GOLF SAUDI, TRANSFORMING GOLF INTO A SPORT FOR ALL
WIN A HERO DUBAI DESERT CLASSIC PRO-AM SPOT
ARAMCO TEAM SERIES RETURNS TO RIYADH
4 PGA & LIV
The players seem to be more positive about a deal being struck. by harry grimshaw
the starter
6 Summiting Black Mountain 27 holes carved through Thailand’s Hua Hin mountains. by harry grimshaw features
8 Journeys by alexa pano with keely levins
10 Oktoberfest is back!
Play your way into the Hero Dubai Desert Classic Pro-Am. by harry grimshaw
36 Riyadh Is Ready
The Aramco Team Series Presented by PIF climaxes in the Kingdom.
40 2024 LIV Golf
A recap of Jon Rahm’s rookie season and Ripper GC’s team winning journey. by harry grimshaw
42 Box Office Billy
The American became a two-time winner of the BMW PGA Champs. by harry grimshaw
43 Riyadh Round The Corner Riyadh Golf club brings the curtain down on the Asian Tour season. by harry grimshaw
44 Pound for Pound Power
How Min Woo Lee squeezes every ounce out of his drives. by luke kerr-dineen
52 Do This, Not That Eight ways to get smarter in how you practice and play. by mark blackburn
how to play
12 Go Golf Golf Saudi is transforming golf into a sport for all.
14 Swing Sequence Matthieu Pavon by luke kerr-dineen
16 Rules Of Golf
Why these bad breaks are just tough luck. by ron kaspriske
18 Steal This Tour
Pro’s Quick Prep
All you need is 10 minutes to be ready for the first tee. by mark blackburn
20 Master The Doglegs
Use these tips and you’ll stay ahead of the curve. by mike bender
22 Claw your way back
In a slump on the greens? It might be time to use this grip. by steve buzza
Riyadh Ready
Golf Saudi’s Aramco Team Series - Riyadh is set for the LET’s $5 million team finale on page 36
what to play
24 Could a Driver Rollback be Next?
The R&A’s chief of technology says it’s ‘a topic of interest’. by mike stachura
26 Just Like Us
Why some pros are opting for drivers designed for the masses. by mike stachura
28 What’s in My Bag Eric Cole with e. michael johnson
66 Q&A
The worst thing for your kid’s golf game. by mike stachura and e. michael johnson
where to play
30 Ask An Architect
Many Golfers Like Fast Greens, But Do They Ruin Good Architecture? by brian schneider
32 ‘I Hate This Golf Course!’
The modern terms of endearment for architectural frustration. by jerry tarde
34 A Beacon of Hope Mallorca’s Club de Golf Alcanada is the final stop (for some) before setting sail to the DP World Tour. by harry grimshaw
AGF news
62 Club News
All the recent news from within the Arab Golf Federation.
the
gulf club
64 Club News
A gallery of just a handful of the local tournament winners in the amateur circuit within the region of the Middle East.
Is the framework agreement happening?
The players seem to think something will be done, but we want to know when.
BY HARRY GRIMSHAW
Is the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, PIF deal actually getting any closer?
With a framework agreement being announced back in June 2023, it still seems like there is no clear end in sight, even though there seems to be murmurings from players that there is progression being made.
With recent talks having continued with all parties in New York recently, there is a still a sticking block with the Department of Justice being involved, even though they have removed a non-solicitation clause from the framework agreement.
On the eve of returning to the DP World Tour for the first time since joining LIV Golf, Jon Rahm seemed to think that with the gossip and rumours that have being circulating over the last few weeks, it seems there has been a big step forward made.
Scheffler had his say on the matter at the Presidents Cup, “there’s just so many moving pieces in that deal,” Scheffler stated, whilst he was initially left unimpressed with the legal action taken against the PGA Tour, but now he feels that any bitterness between players is no longer a problem.
It still feels like we (who are on the outside) are kind of sitting in the dark as we sit patiently to hear some direction on it all from the actual horse’s mouth and some gossip from anyone who is involved in the process.
POSITIVE THOUGHTS
“I
Rory McIlroy has even been in a more buoyant mood about it all as well recently, “It seems like the people that are really making the decisions are all rowing in the same direction, which is a really good thing.
“I think the tours want it to happen. The investors certainly want it to happen because they can see the benefit for themselves.”
An alternative in it all could be that if an agreement can’t be done, PIF could cut ties and hook up with the DP World Tour which would bring plenty more investment, better fields and even bigger prize funds in a throwback to how the then European Tour used to look decades ago.
“If things don’t materialise with the PGA Tour, I think it would maybe bring the European Tour back to like the ’80s and ’90s when there was like really two strong tours,” McIlroy added.
That would be pretty cool.
Rory McIlroy
All this positivity from the players still doesn’t actually mean a deal will get done as it’s a very complicated set of circumstances on wanting them all to operate together, rather than independently.
Anyway, closer to home, the golf scene is very much in full swing as the temperatures have cooled enough for us to venture from the comfort of our air conditioning and back out onto the golf courses!
The Emirates Golf Federation has created a new structure in their order of merits focusing on the development of Junior and Mixed Opens, the UAE girls defended their medals at the Pan Arab Golf Championships which was fantastic to see, plus we are keeping a close eye on UAE Men’s National Player, Joshua Grenville-Wood, as he goes in search of his DP World Tour card over the next few weeks.
Plenty more of all the local stories can be found in our Gulf Club inside on page 64, or online via golfdigestme.com, enjoy!
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the starter
Summiting Black Mountain
27 spectacular holes carved through Thailand’s Hua Hin mountains BY
HARRY GRIMSHAW
SET IN A VALLEY surrounded by black granite rock mountains, this jewel of a property is located just 25 minutes west of the town of Hua Hin, Thailand.
Black Mountain has been a regular Asian Tour venue for the past 15 years, having hosted several events since 2009, including the past two International Series Thailand tournaments.
The Phil Ryan-designed course has also welcomed The 2014 True Thailand Classic, the first DP World Tour event to be staged in The Kingdom, as it now has it’s sights set on the Asian Tour’s Black Mountain Championship taking place from 17-20 October 2024.
The 27 hole property, founded by Swedish entrepreneur Stig Notlöv in 2005, consists of three nine hole courses: East, North & West. The East Course is the original front nine. Offering a layout of spectacular golf holes, including two risk/reward par fives and a par four with an island green. The North Course is the original back nine, with a renowned par three second hole (originally the 11th) and holes with spectacular views and elevation changes.
While the West Course, opened in 2016, is cushioned into the canyon as you enter Black Mountain and complements the original holes. The West Course allows Black Mountain to serve a challenging golf experience to all golfers on a daily basis.
‘Going From Netflix Star to the LPGA Wasn’t Always Easy’
I was a prodigy and world champion at 7 years old. Now I’m a tour winner. That hardly tells the entire story BY
ALEXA PANO WITH KEELY LEVINS
YOU MIGHT RECOGNISE ME FROM “THE SHORT GAME,” the Netflix documentary about the U.S. Kids World Championships. I was 7 years old, and in it, I said I wanted to be the first woman to play in a tournament at Augusta National. Seven-year-old me was pretty close to predicting the future.
My dad, a former collegiate football player and coach, will tell you softball was my best sport, but I loved golf from the start. We lived on Sherbrooke Country Club in Florida, the same course the Koepka brothers played. Brooks was already in college, but his brother, Chase, played in the high school matches that my dad took me to when I was 5. Watching him hit it far and compete hard made me want to be a competitive golfer, too.
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AGE: 20
LIVES:
I went to middle school in the morning, got out at noon and went to the range. There were these massive buckets that were so big I could barely carry them. For hours I hit wedges at a target green 100 yards away. Then I’d go home and do the rest of my school virtually. I switched to homeschooling for high school. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything.
● ● ●
I started playing tournaments when I was 5 . U.S . Kids Golf approached my dad about the documentary and asked if I’d be in it. Filming gave me a lot of confidence. Before, I was so shy. When greeting people at golf courses, I’d turn my head away as I said hello. The attention afterward was kind of crazy. I was on Jimmy Fallon’s and Katie Couric’s shows. When I was 11, I received a sponsor’s exemption to a Japan LPGA Tour event.
● ● ●
When the Drive, Chip & Putt was announced, I was excited. I qualified and played in the inaugural event at Augusta National in 2014. At Augusta, I was shaking over the ball, but in 2016 and 2017, I won my age group. Although we didn’t actually play the course, that dream came true five years later when I competed in the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Seven-year-old Alexa would have been proud.
Colleges started recruiting me when I was 11, which was flattering, but I focused on playing well in junior tournaments. I won five U.S. Kids Golf World Championships, was on winning Junior Ryder Cup and Junior Solheim Cup teams, finished runner-up at the U.S. Girls Junior and was co-medalist at the U.S. Women’s Amateur. I realised I wouldn’t go to college. I wanted to turn pro.
●
During the summer of 2021, I was 16 years old and planned on turning pro the next spring. Then, I got the driver yips. I had always been a strong driver, but suddenly I couldn’t control it. My coach, Chris O’Connell, helped me build a repeatable swing. It’s not glamorous, but I hit thousands of balls to drill that motion. It took almost a year, but now my driver is the club that I’m most confident with. Conquering the driver yips is the thing I’m most proud of.
● ● ● The transition to pro golf was hard. It helped that my dad was caddying for
me on the Epson Tour, but having your dad on the bag is not for the weak. He knows my game better than anyone, but because we’re so close, it’s easy to argue, and emotions can run hot. Once in 2022, I had essentially won an Epson tournament in Kinston, North Carolina, until I hit a bad drive and went for the green on a hole that I didn’t need to because my dad encouraged me to. That mistake sent the tournament to a playoff, and I lost. I was mad about that for a long time.
● ● ●
I played well that season and earned my LPGA Tour card for 2023 at Q Series. I struggled at first on tour. The hardest thing was managing my time. I missed a bunch of cuts early in the season. To get through that rough patch, I needed to manage expectations, stay patient and realise an adjustment period was normal.
● ● ●
Later that season, at the ISPS Handa World Invitational in Northern Ireland, I needed birdie to tie the lead on the final hole. I was in the rough, a long way to the green. I asked my dad 15 times: “Are you sure going for it is the shot? Don’t just tell me it’s the shot. You have to really mean it because I’m going to be pissed if this doesn’t work this time.” I hit a great shot and made birdie to force a playoff, which I won for my first LET / LPGA Tour victory. My dad looked at me and said, “I don’t ever want to hear about Kinston, ever again!”
● ● ●
I’ve grown up in golf with a lot of expectations on me, but I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I’m still addicted to the intensity of competition that only golf can provide. Each week, I’m going to keep doing the same thing: Fight to get back in the winner’s circle.
ALEXA PANO LPGA TOUR
LAKE WORTH BEACH, FLORIDA.
what Golf Digest Middle East Oktoberfest Tournament where The Els Club, Dubai when Friday, October 18, 2024 price AED 795 per person (incl VAT) Individual Stableford tournament, 1:30pm shotgun start categories Division A: 0-12 Handicaps Division B: 13-24 max Best Gross
Go Golf
Golf Saudi – transforming golf into a sport for all
As A leAding home-grown entity driving the establishment of a golfing ecosystem in the Kingdom, Golf Saudi’s mission is simple: to grow the game of golf. Its Go Golf initiative represents a significant leap in the development of golf within Saudi Arabia, by increasing access for all Saudis to learn the game, as well as paving the way for many talents to join the national team.
Since its launch in May 2021, Go Golf has aimed to ignite passion among a wide breadth of Saudi youth through its small group coaching and personalised training. With golf in its infancy across the region, there is no greater demographic to target to elevate the growth of the game in Saudi Arabia than the younger population, who make up around 44% of the Kingdom’s total population.
GO GOLF
Contributes to building a bright future for golf in Saudi Arabia.
Over a period of three months, the program provides technical training divided into three phases under the supervision of qualified trainers. The first phase focuses on the foundations of the game, while the second concentrates on rules and advanced skills. The third phase develops the competitive skills required in tournaments, setting the selection criteria for qualified talents, who have potential to become professional players in the future.
The Go Golf initiative serves Golf Saudi’s ambition to pave the way for young Saudis and eliminate the barriers of entry. More than just an educational program, Go Golf enables Golf Saudi to equip a new generation of golfers, both men and women, who it is hoped will play an increasingly significant role on both the local and international stage.
Junior trainee, Badr Al-Harbi, said that his love for golf drove his program enrolment. “I learned a lot through this program and enjoyed my time, as I completed many training sessions and got to know different types of clubs and various technical techniques of the game.”
He added: “This program has greatly contributed to nurturing my passion for golf, and I have become more interested in continuing training and developing my skills. The program provided me with valuable guidance and helped me understand the game more deeply, which increased my enthusiasm to participate in future tournaments.”
Since the program’s inception, the initiative has seen widespread participation. In May 2021, 1,315 girls and 1,410 boys from Riyadh, and 133 girls and 85 boys from Jeddah joined the program. Over time, the numbers continued to rise, with 58 individuals now having graduated from the program, including 9 juniors, 21 female players, and 27 male players.
Another junior trainee, Mohammed Hassan, said that “I enrolled in this program with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of golf and developing my personal skills. Through the inten-
sive training offered, I was able to learn the basics and techniques necessary to improve my performance, and I was proud to see a clear improvement.”
He also remarked that this program not only boosted his confidence in playing but also gave him strong motivation to continue training and enjoying the game. “Golf has become an important part of my daily life, and I look forward to continuing to improve my skills and achieving more successes.”
Golf Saudi programs such as Go Golf have supported and provided professional pathways to many home-grown talents who are now among Saudi’s top golfers including Othman Al Mulla, Saud Al Sharif and Faisal Al Salhab. We are thrilled to share in their achievements and the increasing success of
the Kingdom, in global golf, and global sport at large.
In addition to its efforts within Saudi, Golf Saudi aims through this initiative to expand golf’s reach and presence globally. Go Golf is organised alongside the Aramco Team series tournaments which are held across Europe, United States, Asia, and the Middle East.
With this comprehensive approach and ongoing support, the Go Golf initiative contributes to building a bright future for golf in Saudi Arabia, achieving new aspirations both nationally and internationally, whether for those who see golf as a professional sport or a lifelong hobby.
For more information on the Go Golf Initiative by Golf Saudi, please visit golfsaudi.com/Go_Golf
Fade on Command
Matthieu Pavon is an emerging star after recent swing adjustments
BY LUKE KERR-DINEEN
MATTHIEU PAVON IS USED to playing a lot of curve, especially with the driver. The 31-year-old Frenchman and PGA Tour rookie hits his patented left-to-right fade about 95 percent of the time off the tee, says his swing coach, Jamie Gough.
“Moving the ball left to right is really
big for me,” Pavon says, “because I want to take away the left side of the course.”
It wasn’t until last fall, however, that Pavon had the fade consistently dialed in, the result of several years of hard work with Gough. The payoff has been significant. In addition to winning on the DP World Tour for the
first time last October, he captured his first PGA Tour title at the Farmers Insurance Open in January, one of three top-10 finishes in his first four starts as a tour member. Pavon carried the momentum to June, finishing fifth at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst.
“By removing the left side of the course, it gave me confidence in my game,” he says. “That’s pretty big, because if you’re confident in yourself, you can do pretty much whatever you want on the course.”
Pavon’s previous tendency was to get his right elbow too far behind his
body on the backswing, causing the shaft to cross the line and point right of the target at the top. He would also excessively slide his hips toward the target on the downswing, trying to extract whatever power he could from his legs. This would cause his arms to drop too much to the inside—not a good position for a fader of the ball. As a result, his good shots would start to the right and curve farther right, and his bad shots would be nasty doublecross hooks to the left.
To stop hooking shots he was trying to fade, Pavon adopted two key swing feels.
The first was to keep his right elbow more in front of him on the backswing, so the club pointed left of the target in a laid-off position at the top (above, fourth image). From there, he doesn’t have to reroute the club and has a much easier time getting his right elbow and arms in front of him on the downswing.
The second adjustment was to post up on the left hip and rotate his body around it on the downswing ( above, seventh image). When that hip slides toward the target and leaves his arms behind, his shoulders get shut and the path of the club becomes too much in
to out. Pavon needs his path to be more out in front of him so that his body can rotate and work left. It’s much easier to hit a fade with the shoulders open, says Gough, who also coaches another rising tour player, Ryan Fox.
“Matthieu is in complete control of his shape right now,” Gough says. “Because he’s taken the left side out of play, he can swing hard down the left side of the fairway and he knows the ball is coming back. He’s not afraid to curve it, which is a good thing, because if you know what shape is coming, it’s really easy to play with confidence.”
Two Rules You Wish You Could Change (But Can’t)
Why these bad breaks are just tough luck
BY RON KASPRISKE
WHETHER YOU’RE
new to the game or have been playing for years, you’ve probably experienced the deflating feeling of hitting a great drive down the middle of the fairway that settles in a hole created by someone else’s shot. Or perhaps you missed the fairway and could have had a clean shot into the green if not for the fact there’s a sprinkler-control box a few yards in front of you.
In both cases, you’re probably thinking you deserve a better fate. You’ll get no disagreement here — those are tough breaks.
However, if you think the Rules of Golf should change to allow for free relief from divot holes or line-of-
sight immovable obstructions such as sprinkler boxes, ball washers and benches, well, the USGA has a message for you:
“It’s fundamental to golf to play the ball as it lies, and you don’t always get a good lie,” says Craig Winter, Senior Director, Rules of Golf and Amateur Status for the USGA.
You might argue that divot holes, especially the ones that have been sanded, should be treated as ground under repair. As for those annoying obstructions, shouldn’t they be handled the way the professional tours handle grandstands and hospitality tents at their tournaments? The pros get free relief from temporary immovable obstructions (TIOs).
Em, no, say the rules makers—and here’s why. Let’s start with divot holes.
Although the USGA and R&A have considered handling them in another manner, there is no “practical solution” other than to leave them as just a part of the game, Winter says. If you think about it beyond the moment you’re in one, how often do you get a divot-hole lie each golf season? Probably not a lot.
Furthermore, if the rules makers were to treat divot holes as ground under repair, think of how many spots on the fairway would then have to be treated as this condition. They’re all over the place, they take a long time to heal, and they typically are not a focus of normal golf-course maintenance.
“Philosophically speaking, it’s hard to think of a different way we’d want to go,” Winter says.
In regard to immovable obstructions, you might wonder why the pros get to move their ball to a better location when something like a grandstand or scoreboard is blocking their line of play into a hole. The reason is that although they are immovable obstructions, they’re only present temporarily. In other words, they wouldn’t otherwise be on the golf course if not for accommodating spectators. Knowing they can unfairly interfere with play, committees can enact a Model Local Rule that allows for golfers to move their ball sideways until finding a spot where the temporary immovable obstruction no longer interferes with the shot.
“TIOs (such as a grandstand or a tent) are not normally present and are not considered to be part of the challenge of playing the course,” the rule book says.
Keep in mind, thinking back to your errant drive that landed near a sprinkler-control box, you could take relief without penalty if it interfered with your ball, stance or intended swing (Rule 16). You just don’t get the bonus plan that the pros get. Sorry.
‘It’s fundamental to golf to play the ball as it lies, and you don’t always get a good lie.’
Golf?
All you need is 10 minutes to be ready for the first tee
BY MARK BLACKBURN
What do you do when you’ve only got 10 minutes before your round starts? Resist the impulse to just hit your favourite club or bang a handful of drivers and call it a warm-up. Instead, do something that’s indicative of what you’re about to do on the course. Like many players on the PGA Tour, Max Homa (above) has a system of alternating clubs day to day—say, 8-iron, 6-iron, 4-iron one day, and 9, 7, 5 the next—to spread the work through the bag. He’s also trying to avoid wearing the faces out
WARM UP YOUR BRAIN Change clubs from shot to shot to get ready.
prematurely. (Most players don’t want to change irons more than necessary.)
Once you’ve done a brisk every-otherclub pass through your bag, prepare yourself for what you’re actually going to do by “playing” the first few holes of the course on the range. For example, if the first hole requires a driver down the right and then a 7-iron, hit those two shots with your full routine—pulling the club, picking your specific target and hitting the shot. A tour player might finish the warm-up playing the first five to nine holes shot by shot.
The most important element in this process is taking the warm-up from getting your body ready to getting your mind ready to actually play shots, which means different clubs and randomised targets. Hitting twodozen 7-irons doesn’t tell you what you need to know or get you ready for the challenge. Spend your 10 minutes with a plan, a purpose and some variety, and you’ll be more likely to start your round positively.
with Matthew Rudy
MARK BLACKBURN is No. 1 on Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers in America list. He has worked with several tour pros, including Max Homa and Justin Rose.
Master the Doglegs
Use these tips and you’ll stay ahead of the curve
BY MIKE BENDER
most amateurs struggle with dogleg holes because they try to do something they’re not capable of doing. If the hole bends to the left, they think, I need to hook or draw it around the corner, even if their natural ball flight is a fade. That strategy has double bogey written all over it. Remember, the second half of every dogleg is the shortest part of the hole, so if you can reach the corner and keep the ball in play, you’ve got a chance to score. Here are some other
things to consider when you step on the tee of a hole that bends left or right.
1. Pinpoint the zone
Before you choose a club, take the usual steps: Consider the shape of the hole, the wind and the trouble surrounding the dogleg. But the important step is to get out a yardage book or a range finder and calculate two things: 1) The distance to the inside corner of the dogleg. 2) How far it is before you run out of fairway. Obviously, getting your tee
DRAW IT?
The 10th at Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri.
shot past the corner is the goal, but you also have to keep from hitting it into trouble on the far side of the hole. Go with a club that is going to fit the ball nicely in that zone.
2. Play it straight-ish
Under calm conditions, choose a start line in the fairway even if your typical ball curves. The mistake is to aim too far left or right and then hit a shot that
doesn’t curve at all and you end up in jail. The exception is when the wind is blowing hard in the direction of the dogleg or you tend to hit a big hook or slice. In those cases, it’s OK to aim at the rough line because you’re likely to curve the ball back into play.
3. Don’t get cute
To play good golf, you don’t have to know how to shape shots left and right, but you do have to know how to make the ball go in one direction. If you’re
most comfortable hitting a fade, play from the far right-hand side of the tee box, aim toward the left-hand side of the fairway and then make an aggressive, confident swing. If you can hit a draw, play from the left side of the tee. Don’t try to produce a shot you’re not comfortable hitting. —with Dave a llen
MIKE BENDER, one of Golf Digest’s 25 Legends of Golf Instruction, is owner and director of instruction of the Mike Bender Golf Academy in Lake Mary, Florida.
Claw your way back
In a slump on the greens? It might be time to use this grip
BY STEVE BUZZA
it has been about 20 years since Chris DiMarco nearly beat Tiger Woods in a playoff at the Masters, putting with an unusual grip known as “the claw.” Since then, dozens of players have used a variation of it including Phil Mickelson, Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood.
Unlike a traditional putting grip, in which both palms face each other on the sides of the handle, a claw grip entails holding the club with your right hand’s palm rotated inward, facing your body. The putter is pinched between the thumb and forefinger, so very few fingers on the right hand make contact with the club. This reduces that hand’s involvement in the stroke, which helps keep the putterhead square at impact.
The claw grip isn’t for everyone. In my experience, it tends to best suit golfers with a thick chest and more rounded posture, and most importantly, those whose palms face their thighs. Most people’s palms naturally hang only slightly inward, and those golfers are usually better suited to hold a putter with a traditional grip. However, if your hands face inward and you putt with a standard grip, the right hand tends to seek out its most natural position, which can twist the forearm and putterface closed. This leads to the left miss—a pull—and a lack of smoothness in the stroke. Many golfers mistakenly think it’s a sign of the dreaded yips. In reality, it’s just a setup flaw.
If you pull a lot of putts, the claw might help you. Turn the page and read on to find out how. —with dave allen
STEVE BUZZA , a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, is director of instruction at Brook Hollow Golf Club in Dallas.
Test: Look to your knuckles
How do you know if the claw is right for you? Without a club, allow your arms to hang naturally from your shoulders and look down at your knuckles. If they point directly away from you and your palms face your thighs (photo, below), you could benefit from the claw. If the knuckles on your left hand point toward the target and your palms face one another, you’re probably better sticking with a traditional grip or trying another way to hold the club.
Why it works: Change can be good
In addition to the claw promoting more of a torsodriven stroke and quieting the role of the hands (photos, right), it also tends to feel more comfortable for golfers with rounded postures who struggle to hit putts smoothly. It improves distance control by helping to negate that bad feeling of needing to give the ball a whack to get it to the hole. Also, switching to a grip so different than the usual way you hold the putter creates an entirely new feel and motor pattern—one that doesn’t come with all those bad memories about the putts you’ve missed.
Grip: Form a paddle
Almost every player on the professional tours who uses the claw has their own version of it. I prefer my fingers make as little contact with the handle as possible, which quiets the right hand and puts more emphasis on the arms and shoulders in the stroke.
Take your normal lefthand grip, resting the putter in the palm of that hand. Now straighten the fingers on your right hand so you’re effectively creating the look of a paddle (photo, left). Keeping the fingers straight and relaxed, slip the handle in between your thumb and forefinger. Apply some light pressure on the top of the handle with your index and middle fingers—just enough so that you can control the club—and make sure that the back of your hand and forearm form a straight line. This way, the putter will swing back and through on one plane, like a pendulum.
Could a Driver Rollback be Next?
The R&A’s chief of technology says it’s ‘a topic of interest’
BY MIKE STACHURA
Steve Ott O , the R&A’ S chief technology officer and one of the keepers of the 100year study of driving distance, says the plan to roll back distance through a shorter golf ball, formally announced late in 2023 and scheduled to be implemented in 2028-’30, has been a deliberate, scientifically rigorous process. In turn, any potential decision to roll back the driver would be just as robust and one that’s still on the ruling body’s mind. (The USGA is the governing body for the United States and Mexico, and the Royal & Ancient governs the
POWER OUTAGE
Would a driver that’s less forgiving slow down R ory McIlroy’s 130 mile-perhour swing?
rest of the world.)
Otto addressed attendees at the 2024 World Scientific Congress of Golf at England’s Loughborough University in July during a talk that detailed the scientific efforts behind the R&A’s research across all phases of the game, not just the distance issue. He stressed that it is unequivocal that distance has increased, and the driver remains “a topic of interest.”
Otto, however, believes any change to the driver’s size, forgiveness or degree of springlike effect would likely be implemented only at the professional level. “We had clubs made that were smaller with lower moment of inertia [less forgiving],” he says. “That was not pretty, but for the elite golfer, that is still very much on the table.”
Otto added that any change would depend on what happens after elite players have been playing with the shorter ball for a period. “Before the golf-ball rollback was announced this past December, we sat down with several tour players, and a lot of them said, ‘You’re addressing the wrong thing; you should be addressing the club.’ Of course, I think if we’d gone with the club only, we’d have almost as much criticism saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing the ball?’”
Otto believes it’s important to get the ball’s 2028-’30 timeframe implementation correct first. “You can’t expect the industry to do both of these things at once,” he says.
The club, he says, would be harder to regulate on multiple levels: “We’ve upped people’s understanding of what we’re doing. They’re watching more carefully, and there are far more data questions coming at us. Any decision we make on the club will need to be held to a higher level of data scrutiny.”
This means any kind of elite-player rule targeting the driver would need to get at how the game is being played. “We have to look at the secondary elements of the data to see if we see a change in the behavior of players,” Otto says. “That might lead us to say these
clubs are too forgiving. We need to give them ones that are more penal, so if they can hit it in the middle at incredible speed, that’s a real skill. It’s looking at the dynamics and balance of skills in the game a little more.”
Reducing clubhead size, which likely in turn would reduce stability on mis-hits (in some cases, significantly) and limit the area of the face that produces the highest ball speeds, does have a downside in trying to attack elite driving distance: With a smaller clubhead, players would be swinging something more aerodynamically efficient, so they could swing such a club even faster than current speeds.
Otto remains resolute on the need to recalibrate distance based on elite male driving distance. The change to what will be a conforming (and shorter) ball will take place starting in 2028
USGA and R&A, that would lead to a 15yard reduction in driving distance for the fastest male professionals.
Otto stressed that the R&A’s Grant Moir, executive director of governance, and Mark Grattan, director of equipment standards, have been in discussions with ball manufacturers about the rollback. He said the early research with prototype balls from manufacturers and the number of golf-ball patents made it clear to him that the four-year transition period is sufficient.
“We’ve got plenty of time to talk to them and work out this problem,” he says. “It’s not us sitting there in our ivory towers and saying, ‘You must do this.’ Grant Moir and Mark Grattan are doing a lot of interaction with manufacturers around the world.”
“There are far more data questions coming at us. Any decision we make on the club will need to be held to a higher level of data scrutiny.”
—STEVE OTTO, R&A
for elite competition and will apply to all golfers starting in 2030. New balls submitted for conformance starting in 2028 must pass the overall distance standard at the new, higher speed. He says the general trendline of distance increase during the past century makes clear the case for change.
“Most people, if you put them into a cold, dark room, would admit that overall distance has increased, but we’re still arguing about bits of data, and we’re trying to engage with people on those discussions to understand their points, but, really, the decision has been made.”
Part of what comes next is the challenge of implementing the rollback of golf balls. Under the new test for conformance, the test swing speed has been raised five miles per hour to 125 m.p.h. According to data from the
Although several manufacturers have questioned the need for any distance rollback, the PGA of America and the PGA Tour have yet to embrace publicly the shorter ball that is scheduled to be in play in 2028. As Otto says, “It’s not going to work if we sit in St. Andrews and cross our arms.”
That transition window brings with it other challenges given that recreational golfers will still be able to play and likely demand the longer balls for their use. (To be clear, the ruling bodies have produced research that the impact on the driving distance for most recreational golfers will be relatively minimal, typically about three yards, or well less than the average variance in any golfer’s distance variability.) Still, Otto believes it will not lead to a fragmented game once the ball rollback is implemented. In the end, he doesn’t believe there will be a substantial hoarding or market for balls that don’t conform to the new standard.
“I think we all have the same North Star, and the future health of the game is linked to playing by the rules,” he said. “The sustainability of the sport is a big thing even for the biggest public company where engaging golfers is how they are going to make the most profit and I’m not sure [non-conforming product] has been the way to do that. There are several examples in Japan of reasonable-size companies dabbling in the non-conforming market, and it just hasn’t worked.”
Just Like Us
Why some pros are opting for drivers designed for the masses
BY MIKE STACHURA
not long ago the best players in the world preferred the least-forgiving drivers with the lowest launch angle and the least amount of spin with no built-in draw bias. Then the two best players on the planet, Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda, showed that it is possible to play world-class golf using a driver designed for everyday players (Scheffler’s TaylorMade Qi10) with maximum forgiveness (Korda’s Qi10 Max). Fellow TaylorMade staffer Rory McIl-
roy, who leads the PGA Tour in Total Driving, also uses the standard Qi10 model as opposed to the compact, lowspinning Qi10 LS.
Dig deeper into the driver usage on the professional tours and you find that models designed for maximum forgiveness are becoming increasingly popular. Akshay Bhatia and Alex Norén have used the Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Max D (draw). Cameron Champ has played Ping’s very forgiving G430 Max 10K. Chandler Phillips
even uses a Ping G430 LST that features a stock build, including the standard 55-gram shaft you might find on a floor model at Golf Galaxy.
With the widespread use of weightsaving carbon composite in the body of new drivers, the centre of gravity isn’t drifting back and higher as much as it used to, and that results in forgiveness with low spin. Scheffler, for example, is playing a more forgiving driver this year than he did two years ago, and his average spin rate has barely changed.
Although these forgiveness-focused drivers are not the standard on tour, their presence in the bags of some of the game’s best players suggests that there is no right driver for a certain skill level. No handicap level or swing speed eliminates considering almost
andy lyons / getty images
BIGGER
SWEET SPOT
Nelly Korda uses Taylormade’s ultraforgiving Qi10 Max.
any kind of driver. With dozens of models and multiple choices within the same brand, one of the things we stress during our Hot List player testing every year is this: Throw away your assumptions. Be prepared to be surprised.
When we looked at how our highswing-speed, low-handicap players at the Hot List fared with game-improvement drivers, we found some did well and others didn’t. For example, Josh Macera, a 1-handicap with a swing speed of 119 miles per hour, averaged four more yards with the game-improvement drivers compared to all others. Jack Bingham, another 1-handicap who plays a natural fade and swings 110 miles per hour, enjoyed more ball speed with the high-forgiveness drivers, including 12 more yards on average with the draw-biased Ping G430 SFT. Conversely, Wesley Gilmore, a plus-1 handicap, hit the forgiving drivers almost 10 yards shorter with a spin rate on one model that was more than 30 percent higher than his average across all drivers.
This tells us that the driver has become as individualised as the putter. Each player’s swing is going to find a driver with a particular shape and centre of gravity that makes his or her delivery more efficient, leading to a more explosive ball flight. This is what is called optimising performance. You cannot find the right driver by guessing or assuming that what has always been your go-to isn’t going to change.
Korda has used TaylorMade’s Qi10 Max driver since the start of the season when she won the LPGA DriveOn Championship in January. That driver has a total forgiveness, or moment of inertia, of over 10,000, a measurement of stability in how much the head twists vertically or horizontally on a mis-hit. Less twisting means more energy is transferred to the ball at impact. For perspective, according to TaylorMade, a 10,000 total MOI is about 40 percent higher than what TaylorMade drivers were a decade ago. “I look down and know I can hit
any shot I want with it,” Korda says. For much of her career, though, she’s played drivers with a little bit of a draw bias like TaylorMade’s Stealth 2 HD or Titleist’s TSR1. It’s all about matching her with her desired shape (more clubhead volume toward the heel side) and her desired right-to-left ball flight, said TaylorMade’s Ryan Ressa, senior tour manager. “People perceive that it’s kind of an anti-slice club, but it’s, really not,” he says.
Ressa says that Korda wants to see the ball on a tee shot fall from right to left, maybe a five-yard draw. “That’s just the shot shape she prefers, so it’s hard, even if you find something that goes dead straight, it just doesn’t fit her eye,” he says.
Aside from her custom shaft (Mitsubishi Diamana GT 60) and custom length (45.18 inches), Korda’s Qi10 Max
the face. Spin and launch consistency across the face are functions of the face material that you’re using, where your centre of gravity is located, how you’ve engineered the curvature of the face, and MOI. It’s all those things working in concert with one another, not to mention, how the player delivers the club to the ball.”
The driver has become as individualised as the putter. No handicap level or swing speed eliminates considering any kind of driver.
is only slightly tweaked from the stock version. The rear perimeter weight is about six grams lighter than standard, which makes the driver’s overall MOI slightly less than 10,000, and the TPS sole weight is a little heavier to get the total weight of the head back to standard and give Korda a little more draw.
It’s worth remembering again, however, that the measurement of a higher MOI that records a higher number is not necessarily the be-all and end-all for forgiveness. According to Chuck Golden, vice president of research and development for Titleist: “The first thing that people kind of forget about but need to realise is that MOI is not about distance gain; it’s about mitigating distance loss on off-centre hits. MOI does not guarantee a straight shot, and it does not make shots straighter, and it does not improve the spin and launch consistency across
More importantly, perhaps, MOI is already pretty darn impressive with 95 percent of current driver designs, compared to what was available a decade ago. More MOI is always going to be better for your mis-hits, and as we’ve heard, probably your confidence, too. Golden makes the case for how years of Titleist research shows that even for the average golfer more than 70 percent of impacts occur within half an inch of centre. That’s much tighter than the kind of miss where an ultrahigh MOI driver might help you more than a standard high MOI driver. In other words, these ultra-high MOI drivers are helping your absolute worst hits get somewhat better. You just might not hit it there all that often, even less so with a driver that has been custom-fit to you.
A driver fitting can produce a lot of numbers on a launch-monitor screen, but one worth paying attention to is how often you are consistently delivering the clubhead square at impact. Obviously, that will show up in longer distance and tighter ball-flight dispersion, but it should also speak to how easy it is for you to make the same swing, the way Korda has been doing since the start of the year.
Chris Marchini, director of golf experience for Golf Galaxy and Dick’s Sporting Goods and the lead clubfitter at the Golf Digest Hot List summit, recently put it this way: “My advice is to go into a fitting totally agnostic. We see it at the Hot List Summit every year. We’re putting a club in someone’s hands that is far better optimised than what this player’s handicap, swing speed or skill level might suggest, but it ends up producing the best ball flight for them.”
In other words, be open to possibilities. It has certainly worked for the two best players in the world.
AGE 36
LIVES
Tequesta, Florida. STORY
Two runner-up finishes in three seasons on the PGA Tour. More than $8 million in career earnings.
MOTHER KNOWS BEST
My mum [LPGA player Laura Baugh] didn’t mess with her clubs much, but my dad [PGA Tour player Bobby Cole] was very precise with his equipment. That said, I’m more like my mum. I trust the people who work on my equipment, and I think the less I know about it, the better.
—WITH E. MICHAEL JOHNSON CLUB YARDS *
What’s in My Bag Eric Cole
DRIVER
SPECS PXG 0311 Black Ops, 9°, Project X Evenflow Riptide LX 70 6.5 shaft, 45.25 inches.
I recently put this new driver in the bag. It’s a little more forgiving on off-centre hits and has slightly faster ball speed than my previous gamer. If I’m not losing forgiveness, and I’m gaining speed, then it makes the decision to switch easy. The shaft is the same as my previous driver.
You might notice the “No Excuses” stamping. It’s a family mantra. I use this club for all my short-game shots. I like getting used to using one club and relying on it. The 60-degree has a very aggressive grind and just 4 degrees of bounce, so when I open it up, the leading edge sits close to the ground.
FAIRWAY WOODS
SPECS TaylorMade Stealth, 15°, Project X Denali Black 70 TX shaft; PXG 0311 GEN5, 18°, Project X HZRDUS G4 95 TX shaft.
I don’t hit a ton of 3-woods off the tee, so the high launch on my 3-wood is helpful. About 18 months ago I switched from a utility iron to this 5-wood. It’s a versatile club trajectory-wise for me. The utility iron was too one-dimensional.
PUTTER
SPECS PXG Battle Ready II Brandon, 34 inches, 3°.
I used a centre-shafted PXG putter for a while. A lot of good things happened with that putter, but I felt like I was being too robotic with it. This putter allows me to be more creative and more feel-oriented, which is how I prefer to putt. With the centre shaft, I felt like I was trying to be too perfect. I do change putters frequently, and since this was shot, I’ve switched to an Odyssey model.
IRONS
SPECS (4): PXG 0317 CB; (5-PW): PXG 0317 ST, True Temper Dynamic Gold Mid X100 shaft. The 4-iron is bigger, more forgiving and easier to get in the air. The rest of the set is the blade-like ST. I haven’t always been a blade player, but with the firm greens we play on tour, I found I need the added spin, especially when playing knockdown shots that come in lower.
SPIN MACHINE
I use the 2021 Titleist Pro V1x. It has a little bit more spin than the most-recent model, and I’m always seeking more spin.
SUGAR BOOST
I’m a Type-1 diabetic. If my blood-sugar gets low, I have some Skittles and other candies to bring it back up to where it should be.
LINE IT UP
I’ve used reminder grips for six years (this is Golf Pride’s Align). It lets me know where the face is during the swing.
Many Golfers Like Fast Greens, But Do They Ruin Good Architecture?
miss around the green becomes less important because the recovery is much simpler. People forget that part—that softening greens in the name of speed has impacts beyond putting.
Why then do so many golfers want fast greens?
It is very much ego driven. The Stimpmeter plays into it. For most golfers, turf conditions are the main factor that determine where they want to play, and high green speeds play into that.
Architect Brian Schneider, a longtime associate of Tom Doak and partner at Renaissance Golf Design, has renovated clubs like Hollywood Golf Club in New Jersey (No. 170 on America’s Greatest Courses), Tamarack Country Club in Connecticut, Llanerch Country Club in Pennsylvania and is the co-designer of Old Barnwell in South Carolina.
Golf Digest: Brian, golfers always want the greens on their course to be faster. The speed of greens can be a point of pride for many clubs and is often how people judge quality: The faster the greens, the better the course. Are ultrafast greens important to good architecture, or do they come with a cost? What do you say to clients, committees and club members who ask for fast greens? Schneider: For me a better question is, why do you want fast greens? That’s a harder question for people to answer. I have yet to have someone explain to me why extreme green speeds make the game more interesting or fun.
I happen to think fast greens make the game slower and less interesting. For instance, if a green is tilted or sloped pretty hard from right to left at 3 percent or more, you’re going to want to try to hit into it from the left to use that slope to hold up your approach shot, and you’re going to not miss it to the right because you won’t be able to stop your ball going down the slope on the recovery.
If you flatten that green to make it putt faster, your position in the fairway becomes less important, and your
Good players love fast greens because the faster the greens, the fewer hole locations available. You can’t cut holes on certain part of greens when there’s too much speed, so the holes are confined to the flatter parts, meaning it’s easier for them to make 12-footers, and missing greens on the wrong side isn’t as punishing. Making the greens faster actually makes scoring easier for good players.
However, reducing pinnable areas makes holes less interesting. It’s especially problematic when older clubs are forced to reshape or regrade their original Donald Ross or William Flynn greens to support higher green speeds. To me that’s tragic when you’re losing something of historic value.
I work with a bunch of great superintendents who are rational about it, but sometimes they can’t help themselves. They hear about green speeds when their members play at another club, or they want the greens really fast for member-guest tournaments so that the members can boast. They’re also good at their jobs, and it’s not difficult for them to attain high speeds.
Greens don’t have to be fast to be great or interesting or fun. You can have a flattish, fast set of greens that aren’t interesting or varied, or you can have a slightly slower and more interesting and varied set, green to green. I’d rather have an interesting set of greens, even if they’re a little slower than the guys down the street. In general, I tend to push for firmness. That’s what makes for interesting golf. Firm and smooth should be the goal.
HOW FAST IS TOO FAST? A PGA Tour official uses a Stimpmeter to test the green speed.
Mishal
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The modern terms of endearment for architectural frustration
BY JERRY TARDE
Th e first time the term might have been used was at Royal St. George’s in 1999 when golf’s boulevardier Jimmy Dunne was playing a casual match with his friend Frank Brennan while attending Wimbledon. On the long par-3 11th hole, Brennan hit a slight hook into the right side of the green and appeared satisfied with the result as he turned to put away his club.
“Hey, Frankie, take a look at this,” chirped Jimmy, as the ball slowly slid
off the left edge of the green into a sodfaced bunker that Dunne described to me recently as resembling a World War I foxhole.
“I hate this golf course,” Brennan said.
“You didn’t hit the green in regulation,” exulted Dunne. “You visited the green in regulation.”
Pete Sampras won Wimbledon that year, but it was David Duval who led the PGA Tour in hitting Greens in Regulation (GIR) with a 73.57 average. GIR may have been invented by Ben Hogan or
Moe Norman or Calvin Peete, but it was first calculated officially in 1980 when Jack Nicklaus led the statistical category (72.11) with the highest percentage for having a ball finish on the putting surface in the number of strokes equal to par minus two.
The consequence—not the tonguein-cheek term Greens Visited in Regulation (GVIR)—has been around as long as golf has been played on the hardscrabble links of Great Britain and Ireland, where you’ve always had to watch
till your ball stopped rolling.
“I fell in love with that idea,” Dunne was saying now. “Brown is beautiful— the links courses always knew that. Firm, brown and fast is the ideal surface for golf. I remember an old pro telling me, ‘You don’t want to be hitting into a bowl of pudding.’ ”
Jimmy Dunne is recognised at all the great golf clubs of the world—and not just for negotiating a framework agreement that his minions can’t finish off—but he is especially known at Seminole Golf Club in Florida where being “de-greened” is held to an architectural art form. Dunne is the longtime president of Seminole, its capo dei capi. He credits his predecessors and membership for having a “high golf aptitude.”
EXACTING
The greens at Seminole, like the 17th here, reject anything but a precise approach.
They want the course to play “harder the closer you get to the hole,” which is a novel concept for most American golfers. Seminole is not for tourists, he says. It’s where people come to play serious golf.
“They drive right down Donald Ross Boulevard past all these fun courses in Palm Beach to beat their head against the wall at Seminole,” Pete Dye, a member, once told me.
The course is known for what may or may not have been Donald Rossdesigned turtleback greens. We don’t really know how much they resemble what Ross built originally in 1929 because they’ve been punched and topdressed and blasted with sand, even scraped and reconstructed, a million times since, but today in all their convex beauty, Seminole greens reject anything but the perfectly conceived and executed approach shot. Sometimes even perfection—with bad luck and the vagaries of wind gusting off the Atlantic Ocean—only visits the putting surfaces. (“I was gusted,” Gil Hanse says is another 21st Century golf term.)
You hear GVIR used frequently at another Donald Ross masterpiece, Pinehurst No. 2, site of this year’s U.S. Open. Bill Coore, who did the renovation with Ben Crenshaw, says No. 2 has the biggest differential between GIR and GVIR of any course in the United States. “Those crowned greens shed balls rather than collect them,” Coore says.
“False fronts” is another architectural feature that has been around since Alister MacKenzie but popularised in the past 20 years with the addition of “false sides” and “false backs.”
“Those are actually misnomers,” says Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s architecture editor emeritus. “There’s nothing false about them. They’re un-pinnable and un-puttable and classic elements of visual design like the ninth at Augusta National or the 15th at Pine Valley.” There’s little more frustrating in life than having your ball stop short on an upslope and then seeing it roll back glacially, inch by inch at first, then by
the foot, then many yards as it gathers speed downhill rushing to a full wedge return—only to do it again.
Another modern expression is leaving yourself “short-sided.” It was probably invented by a TV analyst to describe a short pitch over a bunker or false front to a hole location precipitously close to the brink. The PGA Tour used to mandate that holes be cut no nearer than five paces from the edge of a putting surface, says longtime rules expert Joe Black. The guideline on tour now is a minimum of three paces, which puts an even greater premium on accuracy.
“We will usually use these types of locations on smaller greens where they fit visually to the player,” says tour official Gary Young. Exacerbating this challenge is increased green speed, now commonly 12 or 13 on the Stimpmeter in tournament play (9 or 10 in regular play) and significantly firmer subsurfaces. At the Masters this year, balls seemed to be bounding off greens with almost a concrete thud.
Agronomic technology and maintenance equipment have contributed to changing the way we play much more so than the club and ball innovations that our governing bodies are trying to arrest. “We have more tools under the ground,” Hanse says. One example is the SubAir Systems being installed at many high-end courses, pumping air in or sucking water out so that greens play firmer and faster.
“We may not be able to guarantee you blue skies,” says SubAir’s website, “but we can ensure impeccable greens and superior field conditions. Why? Because it all starts from the roots up. That explains our company’s name and its focus. Superior surface and subsurface aeration. Optimal moisture removal. Incredible results.”
We’ll be the judge of that.
Frankie Brennan is no longer with us. He was a victim of September 11, but we still know the feeling he had when visiting a green in regulation or failing to clear a false front or getting gusted or short-sided in modern terms.
“I hate this golf course” is what golfers forever have been saying when what they mean is, “I love this game.”
A Beacon of Hope
The final challenge before setting sail on the DP World Tour.
BY HARRY GRIMSHAW
R EGARDED AS THE BEST course on the island of Mallorca, Club de Golf Alcanada will be proudly hosting the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final supported by The R&A, for the fourth time at the end of October. After which, the top 20 players on the season long Road to Mallorca Rankings will secure a DP World Tour card for the 2025 season.
Sat on the Mediterranean coastline,
overlooking the bay of Alcudia, Club de Golf Alcanada offers breathtaking views with its striking lighthouse serving as the club’s logo which can be seen from many parts of the estate.
The land was purchased back in 1985 during a dinner between Mr. Hans-Peter Porsche and the clubs current president, Mr. Federico Knuchel. 13 years after securing of the land, with plenty of perseverance and negotiating skills,
all the necessary permits and licenses were finally in place to start building the golf course.
Mr Porsche, then contracted the worldfamous golf course architect, Robert Trent Jones Jr., and asked him to design the course into the natural terrain of the land to maintain the typical Majorcan landscape which can be seen today.
At Club de Golf Alcanada, par is your friend. Francesco Laporta’s winning score in the 2019 Challenge Tour Grand Final was just six under par, Nathan Kimsey in 2022 was nine under, while Marco Penge one better in 2023 at ten under par. Anytime you walk off a hole with par or better, you should be very pleased with yourself!
CLUB DE GOLF ALCANADA
Port d’Alcúdia, Mallorca, Spain
Par 72, Yardage: 7,183 (Championship Tees)
HOLE 1
501 YARDS, PAR 5
The opener greets you with a wide open fairway. Longer hitters should keep their drive to the right side of the fairway to then be able to carry the creek in front of the green. For those not as long, lay up with your second shot!
STANDOUT HOLES
HOLE 2
423 YARDS, PAR 4
The second is a slight dogleg left. Although you are facing a narrow tee shot, from the championship tees, longhitters should be able to play over the fairway bunker. You can then attack the green from the right hand side.
HOLE 8
455 YARDS, PAR 4
You’ve made it to hardest hole on the course. With an intimidating tee shot on this long, uphill par 4. You have to make it past the trees hanging over the fairway on the left by going up the right, the same with your second!
HOLE 11
423 YARDS, PAR 5
A fairly easy long par five. If you want to attack this hole, your drive should land on the left side of the fairway so you can try to reach the green in two. Passing the fairway bunker on the left with your second shot is good.
RIYADH IS READY
THE GOLF SAUDI ORGANISED ARAMCO TEAM SERIES PRESENTED BY PIF CLIMAXES IN THE KINGDOM’S CAPITAL AFTER CROWNING 12 DIFFERENT CHAMPIONS ALREADY THIS YEAR
Ggolf saudi’s aramco team series presented by pif is heading into its home-straight for 2024, with the Ladies European Tour’s (LET) annual $5million touring team contest readying for its return to Riyadh later this month.
The Aramco Team Series made the cross-country switch from Royal Greens Golf & Country Club on the Jeddah coast to the capital’s Riyadh Golf Club for the first time last year, bringing with it a record-breaking weekend of golf courtesy of U.S Solheim Cup star Alison Lee, as she marched to a commanding eight-shot victory that saw her set a new low 54-hole scoring record on the LET.
Fresh off the back of her hole-out heroics at last month’s Solheim Cup triumph, Lee could be looking to do the double – with not only a second consecutive victory at the Aramco Team Series – Riyadh, but with potentially two ATS wins in the space of a month.
Before the Aramco Team Series returns to the Kingdom, it will head East for its first ever event in China. The Aramco Team Series – Shenzhen will see two-time ATS individual champion Lee come up against the likes of Ruoning Yin, Xiyu Lin, Muni He, and Angel Yin, as they lead the stellar field set to battle it out at the Mission Hills Resort, October 4-6.
They will be joined by a host of star-names who represent organisers Golf Saudi as ambassadors – including the likes of Lee’s European Solheim Cup rival Denmark’s Emily Kristine Pedersen, England’s Bronte Law, France’s Pauline Roussin Bouchard and Holland’s Anne Van Dam.
In fields stacked with the games best, both of the remaining $1million Aramco Team Series events are firmly up for grabs – which would certainly be in keeping with the impact the Series has had on the LET since 2021.
ALISON LEE MARCHED TO A COMMANDING EIGHT-SHOT VICTORY AND A NEW LOW 54-HOLE RECORD ON THE LET LAST YEAR IN RIYADH.
Due to the Aramco Team Series unique format – in which teams of three professionals and one amateur compete as a team, while the professionals also compete for a concurrent individual title – the Golf Saudi addition to the Tour has seen more than 50 new champions crowned in its four years since launching, seeing in excess of $15million in prize-money shared.
THIS YEAR ALONE HAS ALREADY SEEN 12 DIFFERENT WNNERS ACROSS THE ARAMCO TEAM SERIES THREE EVENTS TO DATE.
Among those winners have been some of the biggest names in women’s golf, including the likes of Nelly and Jessica Korda, Charley Hull, Georgia Hall, Lexi Thompson and Leona Maguire, plus a plethora of other LET stars.
This year alone has already seen 12 different winners across the Aramco Team Series three events to date, each of which have taken elite level women’s golf to different continents, as a part of Golf Saudi’s ambitions to further grow and globalise the game of golf.
That journey started in Tampa, Florida, where rising German star Alexandra Försterling saw off British pair Charley Hull and Bronte Law to win by three shots in the individual standings at Feather Sound Country Club.
Pauline Roussin-Bouchard captained her team of French counterpart Celine Herbin and England’s Meghan MacLaren – joined by amateur LuJain Omar Khalil – to the team title by six strokes, earning all three LET players €32,000 (US$35,000) in prize-money.
A first-time Aramco Team Series visit to Seoul, South Korea, followed in May, with home favourite Hyo Joo Kim captivating a lively local crowd at the New Korea Country Club as she marched to a solo, rain-soaked win. American Danielle Kang helped guide her team of amateur Kyu Ho Lee and LET stars Lily May Humphreys and Tian Xiaolin to the Seoul team title, finishing on 23-under-par.
This year’s Aramco Team Series - London crowned a first-time individual Aramco Team Series champion in Leona Maguire. The Irish golfer pipped her Solheim Cup
teammate Georgia Hall and Spain’s Maria Hernandez to the title on the Centurion Club’s short par-five 18th hole, thanks to a terrific approach shot which set her up perfectly for an eagle finish.
It was to be double-trouble on 18 for England’s Hall, who as captain of her team took on the duty of finalising the tournament’s team competition in a play-off with France’s Nastasia Nadaud. After battling through two attempts at finding a winner, Nadaud came out on top at the third time of asking to steer her team – amateur George Brooksbank, Spain’s Mireia Prat and Kristyna Napoleaova of Czech Republic to glory.
And now all eyes turn to the conclusion of the Aramco Team Series for this year, with the final two events of 2024 both teeing off in October.
After Shenzhen, China, the Aramco Team Series presented by PIF returns “home” to Saudi Arabia and to Riyadh Golf Club, October 31 to November 2, which made an ideal start as the Kingdom’s new ATS host course with Lee’s spellbinding performance last year.
If that is anything to go by, another incredible month of Aramco Team Series action lies ahead, as the Golf Saudi organised Series continues to elevate and transform the landscape of women’s golf.
Rampant Rahm
How Jon Rahm won LIV Golf’s individual title, at the first time of asking
BY HARRY GRIMSHAW
AS FIRST YEAR’S GO in a new job, it couldn’t of gone much better for Jon Rahm.
Having joined the Saudibacked LIV Golf League last December, for an eye-watering $500 million, the Spaniard joined the league also as captain of his own team, Legion XIII.
The two-time major winner capped off his maiden LIV Golf season in Dallas by firing an 11-under-par tournament total, and bogey-free golf for his last 38 holes for victory number two of the season at while also holding off Joaquin Niemann to win both LIV Golf Chicago and the Individual title. Niemann and Sergio Garcia were tied for second, three shots back.
Not a bad last three events for Rahm – as his two wins bookended his second-place finish in LIV Golf Greenbrier in August, after losing in a playoff to Brooks Koepka.
Strikingly, Rahm finished in the top 10 in all 12 of LIV’s regular season tournaments that he finished. The lone outlier was his WD due to a foot infection in Houston that also had him sidelined for the U.S. Open.
“It’s a different feeling,” Rahm said. “Just being able to culminate all the good golf all season, and especially doing it by winning individually today (LIV Golf Chicago) I think is what makes it so much more special.
“Knowing that I had to win and getting it done is something to really be proud of and something to reflect on.”
A perfect rookie year for Rahmbo, but for others it’s curtain closure on their LIV Golf career, with five players having finished the season in 49th and
below who are now relegated from the LIV Golf League - what will happen to them might you ask?
Finland’s Kalle Samooja almost escaped the drop but bogeyed his final hole of the season to remain in 49th. Zimbabwean brothers Scott and Kieran Vincent also failed to find safety, while South African Branden Grace and
RangeGoats GC captain Bubba Watson were the two big names to lose their status – although Bubba is now putting an appeal into the RangeGoats to fight his case to remain in the team…
The LIV Golf Promotions event in December will be an event to look out for to see who gains a spot onto the 2025 LIV Golf League.
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
Rippers head down under, after coming out on top as LIV team champs
BY HARRY GRIMSHAW
AFTER EIGHT MONTHS spanning across the globe, covering four continents, and travelling to eight countries, it was the boys from down under that were crowned 2024 LIV Golf Team Champions, as Ripper GC took home the biggest silverware of the LIV Golf year.
The all-Australian team consisting of skipper Cameron Smith, Lucas Herbert, Matt Jones and Marc Leishman entered the LIV Golf Team Championship in Dallas sitting in third spot, having acuminated back-to-back victories on their home turf in Adelaide and the following week in Singapore. A position also strengthened by their two second
place finishes towards the back end of the season in the UK and Greenbrier.
The previous two LIV Golf seasons had the Aussie’s finishing the season long rankings in 11th and 7th respectively, with only one victory picked up throughout the two years.
But 2024 was different. Entering the season, there was one change in its four-man lineup from it’s 2023 campaign, as they targeted even greater success. Three-time DP World Tour winner Lucas Herbert filled the roster spot left open after the relegation of Jediah Morgan as he linked up with his compatriots Smith, Leishman and Jones to form the quartet.
After their strong perfromances in the 13 regular event season, the Rippers reached Dallas as the third seed for the week, earning a first-round bye and met sixth-seeded Fireballs GC in Saturday’s semifinals.
When those Saturday matches appeared, the Rippers dispatched the Fireballs 2-1. Victories for Leishman over Eugenio Chacarra and Herbert
against David Puig in the Singles, gave the Rippers their two points to advance. The Fireballs managed to salavage a point in the Foursomes with Sergio Garcia and Abraham Ancer winning 3&1 against Smith and Jones.
On the super Sunday, it was a switch from Matchplay back to the familiar surroundings of Strokeplay for all.
“The Rippers reahced Dallas as the third seed for the week, earning a first-round bye to be met by the Fireballs.”
Lucas Herbert reeled off four birdies in his last five holes, Matt Jones rebounded from a double-bogey on 18 with consecutive birdies in his last three and captain Cam pocketed three birdies in his last six holes for the Rippers to triumph by three shots at Maridoe Golf Club, sealing a third team title of the year for the men from Down Under.
Box Office Billy
The American became a two-time winner of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on the DP World Tour WITH HARRY GRIMSHAW
BILLY HORSCHEL held off a last-minute charge by Rory McIlroy, to claim his second Rolex Series title and BMW PGA Championship title in the DP World Tour’s flagship event.
The Florida native dramatically eagled the second playoff hole, the 18th of the West Course at Wentworth, to deny McIlroy his second BMW PGA Championship trophy, resulting in his fourth runner-up finish of the year on the DP World Tour.
McIlroy, as always, produced fireworks to even get himself in amongst that winning position having eagled the par five 17th in regulation, but only managing a par on the final hole meant he would tie the clubhouse score that was set by South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence, which Horschel then matched.
Victory for Horschel now has his name etched as a three-time winner under the BMW title partner umbrella, having already won the BMW Championship in 2014 on the PGA Tour. This still leaves the DP World Tour’s BMW International Open in his sights to get his name on the trio of trophies which he plans to fit into his schedule in the future.
“Feels amazing,” said Billy. “I’m excited. I’m thrilled. I’m speechless. I can’t put into words, you know what this moment means to me, and it still hasn’t actually sunk in.
“It was a special, special tournament that I love to death, and to come out as a two-time champion, you know, I’m just over the moon.
Billy has now collated his third top ten in the 2024 DP World Tour season after he finished tied second at The Open and tied eighth at the US PGA Championship. He has eight PGA TOUR victories, most recently at the 2024 Corales Puntacana Championship.
“I’m a fan of golf at heart. I do play professionally on the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour but I am a golf fan and I want to see great golf and I want to see the top players play well and win, and I know he’s (Rory) been close a lot this year.
“He has not been able to get it done and you feel for someone like that. I do feel for him a little bit that it was another opportunity that he wasn’t able to get it done, but at the same time, you know, to battle him head-to-head and with other guys on the last play-off hole, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Despite McIlroy falling short again, he remains out in front in the Race to Dubai Rankings in Partnership with Rolex, with Lawrence and Horschel now his closest challengers for the season-long honours which is crowned at the DP World Tour Championship, Jumeirah Golf Estates in November.
The avid West Ham United fan’s victory, puts him in the history books as the third time a player from the United States has lifted the trophy at the BMW PGA Championship, following his own victory in 2021 and Arnold Palmer in 1975, when the event was played at Royal St George’s Golf Club.
IRiyadh Round The Corner
Riyadh Golf Club prepares to bring the curtain down on Asian Tour season at the PIF Saudi International WITH HARRY GRIMSHAW
n less than two months time, Riyadh Golf Club will be playing host to the season ending tournament on the 2024 Asian Tour, and the final International Series event on tours schedule, the PIF Saudi International, powered by SoftBank Investment Advisers.
Taking place December 4-7 the US $5million event will make its debut at Riyadh Golf Club after five successful years at the praised Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in King Abdullah Economic City.
Riyadh Golf Club has played host to many of the Kingdom’s leading tournaments, including the Saudi Open presented by PIF, the Aramco Team Series Riyadh, and the Aramco Saudi Ladies International as it now adds the PIF Saudi International to it’s ever growing CV.
Notable players already confirmed for the December event are defending champion Mexico’s Abraham Ancer, American duo of 2022 champion Harold Varner III and twotime winner Dustin Johnson, and the 2022 Open Champion Australian Cameron Smith.
Smith, who plays on the LIV Golf League as skipper for the Ripper GC’s, finished runner up to Ancer in 2023, as he looks to go one better this time round, “I am really looking forward to visiting Riyadh for the first time.
“From what I have read, there is so much going on there with some great sports facilities for grassroots and professionals being put in place. We have also heard lots of good things about the Championship course at Riyadh Golf Club.
“Looking at the design and reputation of the course, I reckon it is going to provide us with a real test as we try to stay both out of the water and out in front of what will be
another world-class field at the PIF Saudi International.”
With The PIF Saudi International powered by SoftBank Investment Advisers moving to the season end of both the Asian Tour and The International Series order of merits, it has clearly added to the tournament’s prominence, which has grown significantly since its inception. For the first time later this year, the PIF Saudi International will finish on the Saturday in order to align with the final two days with the weekend in the Kingdom as players take aim on the $1 million first place cheque.
The tournament is the last of 10 elevated events on the International Series, a league that offers a direct pathway for players from all over the world onto the LIV Golf League.
The champion of the season-ending International Series Rankings, which is currently held by American John Catlin, will secure a spot on the 2025 LIV Golf League roster.
Golf Saudi CEO, Noah Alireza commented, “We are delighted to be taking this prestigious event to Riyadh Golf Club. Securing this key date and being positioned as the finale to the Asian Tour and The International Series adds to the significance of the PIF Saudi International, powered by SoftBank Investment Advisers as we see it grow in stature with each edition.”
Cho Minn Thant, Commissioner & CEO of the Asian Tour said, “This new date gives the PIF Saudi International, the key position and prominence it deserves as the climax to our season. We believe Riyadh Golf Club will provide an excellent stage to showcase the culmination of our year and, with so much on the line, it should make for a dramatic and mustwatch ending to our 2024 season.”
MIN WOO LEE SQUEEZES EVERY OUNCE OUT OF HIS DRIVES
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS MCPHERSON
Ritchie Smith, the longtime swing coach of Min Woo Lee and his major-winning sister, Minjee, describes Min Woo as “a squiggle.” Whereas Minjee is a straight line— organised and disciplined— Min Woo is creative, playful and unpredictable. It makes sense then that Min Woo’s ascension to the PGA Tour was somewhat unexpected.
“I didn’t necessarily love golf when I was younger,” Lee says. “I quit for a year when I was 11 because I thought it was a boring, old-man’s sport. I really liked soccer, [Australian Rules] football, taekwondo and lifting weights. I enjoyed them much more than golf.”
It was only when Lee learned to crank up his driver speed and hit the ball longer than older kids that he started thinking about a future in the sport. He would quickly develop into one of the most exciting and athletic players in golf—one who ranked second on tour in ball speed last season on the PGA Tour (188 miles per hour) despite his lean, 165-pound frame. He also was in the top 10 in several more driving statistics including fourth in strokes gained/off the tee.
“His awareness of how his body moves and what he can do with the golf ball is off the charts,” Smith says.
Over the years, Lee and Smith have worked to harness that athleticism in an effort to create speed in a more stable way—the balance of horsepower and control. The rest of us might not have the physical gifts of Lee, but Smith says there’s still a lot anyone can learn and copy from this swing. On the following pages, they’ll show you. —LUKE KERR-DINEEN
‘I’M GETTING MY HAND UNDERNEATH MORE TO SUPPORT THE CLUB.’
TILT, BUT DON’T OVERDO IT
Setting up with your left shoulder higher than the right shoulder is ideal for driving. It boosts carry distance, Smith says. However, too much tilt makes it harder to load or transfer weight.
“Min Woo tends to have his left shoulder much higher than his right,” Smith says. “When that happens, he can’t really turn into his right side. He just lifts his arms. We want his right just a little below his left (photo, left).”
This reduced tilt at setup also will help amateurs who tend to hit off their back foot. “It’s probably the easiest thing in your swing to fix,” Lee says.
Another thing to check is your grip. Lee has to make sure he’s not holding the club in a weak position, with his right hand more on top of the handle. “Now I’m getting my hand underneath more to support the club (below),” Lee says. “It’s a smoother feeling, folding my right arm as I go back.”
Smith says it also helps square the clubface, a big perk for slicers.
‘IT’S THE FEELING OF WIDTH... BUT I STAY COMPACT.’
LOAD INTO A LOW RIGHT SIDE
There are two points of emphasis in Lee’s backswing. “We want to keep his arms extended but his right shoulder low at the top (below),” Smith says. “When he lets it go, his arms get higher and higher until he loses control. When he keeps his right shoulder low, he’s using his shoulder structure as a limiting factor. That keeps speed under control.”
Adds Lee, “It’s the feeling of width, with my arms in front of my body, but I stay compact.”
For ams, a low right shoulder also makes it easier to swing down on an in-to-out path with body rotation.
Smith also makes sure Lee loads into his right hip and glutes: “We want him to load—but keep his right knee straight ahead (left). If that right knee turns out, you begin to lose that load.”
Lee says it’s also important to keep that knee bent, staying in the athletic posture he started in at address.
‘USE YOUR ABS MORE THAN YOU THINK. MAKE SURE THEY MOVE THE CLUB.’
USE YOUR CORE MUSCLES TO POWER UP
Perhaps the most important component to Lee’s impressive driving is how he generates speed coming into the ball. “We’re really conscious of him bringing the club down with his abs—not with his hips, not with his back,” Smith says. “His abs are pulling his arms down in front of his body so he can release fully through.”
A good way to make sure the muscles in your mid-section are firing is by keeping your left ankle stable in the through-swing (above), Smith says. “If your abs aren’t in control, your hips will spin and slide, your arms will get stuck behind you, and your left leg will bow like a wobbly wall in an old house. There goes all your power.”
Lee says if there’s one thought to take from all of this, it’s to “use your abs more than you think. Make sure they move the club (left). It’s nice when you feel that unison of your abs and your body moving together to swing the club. It’s why I hit it pretty far for my size.”
DO THIS
EIGHT WAYS TO GET SMARTER IN HOW YOU PRACTICE AND PLAY
BY MARK BLACKBURN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROB
LIGGINS
NOT THAT
GOLF TIPS ARE GREAT, but one of the complexities of getting the most out of them is context: Apply even the best information at the wrong time or in the wrong amount, and it’s like dropping in on a movie right in the middle. It can be hard to pick up the story, and you might jump to the wrong conclusions.
Here I’m going to talk about eight common instruction concepts and explain how to apply them in relation to the bigger picture, so to speak. For example, a lot of players mistakenly think they should sweep the club back aggressively and twist the face really open in the process (previous page, right). With the face open, pointing skyward early in the swing, you make it significantly more challenging to get it back to square by impact to produce a decent shot.
When you step back and look at the goal of the overall swing, not just the beginning of it, you start to realise that keeping the clubface square or slightly closed as it moves off the ball makes a lot more sense. Do that, and you don’t have to worry about squaring it later.
To improve your game from tee to green, I’m going to give you a tip to improve your clubface awareness (below), as well as other “do this, not that” advice. Read on. —with matthew rudy
MARK BLACKBURN is No. 1 on Golf Digest's list of the 50 Best Teachers in America. His Blackburn Golf Academy is at Greystone Golf and Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama.
CLUBFACE TIP
Separate your hands on the handle and make some backswings (left) where your right hand’s palm is skyward at the top. Do that, and the clubface is square or even a little closed—not open. You can even hit shots this way. Just remember to copy this feel when you go back to swings with your normal grip.
DO THIS
How do you produce consistent height and distance on pitch shots? It comes from returning the club to impact with the loft and shaft lean similar to what they were at address (left). Watch elite pitchers and you’ll see very little hand “action” at the ball. They are gliding the club through, letting it skid along the grass, often taking only a thin divot.
As those players turn through, they’re getting taller with their torso, creating space to swing through. The arc of the swing is rising a bit, which promotes contact on the bottom four grooves of the club. This takes variables out and lets you alter height and distance by simply changing the club, face angle or swing speed.
NOT THAT
The perception many players have of where pure contact on a pitch shot comes from is that the hands are dramatically ahead and the clubhead smashes down on the ball to produce backspin. That’s quite different than what you really need.
There’s no doubt a setup like this (above) will create a sharp angle of attack. But if you ever want to hit a shot with some loft, you’ll have to hang back and flip your hands, which brings fat and thin shots into the picture. Yes, backspin can be helpful under certain conditions, but your pitching game will be vastly more predictable when you control your distance with loft and landing angle, not how much spin you put on the ball.
PITCHING
NOT THAT
What happens when you set up more like a normal iron shot, with your hands lower and the club flatter on the ground or even with the toe slightly up (right)? You expose so much of the club’s leading edge to the ground that it gets real easy to interrupt its path through impact. When the heel is on the ground like this, you risk the club bouncing or twisting against the grass, producing hot, low pulls. See enough of those and you might start trying to scoop the ball into the air. Now you’re hitting fat shots, too. You’re now trapped in a loop of poor contact by focusing on the wrong prescriptions for your cure.
DO THIS
Predictability in chipping is just as important as it is in pitching. Excellent chippers set themselves up to make the same quality contact every time. By moving closer to the ball at address and letting the handle stand more upright, you lift the heel of the club slightly off the ground (left). This reduces the amount of negative interaction the face can possibly have with the surface, and it dramatically lowers your chance of catching the club in tight turf and stubbing the shot. Contact with the ball will tend to be slightly more off the toe of the clubface, and that feel can take some getting used to. Don’t worry—with a bit of practice and level-setting about how far these shots run out, you’ll quickly dial in your chipping game with this easy setup adjustment.
DO THIS
Ground-force production is a popular topic, but I’m not sure many players understand it. In basic terms, the energy you generate when you swing starts at the ground and works its way up your body, eventually finishing out through the clubhead. That means you should be pushing against the ground when you swing— and when you push matters a lot.
Your left foot should be pushing frictionally toward the ball around the top of the backswing. I put a pad under my left foot (right) to help reinforce this push while I pivot my upper body in the opposite direction just like in a good backswing. This torque helps turn your body into a sling, making the club move faster as a result of a chain reaction, not raw muscle power.
NOT THAT
If you push into the ground too late, or not at all, you’ll probably get the urge to speed up the downswing rotation of your upper body (right), and there’s no real sequencing, torque or power in that move.
Worse, the only way the club can get to the ball is on a path that moves across your target line from out to in. Add in the clubface issues I discussed, and you’re either hitting a weak slice or a low pull. Your divot holes with irons will be angled left and deeper on the far side. You’ll likely create some some of those ugly scrape marks on the crown.
TURN DRILL
The more separation you can create between your upper and lower body, the more energy you can input into your swing. This does require some mobility work, however. Try this drill: Use a club for balance and do onelegged twists where your hips open up but your chest stays relatively still (above).
DO THIS
Turn is one of those basic terms in golf that should have a clear meaning, but average players often interpret it differently than skilled players. It should mean creating a differential in movement between the lower body and upper body. It’s crucial to creating and storing power.
To learn how to turn, place a club across your chest and rotate away from the target as much as you can while staying in your golf posture (left). Your left shoulder should move down while your right shoulder goes up and behind you. Don’t lock off your hips; let them rotate some, too. It should feel like you’re turning your torso into your right hip socket. Because of this, your right heel might even rise.
NOT THAT
Average players think they’re making a quality turn, but they’re shifting, not turning. Note the difference between this position (above) compared to a quality turn. Instead of rotating my shoulders over my hips, I’ve shifted them away from the target without really rotating my body at all.
This is a mistake I see a lot in average player’s backswings. Another is rising out of address posture, with the arms folding behind the body. There’s little chance of creating power or making solid contact when you “turn” this way. Getting some real turn—however much your body allows—is far better for overall sequencing than any amount of over-shifting or arm folding.
DO THIS
Green-reading is a very important skill. Tour pros spend hundreds of hours learning systems like AimPoint, playing practice rounds and working with their caddies to get the path to the hole just right. But if you want to improve your putting much more quickly, you should be spending a lot of practice time working on solid contact and judging speed. I like to do this by taking the hole out of my practice and focusing on hitting straight putts to a much smaller target like a tee (right). The goal is to roll putts that lightly glance off the tee and stop just a few inches from it. This drill is just as valuable for five-footers as it is from 10 or 20 feet. Try to hit putts at a speed where they stop no more than six inches from the tee. When you can consistently hit putts solid and control distance, then you can put some more time back into green-reading.
green-reading.
NOT THAT
If you’re judging practice by the putts you make and/ or ignoring how far your misses stop from the hole, you’re neglecting a crucial part of this skill.
Distance control is huge. If your read on a 20-footer is way off but you hit the putt with great speed, your leave will be a lot closer to the hole than if you mishit the ball or your speed is way off. Getting those things wrong is where all of those imminently missable four- and five-foot comebackers are created.
DO THIS
Greenside shots from the rough are tough because you need power to get through deeper grass but finesse to stop the ball by the hole. Swing too slowly and the club doesn’t get through. Add speed in the wrong way and you’re hitting it over the green.
A feel I like is a fuller backswing and then consistent speed from the beginning of the downswing through the ball. At the finish, I’m tall and have my chest rotated toward the target—or even past it. The clubhead doesn’t turn over like it does on an iron shot. The face stays open, which helps get the ball up and out of the rough while allowing it to land softly on the green. A way to think about this open-face concept is if the face had a light on it, the light would shine over my left shoulder at the finish (left).
Commit to the throughswing—don’t decelerate in fear of hitting it too far.
NOT THAT
If you think about swing speed on greenside shots like the gas pedal on your car, pushing it to the floor as the club approaches the ball will likely lead to a fender-bender.
All that acceleration comes from trying to muscle it through the rough or feeling like you need more power to correct too short a backswing. When you jab at the ball, you’ll likely dump the shot or hit it into somebody’s yard. Don’t ram and dig; let the back of the club glide through with even speed.
AGF news
Golf Saudi partners with Topgolf Callaway Brands
Saudi Arabia’s investment into the sports sector continues to take off with the announcement of a partnership between Golf Saudi, the Kingdom’s leading commercial developers of golf, and Topgolf Callaway Brands, the global leader in modern golf, bringing their golf entertainment venues and wider innovative product offering to Saudi.
13-year-old ties Jordan Open course record, signs with Niall Horan’s Modest Management
Qatar’s Daniil Sokolov, claimed his first World Amateur Golf Ranking event at Ayla Golf Club a er rounds of 63, 70 and 74. Just the casual 14 strokes better than his nearest competitor, Jordanian Salem Alabdallat.
OMAN GOLF ASSOCIATION AND THE R&A STRENGTHEN GROWTH
His Highness Sayyid Azzan bin Kais Tarik Al Said, Chairman of the Oman Golf Association (OGA), and his fellow OGA Board Members recently hosted Mr Neal Graham, The R&A Development Manager for the Middle East and India, to discuss the development and objectives on how to make golf more accessible in Oman.
15 Arab nations qualify for Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in Japan
A total of 15 Arab nations, consisting of 18 competitors, have qualified for the 2024 Asia-Pacific Championship at Taiheiyo Club Gotemba in Japan, 3-6 October 2024.
PIF SAUDI INTERNATIONAL ANNOUNCED AS ASIAN TOUR’S SEASON FINALE ON THE INTERNATIONAL SERIES
The USD $5million PIF Saudi International, powered by So Bank Investment Advisers, will take place December 4-7 this year, moving into the coveted season-ending position for both the Asian Tour and The International Series.
$1.5 BILLION GOLF RESORT PLANNED FOR IRAQ
UAE developer, Eagle Hills, has acquired land in Baghdad to develop a USD $1.5 billion golf resort named “Baghdad Golf Course and Spa.” The resort will include a championship golf course, high-end residential buildings, a five-star hotel and a resort club.
Egyptian Amateur wins her Junior Open by 75 strokes!
The third edition of the Egyptian Junior Open at Palm Hills Golf Club had 53 amateurs spanning seven countries taking part in the three-day tournament, in which Egypt’s Tayla Sameh claimed the U16 Girls by 75 strokes!
Global GolfSixes League bolstered by United Arab Emirates
The GolfSixes League international expansion gained momentum over the past 12 months with 20 countries now running the programme designed to encourage young people into playing, enjoying and remaining in the sport.
the gulf club
OMA Medalford Tournament Emirates Golf Club
Pontus Fredriksson
OMA Emirates Medalford Jumeirah Golf Estates
Mark Schofield
Dubai Business Integrated Golf Society Jumeirah Golf Estates
competitiors
Ladies Blind Partners Competition Emirates Golf Club
Competition winners
Summer Open sponsored by Mediclinic Sharjah Golf and Shooting Club
Sergio De Souza
AGMC BMW Open Social Sharjah Golf and Shooting Club
Peter Gutteridge & Mukesh Badhan
The Ranches Greensomes Strokeplay Arabian Ranches Golf Club
Competition winners
Jumeirah Pairs Jumeirah Golf Estates
Tara Hession & Hash Kapadia
The Worst Thing For Your Kid’s Golf Game
MY KIDDO RECENTLY TOOK UP GOLF. CAN I JUST CUT DOWN A SET OF ADULT CLUBS?
A lot of parents believe that cutting down adult clubs provides their kids with “quality equipment,” but veteran club designer Tom Wishon, author of 12 Myths That Could Wreck Your Golf Game, doesn’t mince words about this approach: “The clubs will be too heavy, too stiff, the wrong loft, the wrong lie and probably the wrong length. Other than that, they will be just what the kid needs to develop a good swing—for cutting firewood.”
Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, believed that the right equipment was critical
to his son’s golf development. “I always made sure Tiger had clubs that fit,” he said. Unfortunately, too many kids start out playing the game with cut-down, hand-me-downs, but this leaves less shaft to offset the weight, making the head feel heavier. Because a lot of golfers, including tour pros, are increasingly switching to clubs with shorter-length shafts, especially drivers and putters, it’s important to know how to offset this potentially negative impact. First, clubs are cut only from the grip end. However, that alone won’t do the trick. To get the weighting correct, mass in some form (lead tape, for example) will need to be restored to the clubhead to maintain the proper swing-weight. Maybe just heed Earl Woods’ advice and get clubs that fit
GOOD FIT
For club fitting visit egolfmegastore.ae/accufit
Take Earl Woods’ advice and get your kid clubs that fit properly.
properly in the first place. Especially for small kids and juniors, there are many quality sets that are already the proper length and weight. Here are four of our favourites: • U.S. Kids Ultralight 7: Available in nine sizes that fit heights of 39 inches to 66 inches.
• Ping Prodi G: Ping o ers a one-time, no-charge club adjustment to previously purchased sets of five clubs or more.
• Team TaylorMade Junior: Three options for boys and girls ages 4 to 12 (with bag), including three unisex collections of four, five and seven clubs.
• Callaway Junior XJ: Available in four-, six- and seven-club versions. The latter has a titanium driver and a lowprofile fairway wood.
Q: I CARRY ONLY TWO WEDGES— A PITCHING WEDGE AND A SAND WEDGE. THAT’S PROBABLY NOT ENOUGH. ANY ADVICE ON WHAT THE PROPER WEDGE SETUP IS FOR A MIDDLE-HANDICAPPER?
We advise that you carry four wedges. Everyday players don’t hit many greens in regulation, so having options can be useful, like adding a gap wedge or two (often the clubs between your pitching wedge and highest lofted wedge). A wedge set for an average player likely would include a pitching wedge (45 or 46 degrees), a 50-degree wedge, a 54or 55-degree wedge and a 58- or 60-degree wedge. This setup covers you from short range to greenside for any type of shot. Ideally, you should visit a quality clubfitter. “I fit people all the time who have non-standard length and lie angles in their irons but buy wedges off the rack,” says Scott Felix of Felix ClubWorks in Tennessee. “For consistency through the bag, this makes no sense.”
Answers provided by Golf Digest’s equipment experts Mike Stachura and E. Michael Johnson
