Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i Golf Digest

Valentino Dixon is a free man at last. SEVERAL YEARS AGO, Golf Digest published a monthly series called “Golf Saved My Life,” written by Max Adler. It was always one of my favorite features in an issue because it showed golf as a prescription for coping with life’s adversities. At the end of each article, Max invited readers to propose future subjects. From cancer survivors to kidnap victims, from soldiers with PTSD to bereft family members came stories of deep human emotion with golf as a protagonist. One day, Max went to his mailbox and found an envelope with the Attica Correctional Facility as its return address. Inside was a letter with flowing penmanship from inmate Valentino Dixon, convicted of murder and serving a 39-years-to-life sentence. He said he was…

I’VE HAD A SUCCESSFUL PGA TOUR CAREER, including a pair of wins, by keeping things as simple as possible. Yet, in the numerous pro-ams I play, I notice everyday golfers tend to make things more complicated than they need to be, and their games suffer. One area to simplify is off the tee. For amateurs, it’s the most critical part of the game to avoid big numbers. Keeping it uncomplicated will result in better consistency, which allows you to pay more attention on your approach shots and short game. Here’s your first tip: Swing with the thought of putting the clubface on the back of the ball. This will help keep your body from lunging ahead of it, which causes those toey slices no matter what club you’re using. Read…

A lot of golfers think the key on long putts is speed and shorter putts are more about line. Actually, speed is critical on all putts. The pace of the ball dictates the size of the hole. If you hit a putt firmly, the effective width of the cup might be two inches, but if the ball is rolling slowly, the cup might play twice as wide. So let’s work on your speed. Here’s a great drill I use all the time. Set up an imaginary box using four tees, three feet wide and about a foot-and-a-half deep. Drop three balls five feet from the center of the box, and try to roll all three into it (above). If a ball doesn’t come to rest inside the boundaries, start over.…

LATERAL HIP ABDUCTION This is a good way to prime your hip flexors. Stand tall with your right hand on a wall, engage your core, and put all of your weight on your right leg, bending it ever so slightly. Move your left leg out and away from your right leg, trying to get it parallel to the ground. Do 10 times; switch legs. ANKLE-MOBILITY ROLLS Stability from the ground up is the goal. Stand with feet hip-width apart, lift one foot a few inches off the ground, and roll the ankle in a circular clockwise motion. Switch directions and repeat. SKATERS This move helps add power through impact. Assume an athletic position, knees bent, feet a little wider than shoulders. Stand on one leg and jump laterally toward the…

STANDING ALONGSIDE Bill Belichick at a New England Patriots practice in preparation for a game broadcast, I asked the modern-day Lombardi to take me through his roster by position group. At first, Coach Belichick appeared more interested in discussing the FedEx Cup playoffs that had recently visited TPC Boston than talking football. After all, he’s an enthusiastic golfer and fan who has played in several AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Ams. But with a pivot faster than Tom Brady seeking his fourth option on a pass play, he delivered a detailed summation of each player. Soon he blew his whistle and took off to midfield to resume coaching the finer nuances of his sport, leaving me alone on the sideline to ponder what it must be like to assemble a championship team…

Golf-course renovation experts today: 1 GIL HANSE (above). His work on the East and West courses at Winged Foot sets the standard. 2 TOM FAZIO House architect for Augusta National should be enough to make the list, but his revamped 12th hole at Pine Valley is as courageous a reno as any we’ve seen. 3 ANDREW GREEN Little known, but I’m told he’s a real comer. Replaced Faz holes at Inverness and Oak Hill, revised Saucon Valley Grace to growing acclaim. 4 BRUCE HEPNER Former restoration expert for Tom Doak won Golf Digest’s Best New Remodel for Piping Rock (2016). Good job restoring Seth Raynor bunkers at the Country Club of Fairfield. 5 BILL COORE & BEN CRENSHAW Enormous talents as original architects, but reno work a mixed bag. A…

“It takes no athletic ability to set up perfectly every time.” Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the game’s best players. They’re all physically gifted, so it’s often something else—a mental or emotional strength—that sets them apart. Here are a few of those qualities. 1. A SHORT MEMORY Great golfers are like great defensive backs in football: When they get burned, they’re immediately ready to go again. Whatever the mistake—a bad drive, a missed putt—the best players quickly put it in the past. When Dustin Johnson three-putted the last green at the 2015 U.S. Open and failed to force a playoff with Jordan Spieth, people asked me if DJ would be OK. He was fine. He’s a great example of a player who looks forward,…

AGE 31 LIVES Sea Island, Ga. STORY Two-time PGA Tour winner. Finished season 38th on the World Golf Ranking. MONEY PLAYER My caddie and I play a game during pro-ams where I’ll have to hit 12 or 13 greens to break even. If I hit more, I make money. If I hit less, I lose a lot of money. It keeps the iron game sharp. NOT A NATURAL LEFTY Golf is the only thing I do left-handed. As a kid, my parents bought me a baseball glove for my right hand, but I’d catch the ball, take it off and throw it back right-handed. DRIVER SPECS Titleist TS2, 9.5˚, 45.25 inches, Accra 455 M4 shaft, D-4 swingweight I recently switched to the new TS2 from my 917D2. I’ve always fought…

Our ever-traveling writers offer some road-trip ideas. Sewailo Golf Club TUCSON For those who don’t love the grit of the typical Arizona course, I recommend this one, an amenity of the Casino del Sol resort. Like Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, it’s a desert floor reshaped into hills and valleys with lots of waterscapes; generous, plush turfgrass; and hillsides of flowers. Strategically designed by Ty Butler, a former associate of Robert Trent Jones II, with input from former PGA Tour pro Notah Begay III, it’s owned by the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, whose longstanding water rights are now preserved by keeping this course green and lavish. Which is what we want in a winter round. —RON WHITTEN Oak Quarry Golf Club RIVERSIDE, CALIF. Hidden just off an exit ramp on the…

SEAN FOLEY REMEMBERS the first time he saw Cameron Champ swing a club. It was at Foley’s academy in Orlando, and Cameron was about 14. Foley was working with many tour pros at that time, including Justin Rose and Hunter Mahan, but what he saw that day prompted him to call his wife, Kate, and tell her to clear his teaching schedule the next day. “I can’t say in print what my reaction was, but wow!” Foley says. “We spent the whole next day working on his game. And when you look at him now, he’s got the accuracy of David Toms off the tee but hits it 30 yards past Dustin Johnson.” That’s not hyperbole. Even the longest of players in professional golf recognize that Champ—great name, by the…

NORTHEAST JASON BARRY / 30 Mercer Oaks G. Cse. West Windsor, N.J. $110/HR. JASON BIRNBAUM / 36 Manhattan Woods G.C. West Nyack, N.Y. $250/HR. JESSICA CARAFIELLO / 35 Innis Arden G.C. Greenwich, Conn. $140/HR. SCOTT CHISHOLM / 33 Rolling Green G.C., Springfield, Pa. $170/HR. JOE COMPITELLO / 33 Plainfield C.C., Edison, N.J. $175/HR. • SARA DICKSON / 31 The Country Club, Brookline, Mass. $130/HR. • GREG DUCHARME / 27 Michael Breed Golf Academy at Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point New York City $300/HR. JUSTIN FOSTER / 33 Ridgewood C.C., Danbury, Conn. $120/HR. MARIO GUERRA / 34 Quaker Ridge G.C., Scarsdale, N.Y. $200/HR. • STEVE KEOGH / 38 Konnectgolf, New York City $225/HR. ADAM KOLLOFF / 35 Pure Drive Golf, Woburn, Mass. $150/HR. ANDERS MATTSON / 38 Saratoga National Golf…

THERE ARE MORE THAN 3,500 athletes in the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL alone. Add all the other sports leagues, and there are thousands of athletes who are eligible for Golf Digest’s Best Athlete Ranking, which we last compiled in December 2015. We expanded that list of 100 by contacting each team’s communications staff in the four major sports leagues, along with the overall communications leader in other sports leagues. To fill in gaps, we worked with sports agents, sports agencies such as Octagon, Wasserman, Newport Sports Management, Excel, CAA, and Tandem Sports and Entertainment, as well as online search engines and research services of journalistic periodicals. We supplemented that with in-house research and GHIN.com. Some handicaps are estimates from players or representatives. BASEBALL TYLER CLIPPARD +1.9 Toronto reliever travels…

BATMAN AND ROBIN. PB&J. Tiger and Phil. These duos go hand in … OK, so maybe they didn’t exactly play nicely at first, but age has softened them to the point that they’ll face off in the match on Nov. 23. Is it too late? Would it have been better a dozen years ago? Of course! But this is all we have for now. Phil versus Tiger at Shadow Creek in North Las Vegas for $9 million, not a cent of which is their own. Oh, and we all have to watch it on pay-per-view. To prepare you for this showdown of the aging, here is our unofficial tale of the tape.…

Great advice to remember when hitting pitch shots is to swing through impact on a shallow angle, letting the bottom of the clubhead slide along the turf. Having said that, I’ve seen the application of this advice prove troublesome for some amateurs, because they try to do it of the wrong foot—the back foot. This typically happens because the golfer wants to help get the ball in the air with some unnecessary hand and body english. There’s no need for that. Wedges have more than enough loft to produce a high-and-soft shot, especially if the angle of attack is shallow—think skim, not dig. So what I want you to do is make sure your body is being supported by your lead foot as you swing through impact. An easy way…

“My clubface is so open, you could cook a pancake on it.” My caddie on the LPGA Tour calls me the “Bunker Queen,” so I guess you came to the right place for some tips to get out of the sand. One of my favorite drills teaches you how to use wrist action to produce good bunker shots. I’ll explain that on the following pages. Another starts by drawing a letter t in the sand, like you see here. I’ll show you that one in a bit, too. Before I get to those drills, my first piece of advice is to step into the sand with some attitude. Fear of a bad shot breeds tension, which makes it harder to swing the club freely like you need to in a…

TADD FUJIKAWA was a golf prodigy. At 15, he qualified for the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Though he missed the cut, six months later he qualified for the Sony Open in Hawaii and became the youngest player in 50 years to make a PGA Tour cut, finishing tied for 20th. The Honolulu native decided to turn pro at 16. But since then, Fujikawa has played in only 13 PGA Tour events, and he nearly quit golf in 2014 when he lost his game and confidence. What people didn’t know was that Fujikawa had a secret, one that manifested into severe anxiety and depression. On Sept. 10 of this year, Fujikawa, 27 and living in Sea Island, Ga., announced he is gay in an Instagram post, becoming the first openly…

THERE’S NO PERFECT FORMULA for creating a tour player, no list of requirements to check off in the development of a young golfer that will guarantee arrival to the pro ranks. Still, you would think there are a few necessary things. Easy access to a golf course, for one. Or the ability to hit off of grass. Or even just someone else’s path to use as a guideline. It’s the lack of these resources, and many others, that makes the fact the following four women have their LPGA Tour cards all the more impressive. ▶ Maria Torres, Laetitia Beck, Tiffany Chan and Olafia Kristinsdottir are from four very different parts of the world. Torres grew up in Puerto Rico, Beck in Israel, Chan in Hong Kong, and Kristinsdottir in Iceland.…