Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2018 i Golf Digest

Golfers on average change their equipment every four or five years. If you don’t, you risk getting left behind in technology. Equipment Editor Mike Johnson’s analysis of the 102 players on the PGA Tour who qualified for distance-stat tracking in 2013 and again in 2017 shows the average distance gain was 2.2 yards, from 289.8 to 292.0 yards. Sixty-eight players got longer; 34 got shorter. Rory McIlroy gained the most: 15 yards. Experts will tell you distance gain is actually greater because pros can hit it farther when they want to. There were 29 drives of 400 yards or more last year on the tour. But let’s talk about us, not them, and why you should use this 15th edition of the Hot List (page 72) as a shopping guide.…

In the 17 years Denis McDade has worked with PGA Tour pro Marc Leishman, there have been two constants—Leishman’s fearless attitude and his artistic swing. “The hallmarks of his swing are its relaxed, free-flowing nature and its simplicity, McDade says. “And don’t be fooled by his easy-going nature; he’s one of the most highly competitive people I’ve ever met. He’ll always try to win a tournament rather than play for second. He won’t die wondering.” That combo of silky swing and go-forit attitude helped Leishman to two PGA Tour victories in 2017, the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by Mastercard and the BMW Championship. Those wins quietly moved him into the top 15 in the World Golf Ranking, a place where Leishman would prefer to stay. The key to that will…

Let’s take a step back and consider what it means to slice a putt. It’s no different than slicing a drive: The club cuts across the ball from out to in with the clubface open. And just like with the driver, the result is a weak shot that veers off line. The difference in putting is, instead of the mid-air theatrics of a ball peeling into the trees, the sliced putt simply comes up short and to the right of where you wanted (for righties). Less dramatic, but no less frustrating. Why does this happen? If you’re like a lot of golfers, you watch your putts roll by lifting your head and turning your body toward the hole. When the shoulders rotate open, the club gets dragged with them on…

Squeezing rounds and range time between gigs, he’s cut his handicap to 7, from 13. “WHEN I WAS A KID, just getting into music, my dad said, ‘You’re good, but not that good,’” recalls Lukas Nelson. “I thought, I can take this two ways: I can stop playing, or I can get that good.” Nelson, whose dad is country-music legend Willie Nelson, decided to go all in, practicing guitar and writing songs practically around the clock. “I put in hours like I was an Olympian,” he says. It paid off. Last fall the country-rock singer released his fourth studio album, “Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real,” to critical acclaim and solid sales. He and his band also recorded an album, “The Monsanto Years,” with Neil Young and toured with…

Q I teed off, and the ball split in two. When I found half of it in the rough, my playing partner said I had to hit another ball from there. Was he right? TOM DISHER, HARTFORD, WIS. A How sure are you that your swing was the force that cracked that ball? We’re not doubting your superhuman strength, but if the ball broke as a result of a stroke, that stroke is canceled, and you’d play a another ball from the original spot, per Rule 5-3 (Ball Unfit for Play). If some other force split the ball—a lawnmower, for example—you may replace it with another ball and play from where you found it without penalty. I just saw a player on the European Tour move a small rock out…

CALLAWAY GBB EPIC/SUB ZERO/STAR $500 / $700 VERDICT The Epic family of drivers, Callaway’s most successful launch since the 1990s, set out to change how drivers flex. Two titanium bars behind the face connect the crown to the sole, keeping the flexing at impact confined to the face. The result is maximum ball speed across a wider area of the face. Lightweight composite pieces in the crown and sole freed up mass for a rear sliding weight on the sole in the standard model, and front and back weights in the lower-spinning Sub Zero. The newest addition is the Star, which uses a shaft that’s about a third lighter than typical shafts to help provide extra swing speed. COMMENTS (L) I could set the slider and just carve the same…

CALLAWAY EPIC $280 VERDICT If the crown looks similar to the Epic drivers and fairway woods, it’s because the same ultralight carbon composite is used. That lighter top makes room for an arcing tungsten weight low inside the head to help the ball launch higher with less spin. Like the fairway wood, it’s also powered by the company’s cupface design: The face wraps around the crown and sole with a thin rim that flexes so that off-center strikes fly like on-center hits. Available in four lofts with an eight-way adjustable hosel. COMMENTS (L) The ball jumps off the face, and it’s forgiving on mishits. (M) Sleek finish, and it cradles the ball at address. (H) You can launch it high, and it’ll land soft. That crack sound is perfect. CALLAWAY…

CALLAWAY BIG BERTHA OS SET OF EIGHT / GRAPHITE : $1,300 VERDICT Callaway’s belief that higher-handicappers need the most help with the low and middle irons is evident here. The Big Bertha OS features tungsten in the sole to lower the center of gravity (CG), which promotes getting the ball airborne. The short irons don’t need the help launching the ball, which is why the CG gets progressively higher in those irons for increased control. The revamped cupface (in which the face wraps around the topline and sole to help it flex more) functions more efficiently in the low and middle irons. COMMENTS (M) These irons seem to have a little extra distance compared to others. (H) Probably the best-feeling irons of the bunch. Almost a players-iron feel at impact.…

CALLAWAY X FORGED SET OF EIGHT : $1,300 VERDICT The adage that there are few new ideas, only new execution, rings true here. Calling it a “reincarnation” of its X Forged from 2013, Callaway brings its newest ideas to the proven form of a five-year old, single-piece forging. Trajectory (higher in the long irons, more controlled in the short irons) is managed by a weight pad in the back cavity, and a new groove design is intended to reduce fliers and improve spin control on shots out of the rough. The company’s Apex Pro iron was a players iron for wannabes. This one is the real deal. COMMENTS (L) The feel is much softer than in past years. You get a consistent ball flight that is mid to high. (M)…

BETTINARDI BB SERIES (2018) $300 VERDICT The BB Series is made from soft carbon steel and features face milling that is softer than past BB models. The blades are heel-toe weighted with less toe hang (BB1) and crowned toplines (BB29). A light-colored sightline against the matte-black finish is easy on the eyes, and an electric-yellow scheme on the sole offers a distinct look. COMMENTS (L) I appreciate the craftsmanship, the materials and how the feel transfers to your hands. (M) The neutral color is quietly pleasing. The sound off the face is metallic-like but muffled. It plays like it’s heavier, with the ball coming off the face faster than I expected. (H) It has a comforting, balanced feel and got the ball rolling nicely. It was delicate in a good…

If new clubs meant you would drive the ball 20 yards longer and drop several strokes, would you reach for your credit card? According to a Golf Magazine and Club Champion study, “Fitting Matters!” Based on the data and player interviews, it’s clear that correctly fit clubs help golfers of all levels – “you can actually buy a better game with properly fit clubs.” The study found golfers gained 22 yards off the tee, up to 15 yards with their irons and lowered their scores by an average of 3 strokes per round. Club Champion is the #1 premium club fitter and a highly regarded expert in the field. Ranked by Golf Digest among the 100 best club fitters year after year, they offer more than 35,000 hittable head and…

THE KING COBRA DRIVER Jean Van de Velde’s caddie should’ve snapped before the final hole of the 1999 Open Championship.~ THE KASCO SUPER HYTEN DRIVER left in Ian Woosnam’s bag, earning him a two-stroke penalty for carrying 15 clubs at the 2001 Open. THE WILSON WEDGE T.C. Chen double-hit at the 1985 U.S. Open. THE T.P. MILLS PUTTER Scott Hoch used to miss a winning two-footer at the 1989 Masters. THE CALLAWAY WAR BIRD DEUCE 2-WOOD John Daly used to hit six shots into a lake at the 1998 Bay Hill.…

GOLF APPAREL IS INFUSING MORE MAINSTREAM trends than ever. Whether it’s the abundance of energetic Hawaiian prints or the rising popularity of soft-pink hues, it seems golfwear designers are building on the standard, preppy vibe and adding pieces that offer a jolt of personality. Here are five examples we like.…

SLIP IN THE SHOWER More than once, your pro has remarked on your fine footwork. He should see you now as you lie prostrate on the floor outside the locker-room shower, the victim of a slip-and-fall while rushing to get back to your locker. In 2008, some 234,000 people suffered a mishap in the bathroom, 81 percent of them falls. Not the kind of club you’d care to join. COURSE OF ACTION Walk slowly, eyes riveted on your path, staying mindful of tiled floors that might have been cleaned with slippery disinfectant. Be cautious if you’ve had a couple of drinks. Most of all, avoid any towel-snapping high jinks. STRUCK BY A GOLF BALL Becky Harmon of Minnesota recalled the time she took a blow near her temple from a…

I PLAY A LOT OF H-O-R-S-E in the driveway with my oldest son, Will. He just turned 11. Obviously I’m better than he is, so I let him stay close. I’ll miss on purpose so I’m at H-O-R-S and he’s only at H-O. I can see on his face he thinks he’s got a chance. Then something happens to me. This competitive thing inside me kicks in, and I blitz him. I just can’t let him win. Maybe it’s an Iowa thing, but we’re not “everybody gets a trophy” people. Will’s a strong kid. His day will come soon enough. WHEN I WATCH SPORTS ON TV—and I watch a lot—I’m always drawn to the 20-point underdog who keeps it close. At the NCAA basketball tournament, when a small school hangs…

CALLAWAY GBB EPIC/SUB ZERO/STAR $280 VERDICT These fairway woods adopt the strong yet lightweight carbon-composite structure from the successful Epic drivers. The saved weight is pushed low on the standard and Star versions to help launch the ball high, and reallocated as front and back adjustable weights on the Sub Zero model. Power comes from Callaway’s cupface design, a thin rim extending the face around the crown and sole to create more consistent flexing across the face. COMMENTS (L) It’s a party coming off the face. I had total control over the trajectory. (M) Powerful is the only way I can describe this club. It launched the ball out there without a lot of effort. (H) The ball springs off the face. Even my worst swings had decent distance. CALLAWAY…

At last summer’s Open Championship, Jordan Spieth used Titleist’s 718 T-MB 3-iron—a utility-iron-style club—for the now-famous shot from the range alongside the 13th hole at Royal Birkdale. The shot displayed the desirable characteristics of such a club and why it’s a suitable substitute for conventional middle or long irons that produce a lower ball flight. Although the methods vary, the technological goal of all utility irons is essentially the same: ample mass combined with lower and deeper centers of gravity to help get the ball airborne, fast-flexing faces, and the versatility of irons. Manufacturers have responded by providing a number of options, like Ping’s G400 Crossover and Mizuno’s MP-18 Fli-Hi. Other companies have followed with similar iron-replacement versions. You might not hit a shot like Spieth, but your palms are…

GD TESTED : + 5 YDS We compared the latest 7-irons against five-to-six-year-old 7-irons provided by Global Golf, the leading used-club retailer in the world. The new 7-irons showed consistent improvements, and some of them were considerably longer on mis-hits than their previous generations. In some isolated cases, we saw 20-yard improvements in carry distance for off-center strikes. However, for the most part, the gains were more measured: about three yards for an on-center hit on average, and high, low and heel hits improved by as much as five yards each. If you think the difference is just driven by stronger lofts that fly lower and won’t hold greens, guess again. Even with stronger lofts, shots flew an average of two yards higher with about a degree steeper landing angle…

It’s something we’ve asked ourselves for a few years: Would it help our readers to differentiate between the traditional players iron— which emphasizes feel and control—with a more modern version of the players iron that features distance technology? As the latter gained momentum—it now represents 15 percent of the iron market, according to industry tracking firm Golf Datatech, thanks in part to the success of the Callaway Apex, one of the best early examples of such an iron—we decided it deserved its own category, one we call Players Distance irons. An iron in this category must satisfy a pair of simple, but strict criteria: It must be a players iron in shape and possess some distance-producing element. Examples include a face design that wraps around the sole, topline or both;…

CALLAWAY MACK DADDY 4 $150 Spin technology and fitting options define wedge performance. Few are milling this area (literally) like Callaway. There are two types of milled grooves depending on the loft, plus a new process for creating surface friction between those grooves. Instead of cutting into the flat surface between grooves, the MD4 mills ridges that rise from the surface to create more contact points for spin on the shortest shots. As for fitting, the MD4 has more options than ever (21) across nine lofts with four sole grinds. COMMENTS (L) You can hit those bounce-bounce-check shots easily. (M) I like how the bounce lets this club set up flat behind the ball. (H) It has a sandpaper-like face that puts great action on the ball. CLEVELAND CBX $130…

Traditionally, blade putters were thought to be the domain of good golfers with smooth strokes, and only chops used mallets. Then came Jason Day’s rise to No. 1 with a custom version of TaylorMade’s Spider, a high-stability mallet that Day fashioned with a shorter, slantneck hosel. By May of 2017, mallets were in the hands of nine of the top 10 players in the world. One possible reason: The idea of “toe hang.” Many new mallets feature weighting where the face of the putter is angled slightly down when the shaft is balanced on your finger, rather than the face staying open (toward the sky) like in a traditional face-balanced mallet. That feel is designed to work better when the clubface rotates open and then closes during the stroke. It…

Hitting it low and off the toe? Try this move to launch it. Many times the easiest way to get a player to learn a skill or correct a mistake is to have them overemphasize the movement needed to execute the task—or even do the opposite of what they’re doing, so they can find middle ground. I call this teaching philosophy the art of exaggeration. Here’s a great example of overemphasizing a move to get you to swing with proper width, so you can hit better tee shots. Many amateurs mistakenly bend the right arm almost as soon as they start the backswing. This pulls the club up and inside the target line way too soon, narrowing the swing arc and putting the club in poor position for the proper…

JULIAN SURI AGE 26 LIVES Jacksonville FROM New Rochelle, N.Y. STREAK Climbed 1,079 spots in the World Golf Ranking in less than nine months to close 2017 at 63rd. The first golfer to win on the Challenge Tour and the European Tour in the same season. When Julian Suri missed a 2017 European Tour card by one stroke at qualifying school, he faced a decision: stay and use his guaranteed starts on the Challenge Tour, or return to the United States and try playing his way into Web.com Tour events, which carry slightly more World Golf Ranking points? He chose to stay, and it was the right call. Thanks to two overseas wins, he’s now within reach of a top-50 World Ranking, which could lock in a trip to the…

On pro-am day, it’s a lock that one of the ams will try to bomb it past me. Leaving aside that they’re playing from shorter tees, most players who try to hit it longer end up short and crooked. They’re so focused on creating more clubhead speed in the downswing, they don’t finish the backswing—and a rushed transition leads to timing issues and poor contact. Getting the ball out there on a hard par 4 is important, so remember this advice: Slow down. Take your time and finish your backswing turn, then feel like your chest follows your hips in the downswing. The club comes last. Build swing speed like you’re going from the on ramp to the highway—smooth acceleration. Don’t slam the gas pedal. LONG APPROACH TREAT YOUR HYBRID…

GD TESTED : + 11 YDS How much better are the new drivers? In this year’s Hot List, we give you an answer. Through player testing with Foresight Sports’ GCQuad launch monitor and robot testing conducted by Golf Laboratories Inc., we matched the newest clubs against what research says is the average replacement cycle for drivers, irons and wedges. In our tests against four-year-old drivers—on off-center and oncenter hits—the new drivers won 78 percent of the time. The biggest gains were on toe and low impacts, which saw an average of nine- and 11-yard gains, respectively. But even with USGA rules limiting spring-like effect, center strikes were going farther, too—about six yards on average—thanks to today’s lower-spinning, better-launching models. Your results might vary, which is why you should always take…

CALLAWAY EPIC SET OF EIGHT : $2,000 VERDICT Distance in an iron is great, but the extra yards won’t help if your shots can’t hold the green. Callaway sought to create the lightest, stiffest body possible and matched it to a flexible cupface for maximum distance. Then it used a metal-injection-molding process to create an internal weight out of tungsten and steel. The purpose of the slug is to optimize the center of gravity for each iron throughout the set and ensure the best possible launch. COMMENTS (L) The balance and weighting felt good through impact. It’s nice to have an iron that feels strong like that. (M) The face has some spring to it. The ball comes off fast, even on mis-hits. If forgiveness had a feel, this club…

There is something about golf you won’t find in any other sport. It can be played as a Sunday pastime or played in serious competition, but above all it’s a sport played with real passion and that impressed us right from the start”, says Rainer Stoeckl, co-founder of Vice Golf. That passion in turn influenced Ingo Duellmann and Rainer Stoeckl to develop their own line of golf balls and direct to golfer strategy that would revolutionize the current market by cutting out the traditional retail middlemen. “We knew the technology was out there to make golf balls that were as good or even better than golf balls already on the market, while the internet would allow us to sell them directly to consumers at much more favorable prices. That’s what…

CALLAWAY EPIC PRO SET OF EIGHT : $2,000 VERDICT Driver technology has trickled down to irons for several years now. Problem is, irons are smaller than drivers, making it a more intricate task. For this iron, that meant creating a flexible face with a thin lip that wraps around the sole and topline, creating flex at impact to foster ball speed for on-center hits and minimize lost speed on off-center strikes. Flexibility, however, requires support. That comes from a cage-like structure with support beams. COMMENTS (L) It feels like a players club at impact, but the forgiveness for slight mis-hits was there when you needed it. (M) These were like a good pair of running shoes—firm and responsive with just enough cushion. CALLAWAY ROGUE PRO SET OF EIGHT : $1,000…

GD TESTED : + 64% It’s easy to become comfortable with a club and not replace it. But that kind of thinking can be detrimental to your game, especially with wedges. “It’s not like your grooves go from being perfect, perfect, perfect and all of a sudden, they’re terrible. It’s gradual, and you might not notice it,” says Bob Vokey of Titleist. A study by Golf Datatech indicates golfers buy new wedges every four years. To find out what you’re giving up, we conducted our own test: We had a scratch player hit shots from multiple distances and turf conditions with a new wedge and a four-year-old wedge that had endured normal use, and we measured the results using a Foresight Sports’ GCQuad launch monitor. The new wedge produced 27.3…

BETTINARDI BB SERIES $300 VERDICT Bettinardi putters are known for classic shapes and old-school feel, but these mallets also emphasize forgiveness and alignment. Those hallmark mallet features include the BB39’s oversize shape for maximum stability and the distinct alignment bar atop the BB56, which puts more weight higher in the head to promote a quicker end-over-end roll. COMMENTS (L) I like the matte finish and clean alignment lines. It has a nice, quiet roll off the face. (M) It delivers a true roll that’s consistent from long range. Refreshing not to look down and see a bunch of screws or wings. (H) The feel is the best part about this putter. It’s consistent and inspires confidence. ODYSSEY O-WORKS RED/BLACK $200 VERDICT This line comes in solid colors (red or black),…