Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 2, 2022 i Golf Digest

BIO-ENGINEERED TURFGRASSES grow on drips of reclaimed water. The PGA Tour’s Waste Management Phoenix Open is carbon-neutral. Our governing bodies are cooperating on sophisticated strategies, and even Rory McIlroy is adding awareness by talking about his footprint. But what can a regular golfer do that’s meaningful? Of all things, the lowly tee lets us glimpse in microcosm the conundrum of being an eco-conscious consumer. Most bamboo grows at least five times faster than hardwood, but milling both creates excess sawdust that gets burned in smog-producing factories. Molded tees waste not, but plastic and other materials can have thorny source implications. All things considered, “Play a biodegradable tee that decomposes quickly on the course,” says Jonathan Smith, executive director of the GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf. Carpool to the course. Carry…

THE IDEA CAME TOGETHER on the golf course, naturally. Chad Mumm, head of entertainment at Vox Media Studios and a self-described golf sicko, pitched his vision to Chris Wandell during a round at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas: a behind-the-scenes documentary following golfers throughout a season. This had been Mumm’s dream project for a half-decade, confined to the “one day” category until a confluence of factors turned Wandell, the PGA Tour’s vice president for media business development, into an intrigued listener. Deep-pocketed streaming platforms had shown a willingness to invest in premium sports documentaries. A generation of 20-something stars had shown an eagerness to share their lives with fans on social media. Crucially, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan was intrigued by the benefits of presenting golf less filtered. Wandell knew…

THE BEST OF THE MASTERS traditions begins Thursday morning at about 8 when the honorary starters gather on the first tee. The patrons are still rushing up the hill from the gates, breathless and straining to see golf’s living Mount Rushmore. It reminds me of the Third Stage of Man: The first is Youth, the second is Middle Age and the third is “You’re looking well.” Gary Player, 86, Jack Nicklaus, 82, and Tom Watson, 72, are all looking well on this first full week in April. My recurring Masters dream goes back to when Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson were the honorary starters, who in those days not only hit the opening tee shot but played out the first hole and then were carted back to the…

WITNESSING AUGUSTA NATIONAL IN PERSON IS WONDROUS for all the things that don’t readily come across on television. The hills are steeper, the holes broader. The turf is so firm and uniform, you pluck blades to test if it’s real. The black waters of 11, 15 and 16 mirror the pines and sky, masking the electromagnetic pull that hums beneath, and eyebrows raise at the impossibly static order of such a large swath of nature. However, observant eyes will fixate on the greens and the eclectic nature of their size, shape and persona. During telecasts we watch putts swerve, bend and dip, but the forces that animate them are unclear. Seen live, the slopes and contours are sculptural, imperious. A.W. Tillinghast wrote that greens are like faces, the best ones…

MY KIDS SAY THAT FOR ONE of my favorite weeks of the year, I don’t seem to enjoy the Masters very much, and my wife says I’m unusually curt and anxious. They’re right, of course, but they don’t have to figure out the wind at Golden Bell. I love the Masters. It’s the Holy Grail of American golf. If you’re there, you matter. But there’s also a reason why Harbour Town, where most of us head afterward, is beloved on tour; it’s the first time we can exhale in a week. Caddies are generally a loose bunch, but everyone is wound a little tight at Augusta National. Conversations are more formal, and we stick to our job. The club and its members treat us well, and we want to reciprocate,…

IN 2017, BRYSON DECHAMBEAU WAS struggling to make short, soft putts. It didn’t take a genius to realize he needed to start sinking them if he wanted to stay on the PGA Tour beyond his rookie season, and he began his typically exhaustive efforts to fix the problem. After experimenting with a range of approaches, he adopted his now-familiar arm-lock stroke and was feeling good about it. He analyzed his impact with the ball in myriad ways—his club path, his lie angle, the squareness of his face—and felt his form was beyond reproach. Yet on the easiest makes, his ball continued to spin off his putter: sometimes left, sometimes right, but too often maddeningly off line. DeChambeau turned his fine-eyed attention to the ball, falling down another of his countless…

WITH THE MASTERS TOURNAMENT approaching, attention will likely turn to defending champion Hideki Matsuyama and his distinctive swing. Broadcasters, podcasters, bloggers and such will undoubtedly point out the obvious—that he briefly stops at the completion of his backswing before starting down. How unusual is this move at the tour level? You have to go back to the 1950s to find another great player who did it—three-time major champion Cary Middlecoff. Although Matsuyama’s pause isn’t as prolonged as it once was, it’s still the part of his game everyone highlights. However, a closer inspection of his swing reveals that there is something else going on, something that actually should be considered his signature action. It’s not as noticeable as the stop-and-go move, but it helps explain why Matsuyama is often regarded…

I GUESS YOU COULD SAY I hit it pretty good out of the rough because I’ve had a lot of practice. Little joke there. Seriously, if you want to put the ball on or around the green when it’s sitting down in the tall grass, you need to know how it’s going to come off the club. For example, the ball’s going nowhere with a lob or sand wedge—it’s just going to balloon. But it usually flies farther than normal with a pitching wedge down to about a 6-iron, because it jumps out of the grass with no spin and stays in the air longer. You can forget using a 5-iron or any longer iron, because the ball doesn’t launch high enough unless you have some serious swing speed. If…

ABRAHAM ANCER “Abraham answers the bell at Augusta National!” JUSTIN ROSE “A rose blooms among the azaleas—a Justin Rose!” BRYSON DECHAMBEAU “Finally, science we can all agree on! DeChambeau wins!” BROOKS KOEPKA “Brooks was here, finds a ‘Shawshank Redemption’ of his own!” BEAU HOSSLER “A rising tide lifts all Beaus! Hossler wins!” VIKTOR HOVLAND “From Norway, a new way to victory!” CHESSON HADLEY “Chesson not checkers Hadley is your 2022 grand master!” RORY MCILROY “From the Emerald Isle to an emerald jacket, Rory has it easy being green!” KEVIN NA “Kevin Na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye!” MATTHEW WOLFF “Matthew Wolff leads the pack at the Masters!” CAMERON SMITH “Business on the front nine, party on the back. Cameron Smith is your Masters champion!” XANDER SCHAUFFELE “X marks the spot!…

WHEN BOBBY JONES and Clifford Roberts conceived of the golf club that became Augusta National, their plans were ambitious: two 18-hole golf courses, one for women; tennis courts, a pool, outdoor squash courts and a bridle trail; an extensive real-estate development with at least two dozen large building lots overlooking the course; and 1,800 members, more than a few of them from overseas. In the spring of 1931, in Augusta, Ga., they found the ideal property: a defunct commercial nursery, which, Jones wrote later, “looked as though it were already a golf course.” Jones and Roberts, however, had the misfortune to undertake their project at the outset of the Great Depression. They were able to raise only a fraction of the money they needed, and, in three years of conscientious,…

THERE’S BEACH VOLLEYBALL, a soccer field, basketball courts, batting cages, tennis (obviously), pickleball, bocce, a pool with a “splash zone” for kids, a pool with an island in the middle, and two lap pools so that you can swim without interruption while listening to music through the underwater speakers. There’s an AMF bowling alley with arcade games like air hockey and pinball. Around the corner there’s a wall-to-wall Lego area and a “dream room” where overstimulated kids are snoozing, a 23-seat movie theater with a fully stocked snack bar, steam rooms, TV rooms and wine cellars for storing and sampling. “When you look at most country clubs, they do have a lot of amenities these days,” says Mike Orosco, general manager of Santa Barbara’s Montecito Club, which has all of…

DRIVER SPECS TaylorMade Stealth Plus, 8.5°, Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 60 TX shaft, 45.125 inches, D-3 swingweight. The red face caught my attention, but it only took 10 shots to feel comfortable with it. I hit a little cut, so I like a driver that I can aim down the left side of the fairway, and it’s not going to go farther left. This driver does that. FAIRWAY WOODS SPECS TaylorMade Stealth Plus, 14°; TaylorMade Stealth Plus, 19°; Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 80 TX for both. Big hitters want 3-woods that don’t go as far as possible, but I want as hot of a 3-wood as I can get. The 5-wood is the opposite. I don’t want a 5-wood shot that goes farther than I’m expecting. IRONS SPECS TaylorMade P•770…