Today's Golfer Issue 325

TODAY’S GOLFER SEPTEMBER 2014 (AUGUST 7 – SEPTEMBER 3)

LET’S SMASH SLOW PLAY The new way to find more fairways... and anyone can do it PLUS 10 best short game drills

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RANGE FINDERS GPS, watch & laser test

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TESTED! > 20 GPSs, lasers > Ping G30 driver > SLDR irons

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The big interview

Martin Kaymer on his slump, his Pinehurst procession and a career-saving putt at Medinah WORDS JAMES HENDERSON PICTURES GETTY IMAGES

F

rom the towering pines of majestic Pinehurst, Martin Kaymer emerged from the golfing wilderness with the US Open in his hands and two years of struggle a distant memory.

A wire-to-wire victory that ranked among the greatest in the game, the German’s eight-shot masterclass was compelling evidence of his welcome rebirth. The Ryder Cup star’s return to the summit of the game followed a welldocumented dip in form that coincided with technical changes designed to allow him to shape his shots both ways, on demand. His determination to hone a swing that to the untrained eye needed few alterations was admirable but risky and arguably unnecessary.

This swing work was carried out during a period in which Kaymer felt burdened, not boosted, by his 2010 PGA Championship victory and subsequent rise to world No.1.

In contrast, the reserved Kaymer left the sandhills of North Carolina a different man –

content with his swing and his position within the game; that of a man who has won two of the five biggest titles in the sport within a few weeks. His US Open success was preceded, and indeed perhaps set up by, an emotionallydraining win at The Players Championship.

Made in Europe, but once again excelling in America, Kaymer’s US Open victory was a feat of German engineering so flawless it suggested he could dominate the game.

Was there ever a point when you thought you’d never return to the top?

Well, you know, it shouldn’t sound cocky or arrogant, but I knew it would come and that I would play good golf again. There was enough belief there I just didn’t think it would take me that much time to get back to where I was, or actually not where I was as I think I play better golf now; I’m more of a complete player. So it’s not a huge surprise to me that I played good golf, it’s just a surprise I won such big tournaments, but I’ll take it.

What does this win mean following your lack of form prior to 2014?

Any Major would have been nice, after the PGA Championship. You want to win Majors in your career, but if you can win one more, it means so much more. Some people, especially when I went through that low, called me the one-hit wonder so it’s quite nice proof, even though I don’t feel like I need to prove a lot of people. But somehow it’s quite satisfying to have two under your belt. I’m only 29, so I hope I have another few years ahead of me, but the challenge was not to think too much about the trophy and how you might celebrate on 18 and those things. It goes through your head and I’m sure a lot of players feel the same way, but not many talk about it. We do think about it though; we are humans, not robots.

You won the title by eight shots – what has changed in your approach?

Obviously I practised a lot, but it doesn’t always turn you into a better player. The

YOUR NEW

SECRET WEAPON The ‘mini’ driver is a new club category designed to help you find more fairways without sacrificing distance. But does it? We found out...

W I T H J O E L TA D M A N P H O T O G R A P H Y H O WA R D B OY L A N

Cover story

I

t’s often easier to find your ball in kneehigh hay than it is finding a club you can hit consistently well off the tee – a driver curves too much while a 3-wood has a small, daunting-looking head and sacrifices too much distance.

But this year, three manufacturers – Callaway, TaylorMade and Ping – have developed a whole new product category to allow you to enjoy the best of both worlds. It’s the ‘mini driver’.

The size of the clubhead sits between that of a driver and a 3-wood, as does the loft. They combine the workability, versatility and launch of a 3-wood with driver-like distances thanks to thinner, hotter faces that promise more distance through less spin and a higher launch. Higher lofts make them easier for average golfers to get the ball in the air, while a shorter shaft than a driver makes them easier to control, too.

Most Tour players would rather give up a bit of yardage with their driver and play from the short grass, which is why more and more of them are using these clubs.

Phil Mickelson kick-started the trend at last year’s Open, where he replaced his driver with Callaway’s X Hot 3Deep.

“It’s made my 3-wood perform like a driver,” Mickelson said last year. “Not only do I hit the ball off the tee so much longer, but it’s so much easier for me to hit straight.”

Last year saw the lowest driving distance average for all drives on the PGA Tour since 2004, while the percentage of 300-yard-plus

drives (20.6) was at its lowest in a decade.

TaylorMade’s SLDR Mini is among the largest fairway woods available – at 260cc it’s larger than the titanium drivers of the mid-1990s. The extra size over a normal fairway wood is designed to make it more stable on off-centre hits, which on average are a third smaller. A larger face also makes it easier to achieve higher balls speeds and more distance.

“Tour pros and better amateurs often hit their 3-wood off the tee more often than from the fairway,” said Brian Bazzel, TaylorMade’s senior director of metalwood creation. “We embraced that fact to create a metalwood that’s sized between a 3-wood and driver and is designed to be easy to hit off a tee.”

Callaway added a slightly stronger 12.5-degree X2 Hot 2Deep to its 2014 range. The 203cc head is 21cc larger than X2 Hot 3Deep and is designed to be used almost exclusively off the tee.

“We wanted to take the 2Deep and 3Deep in slightly different directions,” said Callaway’s Evan Gibbs.

“2Deep has a higher MOI and is even more of a driving club, while 3Deep, although retaining the same size as last year, has a couple of elements in there to make it more versatile.”

So it works for Phil, but what about average golfers like you? To find out if these clubs can really transform your game, we invited nine TG readers to the TaylorMade Performance Lab at The Belfry to assess the technology, with chief fitter Liam McDougall guiding the investigation.

Even we were surprised by the results...

‘CALLAWAY’S 1991 BIG BERTHA WAS 190cc WITH A 43-INCH SHAFT. IN OTHER WORDS, SMALLER AND SHORTER THAN THIS NEW CROP OF MINI DRIVERS’

THE NEW CLUBS TaylorMade SLDR Mini n £199, TP £249 TaylorMade discovered that golfers hit a 3-wood more off the tee than they do the fairway, so they created the Mini driver with a Speed Pocket to boost ball speeds on shots struck low on the face. It has a 260cc head and a short shaft.

Callaway X2 Hot 3Deep n £189 An update to the 3Deep Phil used to win The Open last year features a thinner, lighter forged cup face for faster ball speeds, especially on shots struck low on the face.

A flatter roll radius on the clubface is said to increase launch from the fairway.

Ping Rapture n £395 A premium club aimed at golfers seeking a versatile driver or hotter-faced 3-wood.

The tall, variablethickness face is made of highstrength titanium.

Weight is placed low in the head via a tungsten sole plate. Loft is adjustable.

How does it work? The anatomy of a mini driver Bigger head

New tech

Shorter shaft

Deeper face

Higher lofts

TaylorMade’s SLDR Mini is around 250cc, Callaway’s X2 Hot 2Deep is 210cc and at about 220cc, Ping’s Rapture is nearly a third larger than the company’s current largest 3-wood, the G30. This extra size is designed to make the clubs more stable on off-centre hits compared to the average fairway woods, which are typically a third smaller.

Callaway’s “Deep” clubs feature a Carpenter 455 steel cupface design.

The Rapture has a titanium body, high-strength betatitanium face and dense, injectionmoulded tungsten sole plate, while the SLDR Mini has a slot in the sole to improve ball speeds.

A shorter shaft versus a driver (about 43.5 inches versus 45.5 inches) should help average golfers hit the centre of the face more consistently and return the clubface to square at impact.

It looks more forgiving than a fairway wood, and ball speed isn’t going to drop off as much on off-centre hits. A larger face makes it easier to achieve a larger area of maximum flexibility for the highest ball speeds and more distance.

The higher loft of a mini driver should make it easier for average golfers to get shots launched more optimally than with a driver. Loft options in the three go up to 16 degrees (SLDR), 18.5 (X2 Hot Deep) and 13 (Ping Rapture, see table below).

Club

Head volume

TaylorMade SLDR Mini 260cc

Shaft length

Available lofts

43.5”

12˚ 14˚ 16˚

Callaway X2 Hot Deep 210cc* 42.75”-44” 12.5˚ 14.5˚ 18.5˚ Ping Rapture

219cc

43.5”

13˚

*Callaway X2 Hot 2Deep is 210cc. 3Deep is 190cc. 5Deep is 165cc

TODAYSGOLFER .CO.UK IS SUE 325

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CAN YOU

It’s one of the fastest-growing sports in Britain and is probably played on a golf course near you. But is FootGolf any good?

W O R D S R O B M c G A R R P I C T U R E S A N G U S M U R R AY A N D M AT T H O W E L L

KICK IT?

FootGolf

H

ow do you think you would fare on a par-70 course measuring just 1,697 yards? Pretty good, we imagine. But what if we told you that you’re not allowed to use your golf clubs? Confused?

Welcome to the world of FootGolf.

Created in 2008 in either Holland or Spain – no one is really sure – FootGolf first came to the UK in 2012. “I’d played FootGolf in a few different countries and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t in the UK,” says Mike O’Connor, now President of UK FootGolf. “You’re combining football and golf – two of the biggest sports – so people are always going to want to give it a try.”

And that they did. One of the first courses to offer FootGolf was the South Essex Golf Centre in Brentwood, Essex. “They started doing it after 3pm on a Sunday afternoon,” says Kieran Lawry, FootGolf UK Operations Director. “Very quickly they had 110 people doing it on a Sunday afternoon, and you had to book three weeks in advance. When that happens, the hours it’s available increase, and then they add another day, just to try to meet the demand.”

FootGolf is now available at over 40 UK courses, with more on the way. For those who have never heard of FootGolf, it’s almost too simple to warrant explanation. The concept is ➔

‘THE INSTANT GRATIFICATION AVAILABLE FROM FOOTGOLF IS IN VAST CONTRAST TO GOLF, AND IS ONE OF ITS STRONGEST BENEFITS’

TODAYSGOLFER .CO.UK IS SUE 324

The innovators

THE MEN WITH GOLF’S

BIG IDEAS Meet the man who’s trying to create golf’s most powerful driver... and four more whose concepts are transforming the game W O R D S C H R I S B E R T R A M P I C T U R E S H O W A R D B O Y L A N , A N G U S M U R R AY

#1 THE SCIENTIST Performance engineer Dan Fleetcroft aims to build golf’s longest driver using a heady mix of maths and physics

use in a big hitting, but legally conforming driver. And our third goal is to spark a technology drive that ensures golfers have access to the best products they possibly can.

So what makes us believe we can achieve

these goals? Again, the answer is threefold.

Our team has previously come up with innovations that have revolutionised the Before our Bloodhound golf driver project, equipment used in sports such as cycling, F1, I knew little about golf. I had played it once Moto GP and skeleton bobsleigh. Our team or twice, but I had never been a club member is based at the University of Sheffield’s and had never owned a set of clubs. And Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, that’s what made me perfect for this task. which gives us access to cutting-edge I say this, because Bloodhound didn’t want composite materials. And, unlike other golf someone with previous market experience to equipment companies, our team does not lead its design team. It wanted someone who have to kowtow to marketing plans, sales could bring a fresh perspective to golf design. strategies or industry regulations. In other Someone who would ask questions that words, we have a freedom of thought that people who’d been in the golf market for a allows us to push the boundaries and few years wouldn’t. Someone who could get investigate almost anything and everything. their head round the fact that we were designing a club that did not fit into the I say almost anything and everything, rules and regulations of the game. because when push comes to shove we are scientists, so are always going to attempt to When I get to this stage of the story most make gains by taking a regimented and golfers have a question. Namely: what on systematic approach consisting of physics, earth is the point of developing a driver that mathematics and equations. And because the R&A and USGA will deem illegal? The when all is said and done our product still answer is straightforward. Our first goal is to has to be swung by a human being. design a club that is capable of breaking the The former of these constraints has slowed Guinness World Record for carry distance, us down, because it has taken us a lot longer which currently stands at 408 yards and 10 to get our heads round the mechanics and inches. Our second goal is to discover some science of impact than we initially imagined design solutions that we can scale back and it would. And the latter has pushed us in a

certain direction in terms of our clubhead designs.

Talking of clubhead designs,

I’m pleased to say that we recently printed our first prototypes on a 3D printer, but I’m sorry to say that we’re keeping them under wraps in case a bigger equipment company, with a far bigger research budget, sees the pictures and sets off on a parallel research journey that it will complete far quicker than us. With this in mind, all I am going to tell you is that though our design is recognisable as a golf club, due to our focus on aerodynamics, it is a very different animal to any current drivers.

Our next step is to test our prototypes,

which we intend to do later this summer.

Then we will analyse the data and make a few tweaks. Then we’ll repeat this process until we come up with a scientifically perfect driver. When we get to this point, it’s record attempt time. Then, once this job is done, it’ll be back to the lab to produce and then launch the world’s longest legal golf driver. If it goes to plan this will be on the shelves and adding yards to everyone’s shots in 2016. n http://www.zenoracle.com/zen-

bloodhound-driver/

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Access to cutting-edge materials makes Dan Fleetcroft believe he can reform the driver.

The Test

DISTANCE DEVICES We’ve tested 20 watches, GPS units and lasers to reveal which you should buy W O R D S J O E L TA D M A N P I C T U R E S T O M C R I T C H E L L / H O WA R D B OY L A N

GPS units are getting smaller and smaller.

Watches are getting more and more features.

Reading the instructions first is a must!

THE TESTERS Joel Tadman

Age: 27 Hcp: 4 A laser user that likes precise distances to the flag and carries over hazards from the tee.

Jon Lane

Age: 30 Hcp: 5 Currently uses yardage books and on course markers and has never used a distance measuring device.

Aaron Tebbutt

Age: 39 Hcp: 14 Currently uses a handheld GPS device but is keen to see if a laser rangefinder could benefit his game.

Lasers are often the choice of “better” players.

Long gone are the days of searching for a marker post, pacing out the distance to your ball, and then trying to work out where the flag is on the green.

There has never been a greater choice when it comes to GPSs or laser rangefinders. Want something just to give you basic yardages? You got it. Need more detail, like the distance to hazards? No problem!

Want to accurately place the flag for the day’s pin position? Done!

You might say: “Who needs a GPS? Golf got on fine without them!” That’s true. But if you’re serious about improving, why wouldn’t you take this extra help? And if there’s no doubt it’s 163 to the flag, you’ll pick the right club and commit to your swing.

With so many models to choose from, we picked 20 of the most popular for this test.

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HOW WE DID THE TEST We split the test into three categories: GPS watches, handheld devices and lasers. Two TG readers joined

Equipment Editor Joel Tadman in testing all three types of DMD. We asked all the leading brands to send us the GPS and rangefinders they wanted to submit and all but a handful made the final cut. We didn’t place a limit on how many they sent in, so some brands have more than one model in certain categories.

To form an assessment, we asked testers to play two rounds with each to put the devices through their paces on the course. We formed our assessment in a variety of ways: n We noted how each device stacked up against markers on the course. n We used a rangefinder to ascertain the exact distance to the fronts and backs of greens (placing a target in the exact spots beforehand) and noted how the GPSs compared. n We considered things like the speed at which the device picked up the course, switched holes correctly and came to its final yardage. n We assessed the ease of use of each device, and how easy it was to set-up and start using.

n All the devices were fully-charged and loaded with the host course.

THE RATINGS Our testers rated the GPS watches and devices on Ease of Use, Functions, Styling and Value. An average was then taken and rounded to the nearest half decimal place to form the final star rating out of 10. We gave a Bronze, Silver and Gold award in each category.

WHERE WE TESTED THEM We tested GPS devices and lasers at the Hertfordshire Golf and Country Club, designed by Jack Nicklaus’ son Gary. It boasts a 27-bay floodlit driving range, health and fitness club and outdoor tennis courts. Call 01992 466 666 or visit www.thehertfordshiregolf. co.uk for more info.

FEATURES GLOSSARY CP: Courses pre-loaded AHA: Auto Hole Advance ACR: Auto Course Recognition MAG: Magnification ➔ TODAYSGOLFER .CO.UK IS SUE 325

Courses The inside line on where to play, home and abroad

Edited by Kevin Brown

We’d rather be playing...

RAMSIDE HALL, COUNTY DURHAM

England’s newest championship layout has opened in the north east

E

ngland’s newest championship course has its own Amen Corner and views of one of Britain’s greatest cathedrals.

The Ramside Cathedral Course is named in honour of the nearby Durham landmark, a World Heritage Site.

The 7,200-yard, par-72 parkland layout has been designed by Jonathan Gaunt of Gaunt Golf Design, the architect of Ramside’s original 27 holes in 1994, and is the only new

championship-standard 18-holer to open in England this year.

Gaunt calls the stretch of holes from the 11th to the 14th Ramside’s Amen Corner. The downhill par-3 12th is a tribute to its famous counterpart in Georgia, but instead of Rae’s Creek, Sherburn Beck guards the front of the green and then flows all the way down the side of the dog-leg par-4 13th.

Gaunt told TG: “This new course is situated

on an exceptional piece of land comprising a rolling valley with a coursing beck, a wide open hilltop plateau and some secluded wooded parkland.”

The new course will open in two phases.

On July 5 a nine-hole loop opened for play; the final nine will be ready in September.

Green fees: £40 Mon-Thurs, £45 Fri-Sun. Tel: 0191 386 9514 or visit www.ramsidehallhotel.co.uk