Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Golf Digest

If you were to build the perfect power player, he’d look a lot like this guy. Tall and flexible, with long arms and wonderful rhythm, Dustin Johnson is built for speed. And now that his go-to tee shot is a controlled fade, he’s hitting more fairways, too. Says Butch Harmon, Johnson’s coach since 2010, “When D.J.’s driving it well, he’s the favorite to win every week.” Johnson might seem like a physical freak, but Harmon says there’s plenty for average golfers to learn from his driving. For one, Johnson doesn’t restrict any part of his body during the swing. His hips make a big turn going back, and his head swivels freely with the momentum of the swing. So forget what you’ve heard about limiting hip turn or keeping your…

YOU’VE RUN DOWN the fairway-bunker checklist in your head—take an extra club, dig into the sand with your feet, grip down on the handle, aim a little right of the target—all the things you’ve been told that will help execute this shot. You’re confident this is going to work out, and you make a swing that reflects that self-assurance. What happens next? Thud. Your ball smacks into the lip of the bunker and rolls back into the sand. So much for best-laid plans. Though I applaud the analytical approach to escaping fairway bunkers, you can’t ignore the first step—which is to clear the lip! If you find it difficult to get out of fairway bunkers in one shot, I’ve got two options for you, and you’re not going to like…

1. In making a practice stroke on the green, you accidentally strike the ball, and it moves a few inches. You replace the ball and take a one-stroke penalty. Are you following an old or new rule? 2. You drop a ball to take relief. The ball lands in the relief area and rolls outside of the zone but within two club-lengths of where it first touched the ground. You then select a club and hit the next shot. Old or new? 3. Your ball lands in the rough and embeds in soft turf. You pick it up, clean it and drop it within a club-length behind where it embedded, no nearer to the hole? Old or new? 4. Your ball rolls just inside an area of the course marked…

Q My group celebrates a hole-in-one with the player who makes the shot buying everyone drinks afterward. He also buys dinner for our group. One member of the group aced No. 7 at Pebble Beach on a golf simulator. Is this considered a legitimate hole-in-one? SPENCER BURCHFIELD, TUSCALOOSA, ALA. A Does being really good at Rock Band mean you’re ready to play Madison Square Garden? The same holds for golf simulators. Though they’re a lot of fun, they’re not real, and your achievements on them shouldn’t be counted as “legitimate” beyond the world of virtual golf. Note: This should not stop you from urging your buddy to buy drinks and dinner for the group. Just don’t be surprised if he offers you a simulated feast instead of a real one. On a…

IN A LOT OF WAYS, golf has changed since my grandfather, Claude Harmon, was giving lessons in the 1960s and ’70s. Equipment is massively different, and athletes playing on the PGA Tour barely resemble the crowd Jack and Arnie were dominating during the Lyndon Johnson administration. But the lessons he shared in magazines such as Golf Digest and Sports Illustrated (that’s my grandfather and father, Butch, demonstrating the same tip on past covers of Golf Digest, left) are proof of an important point: Good fundamentals are timeless. Here are five I’m revisiting from one of my grandfather’s other articles, starting with this one (opposite page). He tended to hook the ball, so he liked to feel his hips sliding forward before rotating, which held off the clubface from shutting too…

AS FAR AS NIGHT LIFE, THERE’S ONLY ONE MAJOR. The Masters sets the curve while the rest collect gentleman C’s (Ryder Cup included, all due respect). The reasons range from pragmatic to spiritual—corporate-entertainment budgets are freshest in spring, azalea blossoms release a pheromonal dust that makes golf people put on their finest pastels and howl—but most obvious is the value of a fixed location. Just as the traditions inside the gates have formed naturally over decades, so, too, has what happens outside them every April. Though a New York or Paris will overwhelm a golf tournament with competing events, and a second-tier city that hosts a major even every decade is in some respects always starting anew, Augusta’s alter-ego has an established identity and rhythm. Regulars know where to go,…

“Don’t look at the trouble right. Look where you want to go.” WHEN I MEET GOLFERS who’ve been struggling with a slice since day one, I know I’m going to have some fun. Why? Because I can straighten their ball flight, even teach them to hit a draw, in a matter of minutes. Getting in the correct positions is easy. Beating a slice is ultimately about commitment and good habits. If you’re like most slicers, the first fix you need is in the setup. Close your feet, hips and shoulders so they’re pointing to the right of your target. This takes some faith because you’re shifting in the direction you want to avoid. But a closed setup does two things: First, it makes it easier to turn back and complete…

“Worn turf is a good sign you’re using your feet to create power.” AS A FORMER world long-drive champion, I often hear from regular golfers that they’ll never come close to being able to swing like me. Not true. You can. If you copy even a little of my technique, the ball is going to come off the face of your driver hotter than ever. Try these things the next time you’re on the range. CHEAT THE SCALE If you just stood on a scale, it would give you your body weight. But if you push down, that number will go up. When I make a backswing, I’m loading more than 100 percent of my body weight into my trail leg (right leg for righties). So really push into the…

“There’s nothing like puring a muscle-back blade. …It’ like a drug.” MUSCLE-BACK BLADES are like cars with manual transmissions or popcorn cooked on a stove. There are smarter alternatives, yet 11 of the top 15 players in the world play blades. Clubmakers continue to introduce them because, well, they look like jewelry and feel like first love. “There’s nothing like puring a muscle-back blade,” says Marni Ines, Titleist’s director of product development for irons. “If you get a taste of it, that rush sticks with you for a long time. It’s like a drug.” Yes, you can work the ball with blades more easily, but game-improvement (GI) irons produce more distance. How much? To find out, we partnered with Club Champion, a Golf Digest 100 Best Clubfitter, to test blades…

GOOD GOLF is about playing as many par 3s as you can. What does that mean? In addition to the actual par 3s on the course, your goal should be to have a reasonable “par 3” to the green after your tee shot on par 4s (or second shot on par 5s). If you drive it in the water or out-of-bounds, you don’t get to play a par 3. But from 150 in the fairway, you should be thinking, I can make 3 from here. Driving is the first step in the process, but given at least a decent drive—assuming you’re playing the right set of tees—it’s really more about what you do next. Think about it: What’s the most important shot on a par 3? It’s the shot to…

WHEN IT comes to predicting who’s going to play well and who isn’t, caddies are the ultimate source. They’re even closer to the pulse during Masters Week as the tradition of players hanging out at the “caddie shack” beside the practice range has grown. In keeping with the other grand structures on the property, the comfortable spread of food, TVs and chairs creates a nice break away from it all. Indeed, only rookies and former champions tend to use the busier main clubhouse. For the first time, Golf Digest has partnered with The Caddie Network to bring you the uncensored thoughts of five caddies who will be working the 2019 Masters. (You’ve heard of The Caddie Network? Yet another sign of the rising station of loopers, the media entity opened…

IN COOL, muted April sunlight and the exhausted atmosphere of just-completed competition, four warriors in golf clothes sat amid a group of gray-haired men in green. Fifty years ago, the closing ceremony of the Masters presented an interesting tableau. ▸ While an Augusta National muckety-muck addressed the throng, the new champ grinned a goofy grin, and the three runnersup tried and failed to look like good sports. One of them, the perfectionist, seemed close to tears. That damn bogey on 17, he thought. The second silvermedalist—the surgeon—adopted a chin-up, impassive look, the same stoic face he wore on the golf course. Should he have gone for the par 5s in two this week? No, he decided; he lost for other reasons. Between these two sat the game’s dark prince, inscrutable…

“Short-game confidence will free up your long game, too.” PEOPLE TALK ABOUT my driver a lot. It’s fun to hit it far, and my driver does put me in a lot of good positions on the course. But golf isn’t just about how far you can hit it off the tee. Scoring and winning tournaments happens a lot closer to the green. About three seasons ago, I realized I needed to take my wedge-game practice a lot more seriously. Though my coach, Butch Harmon, will give you an analysis of my driver swing (pages 16-17), I want to talk about my short game. It has made me a complete player. My World Golf Ranking has mostly been somewhere in the top 10. But I wanted to get better, and one…

“Keep your knee flex if you want to pop the ball up.” Usually the area around a green is level with or lower than the putting surface. But sometimes you’ll find your ball on a mound near the green. Sure, it was a lucky break that the hill kept your ball within chipping distance. But now what? This atypical lie presents a challenge for a lot of golfers, because it drastically reduces the chance of popping the ball up and landing it softly on the green—especially if you have a tendency to try to help the ball in the air with a scooping, wristy action. You need to make some adjustments to pull off this shot. First, you can’t afford to make contact with the ground behind the ball, or…

A shoe can be light and structured, spikeless and full of traction, waterproof and breathable. THESE AREN’T your grandfather’s golf shoes, but that’s not to say you can’t find a pair that looks like them. How they perform, however, is thoroughly modern. Improvements in technology mean today’s golf shoes offer vast options. Choices used to come with compromises: Comfort meant giving up performance. Less weight meant less stability. Style worked on casual Fridays, not on tee-time Saturdays. But the new shoes show us a place where consumers get all they want. A shoe can be light and structured, spikeless and full of traction, waterproof and breathable, supportive without looking clunky. Most textile uppers are made to be waterproof now, and classic styles use the latest high-tech performance materials. Whether you…

SAME AS ANYONE, I can get ticked off at bad shots. But I really try not to. Ups and downs are the nature of this game, and what separates great players from merely good players is the ability to coolly diagnose what’s going on in their swings—and then adjust. Is it going to take one or two missed shots on the course to figure it out, or are you going to shoot a thousand and need to plow through five bags of range balls after the round to get it sorted? Hopefully it’s closer to the first scenario, but I’ve also noticed great players don’t rely on hope. Rather, when the ball starts behaving unexpectedly, they have a systematic method for reassuming control. You start with the minor stuff that’s…

EDITOR’S NOTE This month Dan Jenkins introduces Golf Digest’s Greatest of All Time Invitational, with the top 32 in the mythical event advancing from stroke-play qualifying at Augusta National to match play. Beginning daily March 20 at golfdigest.com and in the May issue, Senior Writer Guy Yocom will document the match-play results, leading to the final at Pebble Beach. Who will become the champion? The winner will be revealed online April 4 and in the June issue. Screenwriter Mark Frost, whose books have included The Greatest Game Ever Played and The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever, will write two versions of the final with different winners. For more details and to follow the event, go to GOLFDIGEST.COM/GO/GOAT. IT WILL UNDOUBTEDLY transcend the majors this year, if…

EDITOR’S NOTE WE HIRED James Yang to do illustrations at Augusta National during last year’s Masters, part of Golf Digest’s annual First Impressions series by artists, photographers and writers. Turns out that despite his anxiety over fitting in, James is a funny dude who can write when he isn’t winning awards for design. Here’s his diary and portfolio—“It’s almost like a surreal world”—with tips and cautionary tales for the next artist who takes on what he calls “this most awesome of gigs.” IF GOLF DIGEST ASKS YOU if you would like to be the artist for a few days at the Masters, the correct answer is, “FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY OH GOD YES.” IF YOU LIVE IN New York City, you will have a meeting. Editors and art directors…

THIS COLORED-PENCIL drawing measures 20 by 30 inches, which was the largest size paperboard the artist could steady on his lap, seated in his prison cell, which measured six by eight feet. He guesses he created it in 2015, because he remembers being recently transferred within Attica (N.Y.) Correctional Facility. He’d occupied his previous cell for 13 years, but shortly after two convicts dug a tunnel out of the Clinton facility—events that provided the basis for the Ben Stiller TV mini-series “Escape at Dannemora”—“We started getting rotated more frequently to prevent us from growing too familiar with our surroundings,” Valentino Dixon says. ▸ Of course, Dixon (above) was innocent of the murder for which he’d been serving time since 1991. Also distinguishing him from much of the prison population: He’d…