Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2015 i Golf Digest

MALE 14-hdcp ● LPGA TOUR ● Avg. swing speed (mph) 93.4 / 94 Avg. driving distance (yds) 228 / 250 SOURCE: TRACKMAN FIRST, LET ME DISPENSE with the details of this historic Golf Digest cover, although I might point out that Rory McIlroy wasn’t wearing a shirt on last month’s cover, either. (No, not a trend—just a sign of the fitness of today’s top players.) I was not there. Lexi Thompson’s mother, Judy, was. The editors had cleared the room during what were called the delicate moments. But Lexi wasn’t the least bit self-conscious. When our Photographer-at-Large, Walter Iooss Jr., a veteran of 43 years of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues, began working with Lexi, someone asked Judy if she was OK with the shoot. Mom’s response was, “I am, but…

“On a long par 5, your tee shot dictates how you play the hole.” Hilton Head’s Harbour Town Golf Links and I have a long history. It was the first course I was involved in designing, back in 1969. I was at the height of my playing career when the owner, Charles Fraser, asked me if I had any interest in designing courses. I thought it would be fun, and suggested Pete Dye and I work together on Harbour Town, site of the RBC Heritage April 16-19. I made 23 site visits and realized course design would be one of my greatest joys. Harbour Town’s 588-yard 15th is a good par 5. The dogleg-left to a small green requires clear thinking, especially with a tournament on the line. Harbour Town’s…

SCRAMBLING SCRAMBLING 10 - 20 YARDS SCRAMBLING 20 - 30 YARDS THE HIGH PITCH You’re 20 or 30 yards short of the green, and the pin’s just a few steps on. You’ll have to fly it most of the way. Grab your highest lofted wedge, and take a narrow stance, with most of your weight on the front foot (1). Your stance should be open, the ball well forward, and your grip pressure light. Swing back to about hip high, and as you come down keep your wrists firm (2). If you flip your wrists, you’ll have trouble hitting the ball solid or getting enough height on the shot. Instead, think of it as a mini swing: Do all the things you do in your normal swing, just to a…

Mr. X BY NOW YOU’VE HEARD that caddies are suing the tour over bibs. My caddie is part of the lawsuit, so I’ve been privy to all the back and forth for the past year and a half. As you’ve seen, the chest and back of the bib usually go to the title sponsor, with the FedEx Cup and PGA Tour logos on the front pockets. The caddies want a taste of the action, or at least the right to sell the left breast. ▶ The tour runs the program that gives caddies the option of wearing a sponsor’s logo on their hat, but the top caddie stands to make only about 11 grand. For what it’s worth, I’ve played European Tour events where the bibs had a dozen logos.…

In an era when smartphones can tell you everything from the weather at a golf course in Nepal to how many inches you come over the top on your downswing, maybe we should have seen this coming. There’s now an app that reads greens. StrackaLine, which started as a company specializing in yardage books, has unveiled its weapon in the war on missed putts. Jim Stracka and his son, Chase, measure courses by placing a laser in the middle of a green and rotating it 360 degrees to record its undulations. The data is fed into a computer and converted into images showing the green’s slopes. The images are stored in a database that golfers can access if they get the app and pay for a subscription. Prices range from…

The young players are “incredible ambassadors for us.” Symetra is an insurance company you probably don’t know. To help change that, it’s sponsoring a professional golf tour for women you probably don’t know, either. At least not yet. The tour is similar to the Web.com circuit for aspiring PGA Tour players. It has 23 events throughout the United States, and its top-10 tournament money-earners are promoted to the LPGA Tour each year. They call it the “Road to the LPGA.” The Bellevue, Wash., company also sponsors two of the tour’s events—the Symetra Classic in Charlotte and the Symetra Tour Championship in Daytona Beach. Formerly part of Safeco Insurance, Symetra won’t reveal its budget for this. But sports marketing experts estimate the naming rights would likely go for about $1 million…

The hardest questions in golf are the ones that never seem to get asked. Take that cigar-chomping first-tee starter with a wad of cash in his pocket. You’re wondering, Is he as up for a bribe as he looks? If so, how do I solicit a magiccarpet ride to the first tee? Another one: When your opponent hits a hosel rocket into the trees, are you obligated to express sympathy, or can you obey your first instinct and just laugh? How do you ask that LPGA Tour player out on a date, anyway? ▶ No guts, no glory. Here are 30 issues you might have pondered but haven’t quite had the temerity to query your friends about. You won’t find the advice we’ve assembled here in any golf etiquette guide,…

● Potato Salad A guy asked for $10 to make some potato salad and raised more than $55,000. The Coolest Cooler The first campaign of this combination blender/speaker/phone-charger/cooler was a dud. Then it relaunched, asking for $50,000, and landed more than $13 million. Exploding Kittens This card game pits self-destructing kittens against goats and laser beams. It asked for $10,000 and raised nearly $9 million. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus Filmmaker Spike Lee helped legitimize Kickstarter when he raised $1.4 million for this thriller. PowerUp 3.0 This lightweight motor can attach to any homemade paper airplane, which users can then control via a phone app. The makers asked for $50,000 but received more than $1.2 million.…

You just wanted to play for playing’s sake. You didn’t need or want the nassau bet or the baggage that comes with it—the trash-talking, the scorecard gymnastics, the handicap whining, the scowls of concentration, or the pressure. But you wound up paired with the club’s version of Eddie and his pals. Not wanting to spoil their fun, you played for money—albeit for less than $1,000 a hole—but hated it. As you drove home, you wondered for the thousandth time, Who’s the crazy one here, me or Eddie? The short answer is, neither. The golf gambler is not necessarily the craven degenerate the non-bettor makes him out to be. Conversely, the non-bettor is not the tea-sipping spoilsport the bettors claim. “People satisfy their golf jones in different ways,” says Dr. Gio…

IF YOU’RE NOT HITTING THE BALL AS FAR AS YOU USED TO, you can blame your ball, clubs or swing—or all three. But Dr. Ara Suppiah says the reason could be more primal: “As we get older, our testosterone levels drop, and this is the hormone you need for power. Even worse, in many cases men accelerate the drop with unhealthy living habits.” The natural reduction for men is about 1 percent each year past age 30, the Mayo Clinic reports. But if you’re not eating right, sleeping well and exercising, the loss can be more rapid. Suppiah, a sports-medicine specialist who is a consultant for several players on the PGA Tour, says a healthy male 45 to 55 should have a testosterone count of about 500 or higher. Women…

I PLAYED MY FIRST FULL YEAR on the PGA Tour in 2008, and by 2012 I felt like I needed to make some improvements in my swing to take the next step and win some tournaments. I’ve always been fascinated with golf history, and I see Ben Hogan’s swing as the ultimate model of athleticism and efficiency. It’s impossible to look at Hogan’s action and not think there are things you could use in your swing. The equipment might have been different then, but what Mr. Hogan did with those clubs is timeless. I’ve worked with teacher Wayne DeFrancesco in kind of a new-school way to merge some of Hogan’s classic technique into my game. Wayne and I trade video back and forth of my swing and Hogan’s, and it’s…

AGE 31 RESIDES Lakewood, Wash. STORY Turned to golf after breaking his neck at age 11 while diving into a shallow lake. Finished 11th on the Web.com Tour in 2014 to earn his PGA Tour card. NO RAZOR REQUIRED Facial hair wasn’t allowed on the golf team at UNLV. As a pro I grew it out as a joke and still have it. BACKWARD APPROACH If you look at my bag, you’ll see I have the clubs set in reverse. When I was young I didn’t want to dig through the headcovers to get to the irons and wedges, so I put those on top. I tried switching but kept putting clubs in the wrong spot, so I went back to doing it. —WITH E. MICHAEL JOHNSON FAIRWAY WOOD SPECS…

The pivot motion is the lifeblood of any golf swing. How the body winds going back and unwinds coming through is the key to creating energy and transferring it to the ball. In my upcoming book, The A Swing: The Alternative Approach to Great Golf, I explain why it’s so important to synchronize the body pivot with the arm swing. All good players get this right. Learn to pivot correctly with these four steps. David Leadbetter is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional. 1. GET INTO YOUR TILT Without a club, mimic your address posture, but place your hands on the sides of your legs, with your right hand a few inches lower than your left. Your spine will tilt slightly to the right. 2. ROTATE TO THE TOP Simulate your…

Considering the Decisions on the Rules of Golf has almost 600 pages of on-course situations and how to deal with them, it stands to reason some of those address extremely rare events. If you’re looking for a conversation starter, here are several of the most unusual rulings in the book. 1 DECISION 23/6.5 If you encounter a snake during your round—and are brave enough to inspect it up close—remember this distinction: A snake that’s alive is considered an outside agency, but a snake that’s dead can be treated as a loose impediment. 2 DECISION 27/6 You and your buddy hit blind tee shots that seem to land in roughly the same area. Your buddy finds a ball and hits his second shot. You then search for your ball, but you…

Will your next set of clubs be custom-fit? 10-handicapper or lower ▶ 11- to 15-handicapper ▶ 16- to 20-handicapper ▶ 21-handicapper or higher ▶ 58% 49% 40% 72% SOURCE : GOLF DATATECH YOU’RE MISSING OUT ON GOLF’S most game-changing technology: clubfitting. “A lot of golfers don’t know about custom-fitting, or they greatly underestimate the impact of a properly fit set of clubs.” says Craig Zimmerman, general manager at RedTail Golf Center in Beaverton, Ore. “They think a clubfitting is for tour pros or better players. But the more they learn, the better golf they’ll play.” That education begins by visiting a clubfitter, like at RedTail or one of the other top facilities named to our third listing of America’s 100 Best Clubfitters. (Turn the page for our list.) In the…

● Have a cool golf idea? Before you turn your camera on yourself and start blathering why people should give you money, know that the best Kickstarter pitches are typically highly researched and carefully crafted. Backers like to fund projects they think are going to succeed, so enlist your family and golf buddies to give your project early momentum. The magic number is 20: Projects that get to 20 percent of their goal end up being fully funded 80 percent of the time. Once you’re there, attract outsiders by offering incentives. Even if you can’t offer anything material, you can meet with your biggest backers and credit them publicly. Most important, show your personality. Kickstarter supporters like investing in people’s dreams, so show your face, tell your story, and make…

Get stronger (A lot stronger) with this new Eccentric training program WHEN you think about exercises, you probably focus on the first part of the movement— like the push in push-up. But what happens on the way back down is equally if not more important in terms of strength gains and injury prevention. For example, when jumping from a squat position (far left), it’s the landing—not the jump—that’s too often ignored. “People don’t get hurt jumping, they get hurt landing,” says Golf Digest fitness advisor Ben Shear. “And in golf, stopping the swing is causing most of the injuries. If you want to swing harder for power, you have to train your body to decelerate safely.” ▶ The process is called eccentric training, but you might think of it as…

There are all kinds of shots I could teach you from a greenside bunker, but I’ll bet you’d be happy with just one: A shot that puts you somewhere on the green—every time. I know you’re feeling some nerves when you climb into the sand, so I’m going to keep this simple. It’s mostly about the setup. Holding your sand wedge in front of you, turn the face open about 20 degrees, then take your grip. Get into your stance with the ball way forward—opposite the heel of your front foot. Then set a little more weight on your front side, but don’t push your hands toward the target. You want the shaft to be straight up and down. Make a half backswing, then really spank the sand two to…

SOURCE : GOLF DIGEST READERS Ben Hogan once told me that he got so nervous playing in a tournament, he felt like he was jumping out of his skin. That confirmed to me that we all get jittery from time to time, whether it’s you, me, or the great Ben Hogan. The feeling you get is the anxiety of being in competition and failing. So how should you deal with it? What helped me the most early in my career, when I wasn’t keeping my composure at the end of big rounds, was a tip from Byron Nelson. He told me when I was under pressure to walk a beat slower. I was walking too fast, and rushing my decision-making and my swing. When I slowed down between shots, my…

1 UR LIST is based on three criteria: (1) A facility must be accessible to the public. (2) It must offer an array of clubs from top manufacturers. (3) It must earn high marks from our courserating panelists and industry sources. We reviewed nominations from more than 700 locations to determine our 100 Best. ARIZONA VALLEY GOLF CENTER Avondale HOT STIX GOLF Scottsdale (five locations: Ariz., Calif., Fla., N.Y.) GOLF STOP Tucson CALIFORNIA CARLSBAD GOLF CENTER Carlsbad THE CLUB FIX Irvine (six locations: Calif., Ariz., Fla., N.Y.) URBAN GOLF PERFORMANCE Los Angeles HAGGIN OAKS SUPER SHOP Sacramento STADIUM GOLF CENTER San Diego JOE KWOK GOLF San Francisco KEPLER’S GOLF Walnut Creek COLORADO GOTT GOLF GREEN VALLEY RANCH Denver D’LANCE GOLF PERFORMANCE CENTER Englewood CONNECTICUT PERFORMANCE CLUBWORKS Brookfield DEMANE GOLF Greenwich…

CHLOE PHILIPPOU is a quirky 22-yearold with cute Clubmaster glasses and a posh English accent. She works at an auto body shop, but her true passion is making movies. The problem is, they cost money. Her phone isn’t filled with deep-pocketed producers, banks won’t read screenplays, and she doesn’t want to ask her mum and dad. So Philippou finds cash on Kickstarter.com. To make “Crazy Golf,” a horror movie she credits as one of her early breakthroughs, she asked for £2,000 and raised £3,049. “I wanted a kick-ass female underdog main character and loads of blood,” she says. “I wanted a film that would make people laugh and feel disgusted at the same time.” It all starts rather nicely: A young, attractive couple goes on a date to a miniature…

IF YOU’RE GOING TO PLAY GOLF with Eddie and his group, you’ll need lots of money and some serious cajones. Though many of us like to have a little something riding on a match—maybe a round of drinks in the clubhouse or a $10 nassau to keep things interesting— for Eddie’s crew, gambling is something else altogether. Playing at a top country club in Southern California, guys who make up this loose-knit network of 20 or so serious amateur golfers routinely risk as much as $10,000 per man over 18 holes. When a professional athlete or high-roller from Vegas slips into town, wagers can slide into the $40,000-per-round range. As one of the gang puts it over a clubhouse breakfast: “We’re probably a little sick. But we’re a different breed…