’s talk about arrival speed. If it’s good, you’ll be able to hole putts that are rolling over the outer parts of the cup—not just dead centre. For uphill putts, good speed will have the ball hit the back of the cup before dropping in. For downhill putts, the ball will tumble over the edge and strike the bottom of the cup first. Then it’s time to come up with your way to celebrate. Your putting officially has been rebooted.

zander , a Golf Digest Teaching Professional, is based at the Stanford (Calif.) Golf Course and Sharon Heights in Menlo Park, Calif.

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IF THESE BALLS COULD TALK . . .

Photographs by Christopher Payne

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by mike stachura + e. michael johnson

. . . THEY WOULD TELL A STORY ABOUT FOUR SMALL AMERICAN TOWNS SAVED BY GOLF

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unlike the rest of the equipment in your bag,

the golf ball is still largely made in America. Not Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam or China. Rather, it’s New Bedford (Titleist) and Chicopee (Callaway) in Massachusetts. Or Covington (Bridgestone) in Georgia. Or Liberty (TaylorMade) in South Carolina. About nine out of every 10 premium golf balls sold in the United States come from one of four factory towns in three states. • Each of these operations mixes the highly technical elements of modern golf-ball manufacturing with workers whose multigenerational legacies often stretch back to the Great Depression. It’s these sophisticated manufacturing enterprises that have become the pride—and in some cases, the engine—behind these small towns, and in turn these

small towns continue to propel the biggest ball companies, titleist new bedford / mass. making a combined half-a-billion balls a year. • This in a day when American manufacturing has somewhat fallen away. he familiar story of Titleist, whose legendary Pro V1 franchise U.S.-manufacturing jobs decreased by a third in the first accounts for about three-quarters decade of this century, most painfully in the fringe towns, of the balls played in professional where products once thought essential to the landscape and golf and one of every four balls sold in the United States, begins with a missed putt from character of a region are increasingly built overseas. Amid company founder Phil Young that led him to all of that, the golf-ball business resists and persists. When question the quality of the ball he was using. led to a commitment to manufacturing you ask officials at these companies or in these towns why That precision that remains the company’s guidthe world’s golf balls are still made here, the answer is consis- ing principle. (Example: Titleist has been Xtent. As proud as they are of their technological processes at raying balls for perfectly centred cores since the onetime rubber-processing company got plants that operate multiple shifts a day, seven days a week, into making golf balls in 1932.)

It’s not an exaggeration to say that no they’re prouder still of a simpler asset. Like Chicopee mayor company in the world makes more balls at a Richard Kos says: “Natural resources have made the United higher quality than Titleist. One reason: The States a great country, but the resource that’s special now, 1,200 employees in its ball operations reflect aggregated 23,000 years of ball-making the resource that’s special here, is the human resource.” an experience. The company’s personnel at all • This is not a story about golf balls. This is a story about people. levels of R&D and on the plant floor interact

T

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▶ journey to the centre The guts of Titleist’s Pro V1x and AVX ( previous pages): Molded rubber cores come first, and the finished core with a polymer-casing layer comes next. Four hundred times a shift, Scott Andrade (left) lifts one of these 15-pound trays of rubber prep that will become the inner cores of a Titleist Pro V1x. Jason Belmer (below) stands over the roller that mixes the ingredients for the rubber slabs that will become the inner core of a Callaway Chrome Soft.

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daily. It’s not happenstance that Titleist’s R&D, manufacturing, testing, custom-logo and distribution facilities are located within an eight-mile circle.

“This type of manufacturing, it’s not linear,” says Bill Frye, senior vice president of golf-ball operations, who came to Titleist from Boeing 28 years ago. “It’s an integration. And there’s a certain pride in knowing you’re not just a cog in the wheel. Somebody on third shift grinding cores knows they’re an important part of the ongoing success of the future of the company.”

It’s that manufacturing agility that allowed a company whose top product was a tour-played ball with rubber windings to switch to solid-core, multilayer constructions with the introduction of the Pro V1 in late 2000. If it seemed like that process hap-

pened overnight, credit a workforce that has been there and done that. Manny Baptista met his wife at Titleist; he has worked with his brothers there. After 37 years in, going to work still feels like coming home. “Honestly, it’s peace of mind coming here,” he says. “Unlike everyday life, any chaos that happens here is under control.”

That culture might be at the foundation of Titleist’s ball business, but when the company was bought by Fila, a Korean-owned sports conglomerate, in 2011, there were rumblings the business might move overseas. It didn’t, and today the impact on the region, as well as Acushnet, the parent company of Titleist, is not just emotional. In addition to the local hospital system, Acushnet is the area’s largest employer and likely its largest benefactor. The economic impact of

its payroll alone is estimated at half-a-billion dollars. You can purchase new machines and a new building in a new country, but you can’t buy a culture.

“As part of any good business, you had to go through the exercise and evaluate,” says Peter Broome, senior vice president of industry and trade relations for Acushnet.

“But quickly you realise there’s so much more to the general ledger here than economics. You can always find a reason to move manufacturing processes, but the fact we’re where this thing started matters.”

Mike Gemaly was nearly born on the old winding-room floor where his mother worked at the original Ball Plant I. He has been making golf balls for 36 years and is one of more than 50 employees with a quarter-century’s worth of experience. He

▶ spin cycle Rapidly spinning Pro V1x balls are sprayed with a layer of clear coating that maintains the cover’s brightness and color.

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▶ taking shape Titleist makes every mold for its balls in-house, monitoring the specifications of each dimple to two-ten-thousandths of an inch. Laurys Marte-Rodriguez (bottom) holds freshly formed dual cores of Callaway’s ERC Soft.

‘YOU CAN PURCHASE NEW MACHINES AND A NEW BUILDING IN A NEW COUNTRY, BUT YOU CAN’T BUY A CULTURE.’ commands the room like the rock star he once left town thinking he would be. But as life happened, he came home and eventually got his GED through Titleist. He and Manny and those around him know what the company has done for them and vice versa. Titleist might be the No. 1 ball in golf because of its success in the market and on the world’s professional tours, but the way players embrace Titleist’s products probably has a lot to do with the way its employees embrace their work.

“When we see a golf ball, we see our life, we see the people that we’ve been close-knit to,” Gemaly says. “We see what’s allowed us to get things done in life. This isn’t just a golf ball. It represents too much for that.”

▶ swing mechanics Like a team of space aliens, industrial robots transfer rubber slugs and finished cores to and from the molding machines at the Chicopee plant that’s more than a century old.

‘THERE’S A LOT OF KNOWLEDGE ON THE FACTORY FLOOR. YOU JUST CAN’T GOOGLE “GOLF-BALL-MAKING MACHINE” AND EXPECT IT TO WORK.’

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callaway chicopee / mass.

V

ince simonds, whose father, Jim, started in 1948 at the same ball plant that his son now runs, knows things could have gone another way in a town where Spalding/TopFlite and now Callaway have been making golf balls since 1896. “It was really bad,” he says, reflecting on the early 2000s, when Wall Street investors purchased Spalding/ Top-Flite and ultimately filed bankruptcy for Top-Flite. “People who had been working here for decades lost their pensions.

There was just so much uncertainty. We had over a thousand employees, and we got down to 125. But I knew I didn’t want to be the guy locking the doors here and watching the parking lot fill up with weeds.”

Callaway had purchased the company from bankruptcy in 2003, but there was a moment after the recession when it appeared the plant would close and the company would move its golf-ball

production to Mexico and China. But when Callaway president and CEO Chip Brewer took over the company in 2012, he chose to make Chicopee the fulcrum for Callaway’s re-energised golf-ball business, starting in 2015 with the Chrome Soft line of balls. The so-called “ball that changed the ball” helped double Callaway’s ball business and move it from No. 4 to No. 2. “We took a different tack,” Brewer says, “and we’re really only tangentially starting to see the benefits of what we’re spending there at this point.”

Callaway has reinvested in its U.S.-based ball business, spending $50 million over three years. Now, the newest highly automated robots work with union workers from the Boilermakers Local 1851 to build the first ball that uses Nobel Prize-winning graphene in its cores. Chicopee is reinvigorated. The street leading to the plant now features commercial investment and a new Dunkin’ Donuts, and the local bus route was saved so that factory workers can get to the plant more easily. A new hotel has done $70,000 this year just from Callaway business.

Simonds says that comeback is about the pride of a region that had seen more than a third of its manufacturing jobs disappear in the first 15 years of this century. Lifestyles weren’t merely changing, the area was on the verge of economic collapse.

Working with state and local officials, the Callaway plant now has worker training programs with area community colleges.

Simonds says a big portion of the millions of dollars of investment in the plant has had local economic effects for electricians, mechanics, programmers and others. Kos, about to step down after his second stint as Chicopee’s mayor, was mayor when the old plant fell victim to bad decisions and a worse economy.

“Callaway saw the level of productivity of the people who were still here as well as the ones who came and learned from example, and that has made this facility able to be something that a publicly traded company can justify,” says Kos, a lifelong resident who remembers the days when tour pros like Lee Trevino would come to the factory and hit balls at nearby Annie’s Driving Range. “Nobody in that financial environment cares about Chicopee or even the golf ball. They care about the bottom line and how do you justify it.”

Simonds measures progress in the Chicopee plant a different way than the new technology and the expansion of the current building. He sees progress in simply how hard it is for him to remember every employee’s name in a plant that now has more than 400 workers.

“We’re golfers, love the game, love the business and wanted to stay in it,” he says.

“There were a lot of financial people looking at numbers saying there’s got to be a cheaper, more economical way to do this.

But there are intangibles to it. There’s a lot of knowledge on the factory floor. You just can’t Google ‘golf-ball-making machine’ and expect it to work. You need that history behind you to be able to develop systems and processes to do it correctly and profitably.”

Covington is known as the “Hollywood of the South,” a moniker bestowed on the city for the high number of television shows and movies filmed there. The city’s Homer Sharp Stadium also served as the setting for the final football scene in “Remember the Titans.”

Just as Coach Herman Boone’s Titans overcame adversity to thrive, so has Covington.

With Bridgestone Golf playing a leading role.

Like an anchor tenant in a mall, Bridgestone—the Tokyo-based tire, rubber and sports giant that opened a U.S. marketing office in Covington in 1985 and started manufacturing balls there in 1990—helped attract other businesses to the area.

‘THIS COMMUNITY WORKS HARD. THEY MAKE THINGS WITH THEIR HANDS. THEY WANT TO BE HOPEFUL FOR THE FUTURE. NOW THAT HOPE IS BACK.’

bridgestone covington / ga.

D

avid bernd was a 34-year veteran of Kimberly Clark and remembers the security briefings the company issued to employees traveling to Augusta, Ga. “Most people would fly into Atlanta and drive to Augusta via I-20,” Bernd says. “They made a point of telling us not to stop here.”

“Here” is Covington, Ga., a town of some 13,000 people 35 miles east of Atlanta. Bernd serves as the vice president of economic development for Newton County, of which Covington is a part.

▶ handled with care The rubber slabs (no finger oils, please) are trimmed into strips before being fed into an extruder that clips off dozens of preps a minute to form the inner cores of a Pro V1x. october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

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“Every Japanese executive that comes here plays golf and knows Bridgestone,” Bernd says. “We make it a point to take them there to get ball-fit as well as golf balls with their logo on it. When they go back to Japan, they’re aware Bridgestone is in Covington.

It’s a powerful recruitment message.”

Five hotels within five miles of Covington are in the design stage. The Covington Town Centre, including offices, townhouses, a theater and a Publix, is under construction.

Facebook is creating a $42 billion data centre in nearby Stanton Springs in what could be the largest economic-development project in the state’s history.

“None of this could have happened without the foundation the Japanese companies, particularly Bridgestone, laid 30 years ago,” Bernd says.

Dan Murphy, Bridgestone Golf’s president and CEO, is a longtime Covington resident who has seen the distressed side of the area and now is enjoying witnessing the investment.

A reading program involving 600 volunteers, including a large number of Bridgestone employees, started in 2013. Since then the graduation rate has topped 90 percent, with Eastside High School receiving an A ranking nationally for the first time. It’s a fundamental shift in personal economy, too. Median wages in Covington are now nearly $60,000. Nine-year Bridgestone employee Dennis Johnson has seen it firsthand, starting as an entry-level cure press worker and now overseeing 18 people on his shift. A former Harley-Davidson employee with inked-up arms, a strong Southern drawl and a quick wit, Johnson lives in Covington and revels in the pride of working there, particularly on the Monday after this year’s Masters.

“It’s Tiger Woods, and we made his golf ball,” Johnson says. “We all have a part in that, from the person receiving the rubber to the person shipping the ball out the door.

Put your name on it and be proud of what you do.”

taylormade liberty / s.c.

‘IT’S TIGER WOODS, AND WE MADE HIS GOLF BALL. WE ALL HAVE A PART IN THAT. . . . PUT YOUR NAME ON IT AND BE PROUD OF WHAT YOU DO.’ In 2014, Murphy helped drive the decision to make all of the company’s premium balls in Covington. Believing in golf balls “made here, played here” helped boost the number of employees to its current 173, with close to 90 percent living in Covington or its outskirts. All of Bridgestone’s television commercials, including current ones featuring Tiger Woods and Bryson DeChambeau, were shot in Covington.

But Murphy and Bridgestone do more for Covington than lead with their logo. Murphy and Bernd are proponents of BHAG’s: Big Hairy Audacious Goals. In the instance of Covington, that goal is to eradicate poverty and get to zero unemployment. The key to achieving that: education.

“The state estimates how many beds it will need in its prisons by the number of kids who can read by third grade,” Bernd says. “Our schools were not good. In 2012, we had a sub-60-percent high school graduation rate, and 80 percent of our kids read two grades behind their grade level.”

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espite its patriotic name, Liberty was—and in some ways, still is—facing the unpatriotic fate of becoming a dying Southern mill town. On the main drag of Front Street, a dozen red, white and blue “Welcome to Liberty” banners hang from telephone poles, a stark juxtaposition to a street with numerous boarded-up buildings. Around the corner is the rarest of sights in the rural South: a deserted church. A grim symbol for a town fighting for its soul.

With slightly more than 3,000 people, Liberty sits in the upper northwest corner of the state. The closing of the Liberty Denim plant in 2011 dealt a blow to an already shaky local economy. The median income was $35,986 for 2013 through 2017, according to U.S. Census estimates.

A few miles away is the Pickens County Commerce Park—a relatively confined area, but one of significant growth and development during the past decade. Included is TaylorMade’s 120,000-square-foot ball plant that opened in 2014. It wasn’t always a sure thing.

Scott Austin is the plant manager. He came to the company in 2006 when TaylorMade’s ball plant was in the old Dunlop facility 30 miles away.

“My expertise was moving plants,” Austin says, sitting behind a desk littered with custom and cut-open golf balls. “A few months into the job I heard we were moving the urethane line to Taiwan. So, yes, leaving South Carolina was talked about.”

▶ rocks ’n’ roll Synthetic “rocks” vibrate against Titleist balls to get each one pristine before the cover-painting process begins.

But in 2012, TaylorMade’s revenues surged with the RocketBallz metalwoods phenomenon, giving management the financial confidence to go ahead with a new building in the United States for its golf-ball business. TaylorMade invested $13 million to build the plant, using local contractors and suppliers during the construction. It started with about 80 employees when it moved to Liberty and now has 230. In all, Ray Farley, executive director of Alliance Pickens, estimates the economic impact of TaylorMade coming to Liberty to be in the eight figures.

Sixty-five percent of the tax revenue goes toward funding schools in Pickens County.

One of those schools is a technical high school that’s among the top 1 percent of its kind in South Carolina. The school trains talent that TaylorMade and other state businesses need. “It’s the private sector contributing to education, and education contributing to the workforce of the private sector, which then contributes to economic development,” Farley says. “That tax revenue feeds that circle.”

Although the area still faces challenges, there are reasons for optimism. The number of employees in Liberty has increased 9 percent, the median household income is up, and poverty, while still above the national average, has fallen nearly 2 percent, according to datausa.io.

“We have one area with the past and then this other area where there is the future, hope and growth,” says Ken Roper, a Pickens County administrator who has lived all his 50 years in the area. “Without these companies, including TaylorMade, there might not be a reason for this town to exist. Pride is important for a small town. This community works hard. They make things with their hands. They want to be hopeful for the future. Now that hope is back.”

Janice Holland, a 32-year veteran of Dunlop and now TaylorMade, who started out earning $3.35 an hour, knows about hope. She’s back at the plant after a two-year battle with cancer, and she now has two sons working in Liberty with her. “You invest your life in a company, and you notice everything,” she says. “We’re family here, and this is a good job. We’re making a product here in the U.S.A. You don’t walk away from that.”

Holland works in the custom-tour department, sending product out to the tour staff. She makes it a point to put notes in each box, telling Rickie Fowler or Jon Rahm or Rory McIlroy that she’s rooting for them. Then, like she does in church, there’s a prayer for each of them to have a blessed day. Blessed. Whether the church is boarded up or not.

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68 golfdigest.com | month 2019

Photograph by First Lastname

DENIS PUGH’S UNIQUE TOUCH MOLDS WINNERS LIKE FRANCESCO MOLINARI BY JOHN HUGGAN

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THE MOST LOW-PROFILE, HIGH-PROFILE SWING COACH IN GOLF

october 2019 | golfdigestme.com

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ook closely and you’ll spot him . Not front and centre. But Denis Pugh will be there on the range at a professional golf tournament, most likely standing quietly nearby as Francesco Molinari hits shots. Pugh might step forward now and then and offer a few words to the 2018 Open champion he calls “my best work.” But there will be no preening or posturing for any watching cameras. It will be all business—quiet and efficient. ▶ That has forever been the way of things for Pugh, who is perhaps the most low-profile, high-profile swing coach in the world of golf today. Which is odd. A glance at Pugh’s history reveals a number of well-known names and, even more significant, a variety of swings and personalities that have graced the international game during the past three decades. In addition to Molinari, Pugh, 64, has at various times guided the likes of Frank Nobilo, Colin Montgomerie, Ross Fisher, Peter O’Malley, Greg Turner, Wayne Riley, Mike Harwood and Peter Fowler to success around the globe.

Surprisingly, as far as Pugh’s coaching is concerned, O’Malley’s is the name that is perhaps the most significant on that list. In a more than 30-year professional career, the Australian is most famous for three things: playing the last five holes on the King’s Course at Gleneagles in seven under par to win the 1992 Scottish Open, defeating Tiger Woods in the first round at the 2002 World Match Play Championship, and ball-striking that is legendary for its quality and consistency.

“No one in the history of golf has missed more 10-foot birdie putts than Pom [O’Malley’s nickname],” his friend and compatriot Mike Clayton once said, simultaneously paying tribute to O’Malley’s teeto-green play and revealing the fatal flaw in his game.

More glibly, Molinari has been labeled “Pom with a putter.” The pair share strikingly similar stocky builds and a propensity for fullswing consistency. Did O’Malley help prepare Pugh for the work he has done with the first Italian to win a major championship?

Yes and no. Times have changed, as, by necessity, has Pugh’s teaching, something that leaves the native of Essex, England, more than a little ambivalent.

“Pro golfers who don’t hit the ball 300 yards or so through the air are not competitive today,” he says. “Part of Francesco’s preround warm-up is to blast three balls as hard as he can. Is that good for his game? Yes, for the game as it is now. But it isn’t the game I grew up with.

“It was different before. No one has ever hit the centre of the clubface more often than Pom. Or found the middle of more fairways.

If Pom was playing the regular tour now, he would have gone for power more than accuracy. He would have had to do that to survive.

And that’s the difference. Francesco was prepared to risk all in the search for more power. Because that’s all that counts these days.”

Pugh then expands on Molinari’s routine.

“Francesco actually hits three to five shots at full speed with a variety of clubs. He starts each warm-up with five 8-irons to get his swing underway. At that point, he’ll hit five more 8-irons, each one at a different speed. He has three: training speed, level two and level three. I ask him to hit each shot at those different tempos. Then he moves up to a 6-iron. Same drill. And after that, based on the shots he has just hit, we proceed depending on what we think he needs to work on. That’s where the TrackMan comes in. Then he goes to his driver. Same thing with the five shots. He’ll hit most of those at level two, which is what he uses on the course. Level three is used to see what speed he can get to. Next up is his 7-iron. He hits five shots with that club. Never more than five. He’s basically winding down. Then he goes into targets, all pre-measured by his caddie. He’ll hit one shot to each target, or a group of three to one target, each time measuring how close he is. So the first part of the warm-up is to create speed.

The second part is to test accuracy.”

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struggling as a player, thriving as a coach s a player, Pugh never reached such heights— or lengths. His career highlight was winning a mini-tour event in the United States against “a good field.” A self-confessed short-hitting, wild driver who hit too many iron shots fat, he was tour standard with a wedge and occasionally had enough gumption to hole the odd putt.

“But I couldn’t hit the ball at all,” he says. “I was able to pre-qualify regularly—maybe 50 percent of the time. And when I did that, I would make the cut maybe 50 percent of the time. That might be good enough to make a living these days, but it wasn’t back then.

I wasn’t good enough to do well, but I wasn’t bad enough to stop.”

Pugh did stop in 1979, when legendary coach Phil Ritson bluntly told him he didn’t have what it takes to be a great player, but he did have what it takes to be a good coach. A few years later, Pugh was working with David Leadbetter as his fellow Englishman was making Nick Faldo great rather than good.

“When Faldo won the Open in 1987, David became the star name in coaching terms, and that helped me because I was best placed to explain what David was all about,” Pugh says. “I was one of the few people in the U.K. who knew how to analyse a swing on video.

Anyway, David was hot, and I was associated with him. And I knew how to work a video camera. On those things, I built a career.”

In time, more and more tour players went to see Pugh, many of them from Down Under. One, Turner, was rescued, his game a mix of tops and shanks before Pugh entered his life. Nobilo, now a mainstay of Golf Channel’s coverage, was another.

“I went to Denis as part of a search for improvement,” Nobilo says.

“I was questioning what causes what. And he was also a little antiestablishment, which suited me. We were contrarians together. And Denis was as hungry to make a name for himself as I was. He is the best coach I ever worked with. The things that changed my game the most and made me competitive, I did under his tutelage. I was with him from 1988-’89 to 1996. I played my best golf under him. My swing was technically sound. And a lot of people liked it. He made me believe in myself. He preached three things: posture, positioning and plane. That described my swing perfectly. It worked well under pressure, and I could fix it when it went wrong.”

That’s in complete contrast to Pugh’s most famous student, preMolinari. Montgomerie might be the last person in the world anyone would go to for an in-depth explanation of how the golf swing works.

On the range at the K Club in Ireland, a journalist once had to explain to the eight-time European No. 1 why it was easier to fade the ball with a 3-iron rather than a 9-iron: “Loft creates backspin, Colin, which negates sidespin.”

“Really? I never knew that.”

For Pugh, teaching such ignorance was a new challenge. This was no swing re-build for Turner, or a long-term fine-tuning with Nobilo. This was a unique experience with a unique golfer, but one that proved to be mutually beneficial.

“Monty made me better at what I do,” Pugh says. “Learning to coach in chaos was interesting. He taught me to be adaptable. Day to day, I never knew which Monty was going to appear. Or in what circumstances I would be teaching him. He fired me 19 times over 12 years. He rehired me 19 times, too. He made me more multidimensional. There is one way for every player, but no one way for every player.

“Working with Monty was always interesting, but over time he basically cost me the rest of my ‘stable,’ with one or two exceptions,” Pugh says. “The other players didn’t like that Monty was sucking up their time with me. He expected full-time attention.”

AS A PLAYER, ‘I WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH TO DO WELL, BUT I WASN’T BAD ENOUGH TO STOP.’

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a devastating loss

hat was to prove even more impossible for Pugh, whose life changed forever on Saturday, Sept. 18, 1999. Arriving back from picking up pizzas for the family lunch—son Robert was 12, daughter Victoria, 10—Pugh saw an ambulance in his driveway.

His wife, Lesley, had suffered a massive heart attack during his brief absence. Two days later, after being told there was no sign of brain activity, Pugh made the agonising decision to turn off her life-support machine. She was 43.

“It took me about 18 months to get to the stage where I could talk about it without crying,” says Pugh, who married again in 2003 and commutes between London and Munich to be with Nettie, a Supreme Court judge in Germany. “Even now, at certain times, I get tearful if I think about it. I can still get upset. But I don’t like to look backward. I prefer to live in the present and look to the future. I was always a bit that way, but now I’m totally that way. I’m not comforted by my memories. I just feel an enormous sadness, thinking about what could have been.”

After Lesley’s passing, Pugh stopped traveling on tour, gave up his occasional appearances on Sky Sports television coverage and took a club professional job at The Wisley club near London. Apart from Photographs by Dom Furore

PUGH ON THE ART OF INSTRUCTION

editor’s note Ron Kaspriske, Senior Editor/Instruction, talks with Denis Pugh for details on his teaching approach:

you’ve credited phil ritson with getting you started as a teacher. best advice he gave you? He once said, “If you can’t help someone, don’t f--- them up.” That’s good advice for any teacher. what’s your primary goal when giving a lesson?

If you had a lesson with me right now, the things I would tell you, you could use on the course tomorrow.

It wouldn’t be like, “Go to the range and hit 400 balls” to get it, because if it isn’t going to work inside of 10 balls, you’re probably not going to be able to do it. if i came to you and said i’m slicing the ball off the toe of the club, how would you fix me in 10 balls?

If you’re hitting it out on the toe, that’s a compensation for the fact you slice the ball. First thing I’d do is fix your path. It needs to be going farther right if you’re a right-handed player. In the old days, they’d tell you to swing so the clubface closed sooner—roll your

wrists over. But the swing happens too fast to try to control the face with your hands. Better to get the path of your swing moving so it’s open in relation to the clubface at impact. If you’re out on the toe, you might snap-hook some to start, but I guarantee you won’t hit a slice. what was your first real coaching experience?

I got an offer of a job in 1983 at Wanstead Golf Club in London— running the pro shop, playing with the members and some coaching.

But I started to realise that I loved teaching a lot more than trying to sell someone a shirt or a set of clubs. On Mondays, which was my day off, I used to hire some hitting bays at a local driving range and teach groups of four golfers at a time. I’d work with them for two hours and then cycle through three more groups each time. I was making more money in a day than I was making in a week as the club pro. I knew I was better off on the lesson tee. any other teaching influences? David Leadbetter.

Everyone says he’s a great golf coach, but I think he’s just a great teacher. I always felt he could teach me Japanese if he wanted. That’s the type of teacher he is.

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how did your time with colin montgomerie help you as a teacher? I learned that you don’t have to have a textbook swing to have great success in golf. If you have a player who can hit all the shots and play under pressure, what you have to do is figure out what makes his or her swing work and know how to put it back together when things are off. Some of the best sessions with Monty were when he was hitting it great. He’d say, “Remember what it looks like, Denis. You’re earning your money now. When it stops working, you need to tell me how to get this back.” Whether it’s dealing with the mind of a golfer going haywire, or it’s the last day of a major and your player’s swing is awful, you have to find something. The way I do it—I know this sounds crazy—is that I switch my brain off and just go with the first thing that pops into my mind that I think will help.

Instead of thinking, I just react.

And I don’t even question it.

how surprised were you at francesco molinari’s improvement? The change was amazing. He already had contended in majors and played on Ryder Cup teams, and I think he reached 14th in the World Golf Ranking. But he then went through a slump and was really struggling just to stay in the top 50. He didn’t want to be that sort of player. When he asked me what he needed to do, I said, “You’ve got to be 20 yards longer.

You don’t hit the ball far enough, and your short game needs help.”

So, what he did was get a physical trainer to get stronger, work with me to change his swing—to take the brakes off of it—and hire shortgame coaches James Ridyard and Phil Kenyon. And a mental coach, too, Dave Alred. elaborate on “taking the brakes off” francesco’s swing. What it means is eliminating any movement that is stopping the flow of power to the ball. It could be anywhere in the swing. Depends on the player.

With Frankie, he was able to pick up 20 yards off the tee by making a better turn off the ball. His right leg straightens going back, and his right hip and shoulder get behind him way more than they used to.

He’s definitely stretching out his

body in the backswing, loading up.

Then, in the downswing, we spent a lot of time getting him to make a move that I describe as a squat and jump. He’s pushing into the ground hard to generate power.

There’s more to it than that, but the training focused on using his body to create power as effectively as possible knowing that it’s better to have a wedge in from the first cut of rough than a 5-iron from the middle of the fairway. some players never recover from major overhauls. was that a concern? It was risky, but Frankie knew he didn’t want to stay put with his game. Something had to be done, and I think his ambition really came through. He’s a quiet man but very driven. He takes advice better than any athlete I’ve ever seen. He can process coaching really well. Maybe he’ll end up a golf coach, but I hope for his sanity he doesn’t do that. your twitter account says you’re “semi-retired.” i don’t get that impression.

Ever since I’ve become semiretired, I’ve gotten busier. I put that on Twitter to let people know that I’m at the end of the game now; I’m not taking on new students. I’ve got Frankie, Ross Fisher, some college kids and the members at The Wisley club in England. And that’s it. That’s a lot. I have to tell you, recently I’ve turned down three or four well-known golfers who you would think I’m crazy to pass up a chance to work with. They’re good guys, but I’m too busy. how do you feel about technology reshaping golf instruction? It’s a natural progression that mirrors technological advances in everything. It’s not the world I grew up in, but you’ve got to learn all these systems to stay relevant. I’m one of the old guys, and it’s easy to say we didn’t need that stuff back then. But nowadays, the whole field can win each week. You need every advantage you can get. You

better know whether your player should have a banana on the fourth hole or the sixth hole, because if it helps, it helps. The terminology with all these tech systems is funny, though. It’s like learning a foreign language. A lot of it is things you should never say to a student.

I wouldn’t even use some of these words with a tour pro. I just tell them what it should feel like. It’s for me to understand the technical stuff, but I want players to play. is there anything out there in golf instruction that is hurting the average player? Less now than perhaps in the past, when people were trying to concentrate on positions in the swing as being key positions.

I think the guys who do good work on tour, and the guys who do good research on the swing, are learning that it’s not about a set of swing positions—it’s a flow. you have a reputation for being outspoken. is that fair? I tend to be a rebel, and I’ve upset a lot of people along the way. But it never worried me about being popular—I don’t give a s---.

I really don’t. I don’t have intentions of leaving a legacy. My intention is to live my life and do what I do.

The last time I got involved with talking technique on Twitter, about five or six years ago, was with the stack-and-tilt guys. They had so much good information, but they were telling everyone else they were wrong. They weren’t wrong. You look at those guys and say, “Some of your research is great, but don’t tell everyone they’ve got to get in these positions.” Monty didn’t need stack-and-tilt. what’s another example of a great coaching job?

It was with a lady member of Wanstead. We’re talking 30 years ago. She could not get the ball airborne. At the time in England, to play the course, you had to have a handicap of 36 or better. With my help, she got down to 29.

From where she started to where she got, that’s the best coaching I ever did. She got it airborne and got it around the golf course with no talent for sports whatsoever.

And my first lesson? It was a lady member, and I just thought, Let her still like me at the end of this lesson. That was back when I still cared.

the occasional visit from Monty or Pom, that was his working life, the rest devoted to bringing up his two children.

“I look back now and know how much my mum’s death affected his life,” Robert says. “It was obviously a devastating blow for all of us, but a huge thing for my dad. As a kid, I didn’t see that as much as I do now. Before that, I had never had a cooked meal from my dad.

But that became an everyday thing. He learned how to cook. He did all the washing and the ironing. He became both parents, even as he had a career, too. I’m amazed by how much he did, really.

“He was always there when my sister and I needed him,” Robert says. “We were always his first priority. I will always be grateful for all that he did for us. He’s been a great dad. And he still loves golf, even if he claims he doesn’t. He’s always talking about it. He’s always trying to get better. And he spends too much time on Twitter.”

Indeed, the elder Pugh—who refuses to give swing tips on social media—is a prolific Tweeter, his vehemently pro-remain views on the United Kingdom’s imminent exit from the European Union (Brexit) taking up much character space amid the golf stuff.

“Clichéd thinking is everywhere,” he says with a smile and a shake of the head. “And when it comes to politics and golf, many people don’t want to know, because they already think they know. It’s better to think the lie than be told the truth.”

Pugh also explains another of his distinctions on Twitter: He frequently posts photos of place settings for his meals. The explanation?

“This started when I noticed how often people would tweet pictures of whatever they were about to eat,” he says. “Like anyone could ever care what they were having for dinner. I couldn’t care less. So, as a joke, I started posting pics of our table set for dinner. My wife and I always do that, even when we’re watching television. So it’s really just me offering up some of my patented sarcasm. I’ve had 60,000 impressions of my table settings. On average, I get 8,000 if I post Francesco’s swing in slow-motion. Amazingly, people take this stuff seriously. I get people tweeting to ask who is the left-hander who will be sitting at the table. There isn’t one. My wife is German and has her own way with cutlery. Other people ask why I’m drinking a 2018 vintage wine when 2017 is much better. They’re going as far as blowing up the picture to see what type of wine is there. So I’ve had others asking why we’re on the still water rather than the sparkling we had the night before.

Amazing stuff, really. Ridiculous, and a commentary of what Twitter is really like.”

Back to business. Pugh has worked with Molinari since coaching Francesco and older brother Edoardo on the Italian amateur team.

It has been an unusually long and uninterrupted relationship in a world where the inclination of the player is so often to look elsewhere when things are perhaps not going exactly to plan.

“I am obviously biased,” Francesco says, “but I think Denis has great knowledge. He has a great way of working—not too intense or invasive. For me, he always had a long-term picture in his head.

Little by little, he has made me better. In the beginning, I didn’t realise what he was doing. But I matured enough to see where we were going. Our secret is that his message has never gotten old. Denis is always researching and updating his ideas. So the message has changed and evolved. Denis is a lot more driven and ambitious than people realise, just because he is generally happy and smiling. But he is similar to me—and this is why we get on so well—in that we both have a huge drive to get better. Without shouting about it. When it is time, we work very hard.”

When that time comes, watch them carefully.

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Closeout

Increasingly Severe Penalties for Slow Play

10 Write “I will be ready to hit when it’s my turn” 50 times on blackboard.

9 Three-day ban from player dining.

8 Latest tee times on Thursday and Friday means two days of bumpy afternoon greens.

7 Courtesy car replaced with 1975 AMC Pacer.

6 Early-morning bunker raking detail with grounds crew.

5 Be Brooks Koepka’s towel boy at the gym.

4 Scarlet letter “S” stitched onto polo shirt left breast.

3 Watch “Caddyshack II” 2 Like an ancient stoning, except with limitedflight balls.

1 One-stroke penalty.

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Illustration by John Cuneo

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