Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Golf Digest

IF YOU’RE RECEIVING this issue much later than the first week of the New Year, blame your postal worker (gently). In most zip codes, golf season is in a lull, which makes the arrival of reading material about the game feel less urgent but also somehow more essential. On the spine of this magazine, you’ll notice we’ve abandoned a 70-year-old tradition of naming issues by their month and are simply calling this Issue 1—in part to spare our collective psyche the reminder it’s January, but the motives lie deeper. Jerry Tarde, the greatest boss ever, although he deflects the term, has been writing the Editor’s Letter of this magazine since taking the job in 1984—a record run in all of publishing that’s as safe as Nicklaus’ majors if Jack were…

WHEN SHE WAS a little kid, Carly Chaikin’s dad signed her up for summer golf camp at his Southern California club. “I. Just. Hated. It,” the actress says. “I would get so frustrated and throw my clubs. I’d show up in sweatpants and black nail polish, like a rebel.” Those days are distant memories now as Chaikin, who most recently played the computer hacker Darlene on the USA Network series “Mr. Robot,” is fully committed to the game. Unless she’s on set or working on her other passion, painting, she tries to play at least twice a week and takes a lesson or practices weekly. Even her upcoming wedding weekend will include a golf tournament. Golf began to click for Chaikin, 29, after she and her fiance, Ryan Bunnell, started…

IT’S NOT KNOWN what Bing Crosby is saying in this 1958 photograph, taken during the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am by a Golf Digest founding editor, though Bing might be recalling the ace he made a decade earlier on this, the renowned par-3 16th hole at Cypress Point Club. As Golf Digest celebrates its 70th year in 2020 by culling interesting photos from its archives, the Crosby, now known as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (Feb. 6-9), is a good place to start. Crosby established the pro-am format in 1937 in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. With the United States entering World War II, it was canceled after the 1942 event, but Bing restarted it in 1947, initially at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Cypress Point and Monterey Peninsula Country Club. Pebble Beach…

“The hidden benefit of a big turn: better tempo.” IF YOU’RE STRUGGLING with the driver, focus on making more body turn during the backswing. Why? Because the stress you’re feeling is probably causing you to make a shorter, tighter swing. Adding more turn will put you back to where you normally are, which can reverse the issues you’re having. A good swing thought for more rotation is this: Feel like you’re turning into the heel of your trail foot while lightening the pressure on your lead foot. Make sure you don’t just slide your hips back; it has to be a weight shift caused by the rotation of your upper body and pelvis (above). To promote this, another good feel is the lead hip turning farther back. This fuller backswing…

I’M ASKED periodically what career path I would have pursued had my broadcasting gig not panned out. It’s a hard question, because I’ve been working in television since I was a 20-year-old junior at the University of Houston. But I do know that my “other” dream job as a kid growing up in Colts Neck, N.J., involved golf course architecture. That passion behind my alternate career choice was reinforced in the summer of 2014, when I gazed out at my somewhat ordinary back yard and imagined a golf hole there. Not just any hole, but a replica of the famed par-3 seventh hole at Pebble Beach, which we admire every day from our house. The fact it was the seventh hole at Pebble played no small role in pulling it…

JOINING A CLUB has never been a terribly transparent, straightforward and unemotional process. Mix in multi-million-dollar real-estate deals, and what could possibly go wrong? To that, a California couple says, Hold my beer. Michael and Jenny DuBasso were contemplating buying a $2 million La Quinta retirement home within Tradition Golf Club’s gated community where Arnold Palmer not only designed the championship course but owned a vacation home and was a club member. That cachet—and a guided tour of the facility by the club’s membership director—sold the couple on the home and what they presumed would be rubberstamped approval for a social membership. But after closing the deal in January 2016, the DuBassos submitted their application (and $27,500 initiation fee) only to learn that they had been denied membership for reasons…

It’s not really a problem on the PGA Tour… save for one international guy. IT’S SOMETHING we’re asked on a weekly basis, in some iteration, fueled by curiosity and a thirst for gossip: “Do these guys cheat?” Despite its frequency, the question can make even the biggest blabbermouths bashful, most clinging to the time-honored, somewhat misguided omerta that surrounds the subject. Which I don’t understand. I’m happy to answer, and do every time. In my eyes, is cheating a problem on the PGA Tour? Not really. Yes, we all have stories. Hard not to after nearly a decade out here. But it’s not as prevalent or excessive as some might believe. Even the players who carry less-than-stellar reputations, or have been dinged before, are not as bad as they’re portrayed.…

“Feel a little stretch at the elbows? You’re doing it right.” BEFORE I EXPLAIN why you always seem to hit fairway bunker shots fat and what to do about it, let me take you back to the turn of the century. If you’ve got your phone or laptop handy, search “Tiger Woods bunker shot, 2000 RBC Canadian Open.” When I think about the all-time greatest shots, his 6-iron over water from 218 yards on the last hole—which stopped 18 feet from the flag and clinched his victory—is burned into my memory. If you watch it, take a moment to marvel, but also notice how he addresses the ball. He was gripping way down on the club, and that’s a key to fixing your problem. In the future, grip down on…

“Use your pelvis to sling the club through impact.” WHO DOESN’T love Rory McIlroy’s golf swing, especially the way he can fire his hips on the way down and power through the ball. But if you’re trying to rotate your hips even half as well as Rory to hit the ball farther, you should know that his hips are actually slowing down as the club approaches the ball. My friend J.J. Rivet, a French biomechanist who works with the European Tour, has studied hip rotation in elite-level golfers and has measured the speed in which their hips are moving in the downswing. The average is about 600 degrees per second in the initial phase, but the hips rapidly slow down as the club approaches the ball, to an average of…

I’VE CHANGED literally everything about my game over the past few years—how I putt, how I chip, what I do in bunkers, my full swing. It’s not just placing band-aids on things, these are real changes. And it’s been a lot of work. Because this is my job, I can afford to spend a lot of time on the range and in the short-game area. But I realize you probably don’t have that luxury. So what can you do? Try practicing while you play. It’s a great way to get the reps in when you don’t have any other time for practice, and another benefit is that the things you work on are still fresh in your mind when it’s time to swing for real. I’m doing a lot more…

“The Marine Corps owes me nothing. I owe the Marine Corps everything.” LAST VETERANS DAY WEEKEND, on the 244th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, a bullet-headed lance corporal, Bob Parsons, became only the second enlisted man to be named A Marine for Life. It’s an awesome title (even though every Marine is a Marine for life), though Parsons wore it modestly on the deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid, berthed in New York City within sight of Sully Sullenberger’s heroic landing on the Hudson River. “The Marine Corps owes me nothing,” Parsons said. “I owe the Marine Corps everything.” Part of a billion-dollar business empire he built from ingenuity, and dedicated to philanthropy, involved golf, starting with his Scottsdale National Golf Club and his equipment company, PXG (Parsons…

I USED TO THINK THAT GOLF IS MY LIFE, THAT IT’S WHO I AM…. IT’S NOT. AT JUST 25 YEARS OLD, Jon Rahm is on a steady progression. He was the No. 1 amateur in the world in 2015, and after turning professional the next year, it took him only 61 weeks to crack the top five in the World Golf Ranking. (Only Tiger Woods, who did it in 33 weeks, accomplished the feat faster.) And it took Rahm less than two years to reach No. 2 in the world. He has won 10 times around the world, including three times on the PGA Tour and another six on the European Tour, amassing more than $25 million in career earnings. With three finishes among the top four in his eight…

JIN-YOUNG KO, the No. 1-ranked player on the LPGA Tour, swings the driver nearly 30 miles per hour slower than Brooks Koepka, the No. 1 male player in the world. Yet Ko uses a driver with 9 degrees of loft—1.5 degrees less than Koepka. What gives? Aren’t golfers with slower swing speeds supposed to use drivers with more loft? That’s not necessarily the case anymore. Sixteen years ago, Golf Digest presented compelling evidence that average golfers needed to use drivers with more loft to maximize distance—sometimes as much as 12, 14 or 16 degrees. But because of changing driver designs and changing swings, the opposite might be true today. In an exclusive Golf Digest study done in conjunction with Club Champion, the leading national clubfitting chain, players with swing speeds…

THIRTY YARDS OUT. Over a bunker. Tight lie. You might think this shot is a nightmare, but you can beat the stress with a few simple keys. For starters, commit to the hit. Don’t make the common mistake of taking a long backswing so you have to decel at impact. Limit your swing so you can accelerate through the ball for better contact. The next thing is letting the loft of the club do the work. I tell my players “Return the loft,” meaning whatever loft you set on the clubface at address, return it at impact. Too many players try to add loft by flipping their wrists on the downswing. Finally, let your body release toward the target. I know you’re nervous and want to lock yourself in place,…

“Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child.”—John Updike 1,200 SEATS AT THE BEER BARREL SALOON, THE WORLD’S LONGEST BAR 20,000 SEATS AT THE WASTE MANAGEMENT PHOENIX OPEN’S 16TH HOLE PRESIDENTIAL (GOLF) STYLE THROUGH THE YEARS ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL WITH YOUR FUTURE CLUB PRESIDENT 5:30 a.m. Rise and grind 7 a.m. Photo op with maintenance 9 a.m. Send monogrammed Pro V1s to various greens-committee members noon Deliver keynote campaign speech. Remember to… • Unveil campaign slogan: “The future is a drivable par 4!” • Distance self from previous administration’s disastrous cartpath-only policy • Promise to build fence along border with nearby public course; announce the public course will pay for it 2 p.m. Release attack ad accusing opponent of improper drop at last year’s member-guest 4:30 p.m.…

TOP IO 1 (1) ROYAL COUNTY DOWN G.C. (Championship) Newcastle, Northern Ireland Old Tom Morris (1889), Donald Steel (remodeled, 1998) 2 (6) TARA ITI G.C. Mangawhai, New Zealand Tom Doak (2015) 3 (4) MUIRFIELD Gullane, Scotland Old Tom Morris (1891), H.S. Colt (1925), Martin Hawtree (2011) 4 (2) ROYAL DORNOCH G.C. (Championship) Scotland Old Tom Morris (1892), George Duncan (1947), Donald Steel (1993), Tom Mackenzie (2013) 5(3) ROYAL MELBOURNE G.C. (West) Black Rock, Australia Alister MacKenzie, Alex Russell (1931), Tom Doak (2015-’16) 6 (5) THE OLD COURSE AT ST. ANDREWS Fife, Scotland Allan Robertson (1848), Old Tom Morris (1865-’85), Martin Hawtree (2013-’14) 7(14) MORFONTAINE G.C. France Tom Simpson (1927), Kyle Phillips (2004) 8(7) ROYAL PORTRUSH G.C. (Dunluce)Northern Ireland Tom Gilroy (9, 1888), Old Tom Morris (9, 1889), H.S. Colt (1933), Martin…