Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2018 i Golf Digest

Peter Dobereiner, one of the great British sportswriters of the 20th century, introduced me to an Italian red wine called Amarone that has come to hold an extraordinary meaning for some golfers. Amarone della Valpolicella, its full name, is distinguished among all other wines that typically are made from grapes harvested, immediately crushed and fermented. The grapes for Amarone come from older, mature vines that are picked later in the season and left to dry for 120 days, loosely stored on straw mats to allow air circulation all winter. The process is called appassimento  or raisinate. The grapes practically become raisins by the time they’re crushed, losing 30 to 40 percent of their weight and developing an intense concentration with a strong 15 percent alcohol level. Amarone in Italian means…

“My dad would’ve made me pay rent to live at home after school.” Maverick McNealy isn’t on the PGA Tour yet. He still has to earn it with good play on the Web.com Tour. But the Stanford alum and former No. 1-ranked amateur is relishing the chance to make his own way. The son of Scott McNealy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, whose net worth is estimated at $1 billion, Maverick, 22, is far more modest and ambitious than a privileged upbringing might lead you to believe. We talked with Maverick about his childhood, his prospects for making the PGA Tour and how he defines success. YOU TURNED DOWN A CHANCE TO BE ON OUR COVER. WHAT WAS YOUR REASONING? Being on the cover of Golf Digest is a big…

A lot of golfers have been told to keep the trail elbow close to the body on the backswing. I can’t think of a worse tip for driving. With the trail arm cramped going back, the golfer has a very narrow swing and a restricted body turn—and will struggle to create power and consistent strikes. Forget that. I want the trail arm (right arm for righties) to be as long as possible for as long as possible. That does a few amazing things. First, it widens the swing arc, which increases the distance the clubhead travels back and, in turn, creates more room for it to accelerate into the ball. A wide arc also pulls the body into a full rotation. Second, with the clubhead moving back straighter, it won’t…

When we asked golfers to evaluate golf balls for this year’s Hot List—during testing at Marriott’s Grande Vista Resort in Orlando—our overarching guidance was: “Rate these balls based on how much you would want to play them compared to your current ball.” Turns out they found an expanding universe of golf balls highly acceptable for full shots, and many that felt soft on full and partial swings. But as we got closer to the green, certain balls separated themselves with higher spin on chips and pitches. In most cases these balls had a urethane cover (see page 46) and tended to be more expensive. Does that mean you have to make compromises with less-expensive models? Probably, but depending on your skill level, those compromises might not matter as much. (For…

“A golf course is an island of peace in a world often full of confusion and turmoil.” EDITOR’S NOTE Millions knew the Rev. Billy Graham as a globe-trotting evangelist and pastor to presidents. Not many remember that he was a pretty good golfer who once brought his crusade for the game to the pages of Golf Digest. “Golf can turn an extrovert into an introvert, and vice versa,” Graham told our readers in 1961. “For me, a golf course is an island of peace in a world often full of confusion and turmoil.” Graham, who died Feb. 21 at 99, started out playing golf cross-handed, but once he switched to a conventional grip, he often shot in the 70s. (Longtime Golf Digest contributor Pete McDaniel caddied for Graham several times as…

From 2004 to 2010 I had a front-row seat while the best player of all time hit thousands of balls—on practice ranges from Florida to China and at major championships from Augusta National to St. Andrews. I’m proud of the record Tiger Woods accumulated during that time. From July 2006 to May 2010, he won 47 percent of his starts, and finished inside the top 10 85 percent of the time. I’ve seen him hitting the ball as well as anybody who ever played, like in the 2016 british open at hoylake, where he hit only three less-then-perfect shot the entire week. And I’ve watched him grind out wins when he didn't have his best stuff. The stats don’t lie, and I’ve spent a lot of time studying them. They’ve…

“I feel like it’s necessary for one of us to speak the truth.” People have been talking about the golf ball going too far since the 1930s, but recently it has reached a crescendo. Half the golf world thinks the game is fine, and the other half thinks it’s a disaster. Wisely, most of my fellow pros with endorsement contracts have stayed fairly mute or politic around conversations about equipment rollbacks. But I feel like it’s necessary for one of us to speak the truth. So forgive my anonymity, but it’s just easier this way. You can know that I’m a major champion, in case that lends more weight to what I’m about to say. First, forget any numbers you’ve read about driving distance. They’re all nonsense. The PGA Tour…

Golfers are often told to keep their hands passive when hitting shots—even I’ve been guilty of saying it from time to time. But what does having passive hands mean? Your hands are the only thing holding the club. They have to do something! Instead of passive hands, think control the hands. Here’s one example: Certainly when hitting pitch shots, the hands might feel passive during portions of the swing. The club is moving as a result of the body pivoting. But as the ball is being struck, let your dominant hand move under the glove hand. For righties, that’s the right moving under the left through impact (right). Just keep the body turning toward the target, and this controlled hand action will loft the ball up with a good amount…

You’re north of six feet. You weigh 215. You used to play football, and you still lift weights four days a week. How in the world are you getting outdriven by a guy who looks like a stunt double for a child actor? It’s a question that keeps you up at night and frustrates you to no end on the course. Worst part? The harder you try to send it past him (or is it her?), the more you end up staring at the back of this featherweight’s head farther up the fairway. The reality? You’re probably getting outdriven because you think brawn trumps skill. That might be true if you’re swinging a sledgehammer, but not a driver. Your tee shots are coming up short for a variety of reasons…

▸ OVER $35 ▸ $26 TO $35 ▸ $25 AND UNDER BRIDGESTONE TOUR B X/XS/RX/RXS $45 The only tour ball with four options is divided two ways: Better players should stick with the firmer, lowerdriver-spin X or softerfeeling XS. All others who struggle with mis-hits should choose between the RX (less driver sidespin) or the RXS, the softest of all four. TITLEIST PRO V1/X $48 These flagship tour favorites were slightly redesigned last year. The Pro V1’s traditional softerfeeling core has been reformulated to boost distance, and the Pro V1x’s dimple pattern has been reworked for higher and more consistent downrange flight. CALLAWAY CHROME SOFT/X $45 What can microscopic and superstrong graphene do to improve a golf ball? Callaway uses it to strengthen a thin outer core that boosts distance…

“I’d like to crack open an ice-cold beer on every hole. I wouldn’t finish it . . . ” Jonesing Big Time Jason Jones’ golf handicap is that he lives in New York City with three young children. Despite being a grandmaster of awkward dialogue on “The Daily Show”—he did man-on-the-street bits about homosexuality in Russia and even angered Mikhail Gorbachev by asking jokey questions during an interview the former Soviet leader thought was going to be serious—when the weekend arrives, he can’t quite muster the stones to throw his clubs over his shoulder and say to his wife, “Bye, honey, I’ll see you in seven hours.” Long gone are the days when Jones and his theater-school buds would hang out at Toronto’s downtown par-3 course before working as waiters…

SUNDAY MORNING THIS PAST DECEMBER, in the pre-dawn winter half-light, I teed off alone at the Freshwater Bay Golf Club on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast, for my last round of golf. I chose Freshwater to say goodbye to the game because it had been the scene of the first hello, in July 1976, when my father and I escaped from the doldrums of a family holiday one afternoon and retreated to the links where he used to play as a boy with his father. The summer of ’76 was what the Brits call a scorcher. Golf balls ricocheted off the baked, domed fairways of Freshwater, performing a series of antic bounces before disappearing into a gorse bush, or down a rabbit scrape, or coming to rest…

I’m on the Web.com Tour and have my eye on a PGA Tour card, but I’m still practicing fundamentals that began when I started working with my swing coach, Alex Murray, in the eighth grade. Namely, I’m trying to set up in the proper hitting angle. Alex’s theory is that to be in the correct position at impact, you should start in a very similar position at address. It makes it easier to maintain those angles when you swing. I start with the left side of my torso set higher than the right (photo, previous page), but I don’t put too much weight on my back foot. Instead, I focus on my left side, making sure the shoelaces, calf, quad and shoulder are all in a straight line. I also…

The thing I hear the most from golfers who come to me for a lesson is that they want a more reliable swing. I get it, but to play your best golf, it’s more important to understand what adjustments you need to make for the many scenarios you’ll face during any given round. Knowing how to adapt provides you with more latitude to make a less-than-perfect swing and still get a decent result. Your good shots get better, but more importantly, so do your bad ones. That’s why knowing how to change up is the quickest way to lower your scores. Let’s work on how to modify your game. KAYLIN SKOVRON, a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher, is based at Jeff Isler Golf in Southlake, Texas. 1 BETTER DRIVING Change…

▸ OVER $35 ▸ $26 TO $35 ▸ $25 AND UNDER ABOUT URETHANE A multilayer golf ball with a urethane cover can provide a distinct advantage. That’s why it’s the only kind of ball tour players use. In our Hot List player testing, evaluation scores were universally higher for balls with urethane covers than balls with non-urethane (ionomer) covers. Balls with urethane covers spun more on short shots. We tested 54 balls with good players hitting 50-yard shots and had a GCQuad launch monitor to measure the results. In some cases, balls with urethane covers spun as much as 69 percent more. On average, the difference was more than 1,000 revolutions per minute. That means more stopping power on chips and pitches. Some balls with ionomer covers reached urethanecover spin,…

IN EARLY MARCH, I traveled to TPC Sawgrass, the home club of the PGA Tour, to play the Stadium Course from the tees the pros use during the Players Championship. Most average golfers don’t truly understand how much worse we are than the guys we watch on TV. Contrary to popular belief, the difference between us and them isn’t the difference between our handicaps and “scratch”; it’s the difference between roller skates and racecars. I learned that lesson indelibly eight years ago, on another Golf Digest assignment, when I played Pebble Beach from the U.S. Open tees. My handicap in those days was 6, yet I shot what my father and his friends used to call “even par” (in the bond market, par is 100). So when I pulled up…