Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2015 i Golf Digest

Chairman and Editor-in-Chief VOICE FROM OFF CAMERA: “Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlett Johansson?” JORDAN SPIETH: “Scarlett Johansson” Spieth just posed for our cover story this month and is doing a video for GolfDigest.com. His longest putt made all year on the PGA Tour is 45 feet, so we’ve put a highball glass about 90 feet down the hallway of the Sawgrass Marriott the week of the Players Championship. To disrupt his concentration, we’re giving him a pop-culture quiz while he putts. His first practice putt almost hits the lip of the glass. Honest. Really, I’m not kidding. VOICE: “ ‘The Hangover’ or ‘Anchorman’?” SPIETH: “That’s so tough. I gotta go ‘Anchorman.’ . . . although I would take ‘The Hangover II’ or ‘III’ over ‘Anchorman 2.’ ” Golf Digest’s newest Playing Editor hits a handful…

Here’s an effective way to chip when you don’t need to carry the ball a long distance or there’s sketchy grass between you and the green. In these cases, your best chance at success will come from chipping with a putting stroke. Ray Floyd mastered this shot, and I’ve used his technique extensively at the British Open. Ray would take his 5-iron, slide his hands down the grip and lean the shaft forward. His weight favored his left foot. Then he would use his putting stroke to pop the ball on the green and get it rolling to the hole. This swing takes the wrists out of the shot, making it easier to hit the ball solidly. And using your putting stroke improves feel and helps you control distance. Try…

When the USGA rolled back the rules on grooves starting in 2010, the fear was that the ability to get short shots close to the hole would suffer. But five years later, the data suggests otherwise. The PGA Tour averages for scoring, proximity to the hole from the rough and scrambling (even at U.S. Opens) are all slightly better than before the rule change (which restricted a groove’s volume and edge sharpness). Sure, tour players have adapted, but designers have, too, rethinking head shapes, surface roughness and sole grinds. Here are six interesting examples. 1 CALLAWAY MACK DADDY 2 PM GRIND Phil Mickelson’s input led to the high-toe shape and grooves all across the face for more friction on flop shots. PRICE $130 2 CLEVELAND RTX 2.0 WIDE SOLE It…

I happened to be in Berlin when the Golf Digest editors invited me to contribute to this project, and I happened to share what I intended to write with Andreas Kluth, Berlin bureau chief for The Economist. After I told him that I wanted to watch Jordan Spieth’s every shot and step at the Masters and did not want to watch a second more of Tiger Woods, Kluth told me there was actually an Italian word that summed up everything I was trying to say: sprezzatura. It means the ability to make something very difficult seem effortless, if not fun. I thought, That’s exactly what I saw in Spieth’s performance at Augusta: sprezzatura! It was there in every lengthy putt he holed, in the near-impossible chips he got close, and…

For more Mark Ulriksen illustrations, visit golfdigest.com/go/golfmecca…

FOR AS LONG AS I’ve been playing golf, the shot I look to hit first is a draw. Even before I swing, I see the ball tracking right to left through the sky and dropping onto my target. I can’t help it. The draw, it just feels athletic and powerful. If this shot suits your eye, too, I’d like to share a few tips for drawing the ball with your irons. These are things I still work on with my coach, Jorge Parada, and I’ve found them to be a big help when my irons won’t do what I want them to do. Let’s see if we can get you hitting a draw. —WITH RON KASPRISKE 1. YOUR DRAW STARTS HERE There are several ways to play a draw, but…

I realize many of you have demanding jobs and a houseful of kids. You have virtually no chance to practice. So when you do get those rare breaks to work on your game, you should spend almost all of your time on shots from 30 yards and in. Why? According to my friend the statistician Mark Broadie, it takes a tour pro 2.5 strokes on average to hole out from 30 yards. The average golfer is up to a full stroke worse from that zone. That can mean a 10- or 15-shot difference per round. If you have at least decent distance and can get the ball somewhere near the green on your second shot, focus your practice sessions on knocking your third shot on the green, hopefully close to…

Finding yourself behind a big ol’ tree is no fun. But slamming your next shot into the trunk is enough to make you want to walk in. Like I tell my students, “When you’re in trouble, get out in one shot.” In recent years we’ve learned from TrackMan and other launch monitors that the angle of the clubface at impact determines a shot’s starting direction much more than the swing path does. So when players swear they swung left or right of a tree but hit it anyway, it means the clubface was pointing at the tree at impact. Here are four simple steps to getting around obstacles: 1 For solid contact, choke down, stand closer to the ball, and swing about 70 percent. 2 The old adage “Aim the…

“When I’m working on location, I always take my clubs.” KATHRYN NEWTON says it best: “I don’t know whether to call myself a golfer who acts or an actor who plays golf.” It’s a reasonable internal debate. Acting came first. She was 4 when she landed a three-year part on the daytime soap “All My Children” and has since appeared in a number of television shows and movies, including “Bad Teacher” with Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake and “Paranormal Activity 4.” In the latter film, she uses a 5-iron to smash a car window and escape the demon trying to kill her. Now 18, Newton recently graduated from Notre Dame High School in Southern California after helping the school’s golf team win three league championships. She routinely shot in the…

When it comes to golf, we get around. Each month our editors share dispatches on the cool places they visit. DALLAS 1 Stevens Park Golf Course, in a revitalized area just southwest of downtown, isn’t so much a preservation of the past as a celebration of it. The 1924 design by a pair of club pros, Jack Burke (father of 1956 Masters champ Jack Burke Jr.) and Syd Cooper (father of golf legend “Lighthorse” Harry Cooper), was a fun but funky affair, crisscrossed by so many hills, creek gullies and city streets that one par 4 required a snap-hook off the tee, and three others demanded snap-slices. Four years ago, architects John Colligan and Trey Kemp reconfigured the 90-year-old course, straightening holes, eliminating blind spots and increasing its length from…

“A green jacket would really bring out my eyes.” I’ll bet I’m the only nongolfer featured in Golf Digest this month, and boy are my golfloving ex-boyfriends going to be pissed to see me here. What does Mamrie Hart [pronounced Maim-Ree] know about golf? I know golfers like to drink. I know a green jacket would really bring out my eyes. And after hitting my first golf shot 100 yards off a beer can as a tee, I know I’m ready to learn the game. Until now, the closest I’ve come to playing golf was in eighth grade, when I wrecked my friend’s day-old golf cart. We weren’t even on a course! Although, we did have a course in my hometown of Boonville, N.C. One stoplight and one 18-hole course.…

1 You make a 4 on the fourth hole, but your playing partner writes down a 5. You sign and turn in the scorecard. What score did you make? 2 In stroke play, you tee up a ball outside the teeing ground and hit a ball out-ofbounds. You then realize your error and re-tee inside the teeing ground and hit another shot O.B. What do you lie? 3 You hit your third shot from off the green, and it hits your opponent’s ball at rest near the hole and trickles into the cup. Did you just make a 3? 4 You’re not sure if your tee shot is out-of-bounds, so you announce and play a provisional. That shot also might be O.B., so you play another provisional. That shot is…

1 HIT YOUR 3-WOOD FOR ACCURACY 2 LAY UP TO YOUR FAVORITE YARDAGE 3 TAKE DEAD AIM AT THE FLAGSTICK 4 CHIP YOUR BALL FROM THE FRINGE Some advice has been around for so long that it has been accepted as automatic, and nobody ever questions it. But massive improvements in equipment and access to statistics for players at every level tell us that you probably need to rethink how you approach some situations on the course. Many players have had it drilled into their heads that they need to be careful, pick the lowest-risk shots and navigate the safest routes they can find. That can be true, especially when hazards and out-of-bounds are threatening, but in many other scenarios, a different approach will increase your odds of making a…

THE FIRST TIME I SAW St. Andrews was on a bicycle. My clubs and clothes had been misplaced by the airline, yet my third checked bag—the cardboard box in which my upstate New York bike shop had expertly disassembled my mountain bike—made it. This was just as well, because I couldn’t have boarded the cramped bus to Edinburgh train station carrying it all. And this being a period of life when I was long on time and short on money, when I finally arrived to Leuchars, rather than pay eight quid to taxi the final leg, I ripped open the box there on the train platform and wrenched my bike together, inexpertly, using the few tools I’d packed with it. It was a sunny August day. The wind made for…

Before you recoil in disgust and declare that bare-chested golf is a game you’ll never play, acknowledge that the rules of decorum are in constant flux. The first Olympians competed in the nude. Male beach-goers in the Victorian era had to wear one-piece bathing suits that rose over the shoulders. As late as 1960, men could be fined for showing torso in Central Park. Today we traipse through airports in pajamas, and top CEOs wear hoodies. The courses that permit unprotected golf are still few, but the battle of shirts versus skins rages on. Basketball, soccer and tennis players in public parks agree: In severe humidity, no microfiber outperforms skin. Some joggers consider their route before going topless, though many appear governed only by vanity. Among all the breeds of…

SOURCE: GOLF DIGEST R EADERS Clubhead speed for the average golfer is 85 to 100 miles per hour. Let’s say you’re swinging down at 90 mph, and your body stops turning . What happens? Well, you’re not stopping that clubhead, so it whips past you. The face flips closed, and you hit a snap-hook— a low screamer that turns left before it leaves the tee box. With most snap-hooks, there’s another telltale sign: Your weight never shifts to your front foot during the downswing. Combine that with a stalled turn, and it’s easy to snap it. I see this a lot on uphill tee shots, where there’s an urge to hang back and help the ball up, or when nerves or fatigue work against a full turn through the ball.…

HIDEKI MATSUYAMA AGE 23 BORN Ehime, Japan RESIDES Sendai, Japan STORY The 2010 Asian Amateur champion won for the first time on the PGA Tour at the 2014 Memorial. “The words from Mr. Nicklaus held great weight with me,” said Matsuyama. “It was a special experience.” A TOUGH DECISION Most players want nothing more than an invitation to the Masters. But I was not sure I would play in 2011 after the Tohoku earthquake in Japan a month earlier. The people there pushed me to play, so I felt an honor and obligation to play the very best I could for them. IRONS SPECS Srixon Z U45, 2-iron; Srixon Z 945, 4-PW, True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 shafts, S-flex, IOMIC X-Grips There is lead tape on the back of all…

SOURCE: GOLF DIGEST R EADERS Many amateurs have swing issues that start on the way back. They pull the club severely to the inside and around the body and, as a result, roll the clubface wide open. This leads to an awkward and ineffective downswing, resulting in any number of bad shots. In my new book, The A Swing, I explain how to fix this problem. Here I’ve simplified it into four steps. 1. CLUBFACE AT THE BALL Keep the face of the club “looking” at the ball for as long as possible during the takeaway. Eliminating excessive face rotation helps keep the club moving back on a straighter (less inside) path. 2. DON’T ROLL THE FOREARMS As you swing the club back using my new A Swing, the right…

The typical response to a bad round is to get back out there and work harder on your game. But instead of grinding on the range, what you might need to improve is quality couch time. That could be oversimplifying things, says Dr. Ara Suppiah, a physician who treats several players on the PGA Tour, but studies on good heart health are concluding more and more that it’s important to know when to rest and when to train. Ever notice that after a substantial lapse from the gym or golf course, your first time back is better than you expected? “That probably is the result of your stress level being low and your rested body and heart functioning very well. It can absorb the training,” Suppiah says, “but if you’re…

▶ In an era when much is measured by “likes,” the term seems inadequate for how the public has responded to Jordan Spieth. There have been many golfers who have captivated us right away: Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson and, of course, Tiger Woods. But even Arnold Palmer wasn’t embraced so quickly and completely. ▶ It goes beyond Spieth winning the Masters, or being America’s own, 21 years old, fresh-faced, well-built, bright and polite. Or possessing the competitor’s dangerous edge, a Right Stuff toughness that makes the historically inclined Ben Crenshaw think of Wyatt Earp. ▶ All those things are essential, but they aren’t at the center of Spieth’s popularity. It’s instructive that unlike all those who have been liked a lot, it appears that nobody doesn’t like Spieth. Despite being…

Turning points usually don’t walk up, slap you in the face and shout, “This is important—pay attention!” More often, they’re recognized after the fact. The accomplishments of Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and even Jack Nicklaus look bigger now than they did at the time, the appreciation growing with the years. But occasionally, a moment occurs with such sudden brilliance that it amounts to a face slap. When Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes at the age of 21, it was one of those moments. And so, too, it seems was the victory this year by 21-year-old Jordan Spieth at Augusta National Golf Club. “There are certain tournaments when we know we’re watching the beginning of a new era,” says Casey Alexander, director of research and special-situations analyst…

1 OPENING REMARKS Once every five years, the faithful from around the world are called upon to return to their Holy Land, the sacred, medieval fairways of St. Andrews, for a weeklong golf celebration; a time of ritual, observance and dedication to this most peculiar of pursuits. They’ve been playing some kind of golf here for the better part of a millennium— since the 1100s, according to one estimate. St. Andrews was described as a “metropolis of golfing” as long ago as 1691. The Old Course, one of four that run out and back on an odd strip of linksland wedged between the Eden Estuary and St. Andrews Bay, is the original, the archetype, golf’s blueprint, the source of the game’s magnificent river. British Opens at St. Andrews are special,…

● ● ● GOLF WATCHED since my retirement in September 2014: zero. Not one shot. I just don’t follow it as a fan might. Never did. Now and again I’ll catch some highlight from Tiger’s career on the news and think, I remember that. His hole-out from behind the 16th at the 2005 Masters is like that. I’ve seen that one a few times. Maybe when I’m an old man, I’ll get caught up and watch them. There’s a big catalog of cool moments, that’s for sure. ● ● ● THERE’S MORE to that Tiger hole-out than you probably know. After Tiger inspected the green and was walking back to his ball, he pointed out an old ball mark on the green. It was the size of a dime, almost…