Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i Golf Digest

“You‘re talking to somebody who just broke a 40-year slump.” EARLIER this year, I was paired in a four-ball with Nathaniel Crosby, the U.S. Walker Cup captain. I hadn’t met Nathaniel before. Immediately I could see he’s a good storyteller, but he was talking about something I had no interest in, like the American team uniforms. Walking down the fourth fairway, he realized I was beside him, and he turned to me and said, “This is off the record.” “Nathaniel,” I said, “in over 40 years at Golf Digest, I’ve never written a word about the Walker Cup uniforms. Either I’m saving it all up for one big exposé, or I don’t really care. I’ll let you decide.” We laughed and had a very enjoyable round. A couple of weeks…

“Visualize the clubface sliding under the ball.” YOUR BALL rolls through the green, just far enough so you really can’t putt it. You need a little drop shot that lands softly and creeps to the hole. Nervous? Don’t be. With the right setup and a couple swing keys, you’ve got this shot. Use your most lofted wedge and open the clubface before you take your grip. Gripping first and then turning the face open won’t add loft, because your hands will tend to rotate back to their starting position. Next, play the ball forward and set more weight on your front foot. Now you’re in position to make a downward strike and slide the face under the ball. Swing back a little steeper with some wrist hinge and start the…

“Best way to square the face: Don’t let it rotate open.” THE PUTTING STROKE is the smallest swing in golf, which makes it relatively simple—but also challenging. Let me explain. On putts, you don’t have much time to compensate for errors in the setup or backstroke. In fact, your address position largely determines whether you hit a good putt or a bad one. Two positions in the setup matter most. First, you want the shaft directly in line with your forearms (above). Why? Because from there, the clubface won’t rotate much during the stroke. If the shaft is on a flatter plane than your forearms, the face will tend to fan open in the backstroke. Technically, I like no more than 3 degrees of opening going back. That makes it…

THE ASSUMPTION IS you’ve never heard of Joel Dahmen. Maybe you know him as the guy who wears the bucket hat, or if you follow golf very closely, it’s possible you remember him accusing fellow pro Sung Kang of taking an illegal drop last year at a PGA Tour event. But mostly quietly, Dahmen made $2 million in his third season on tour and at one point was the 80th-best golfer on the planet, according to Big Data. Life-changing stuff for him; for golf fans, not so much. Our culture teaches us to scan past Dahmen’s name to wonder how a Day or DeChambeau might’ve played, or better yet, a Brooks or Rory. Winners. But let’s not forget a challenge posed by the late writer David Foster Wallace—incidentally, in the…

THERE’S A CERTAIN bond that exists between South Florida and the Bahamas, neighbors who share warm weather, a laid-back lifestyle and tax breaks. That extends to the golf world, too, with many professional golfers calling the former home, and the latter a place for R&R. Most notably, you might have seen the pristine fairways and sparkling waters of Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club, the private, ultra-luxurious millionaires’ playground in the Bahamas that counts Michael Jordan and Tom Brady among its members and was made Instagram-famous by golf’s spring-break boys, Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Smylie Kaufman. Located on Great Guana Cay, a barrier island just off the coast of Great Abaco, it is accessible only by boat. It is also in sharp contrast to shantytowns The Mudd…

“It’s always exciting being around a young athlete who’s just starting to taste success.” I CAN’T REALLY explain how our cover image of Matthew Wolff this month came about. But I was there. “Stroboscopic” photography has a highly technical language all its own, but anyone can appreciate it. Photographer Adam Levey, based in Portland, Ore., and his assistants began hauling gear into a large ballroom at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., at 6 a.m. to be ready when Wolff arrived at 11. Watching this crew erect, test and fine-tune its veritable orchestra pit of reflectors, batteries, timers and more reconfirmed my decision to follow a career of simpler tools. All I had to remember for the day was my notebook, pen and backup pen.…

YOU MIGHT have heard of the swing flaw known as the chicken wing. It refers to the bend in the lead arm (left for right-handers) as the club moves through the hitting zone. This bend causes the elbow to jut, giving the arm the look of a bar-food staple. Unfortunately, it often leads to fat or thin shots, especially when the ball is on the turf. It also results in a loss of power and makes it hard to square the face at impact. To correct this, think of your lead arm being attached to your chest as you swing down. Keep it in close until just past impact (left). Then you can let the arm separate from the body. A good visual is throwing a Frisbee. The throwing arm…

“Put all your speed as the club meets the ball.” GROWING UP at Oak Tree National in Oklahoma, I got to play a lot with Scott Verplank, and I modeled my short game after his. It’s a pretty good one to copy. His short game was unreal for two decades on the PGA Tour. One shot he taught me that I use a lot creates a ton of spin. It’s especially good when I’ve got to hit one over a bunker and stop it by a tight pin. I know a lot of golfers shy away from this shot because it seems hard, but this technique makes it easy. What you want to do is set up slightly open to your target, the ball positioned just ahead of middle in…

DON’T LET the fist pumps fool you. Golf isn’t a drama. It’s a dark comedy… well, at least according to stand-up comedian and self-professed golf addict Rory Scovel. “There’s so much comedy in golf, which is why looking back you see people like Bob Hope, Bill Murray and so many other celebrities,” says Scovel, who first entered American living rooms in 2011 with an appearance on “Conan” before going on to record a comedy album with Jack White, open for the likes of Nick Swardson, and host a Netflix special. But it’s not the visors that make him laugh. It’s deeper than that. “A lot of comedy comes from tough situations, and what I like about the game of golf is that it doesn’t ever let up. The entire sport…

“Cleanup on green three!” It happens, but we don’t see it. Q Since the Rules allow players to clean bunker sand on a green if it’s on their putting line, why doesn’t the PGA Tour clear the greens of any sand between groups? Why penalize subsequent players by leaving sand on the green? BOB WILLIS, SUMMERVILLE, S.C. A The PGA Tour’s agronomy team actually does monitor greens, looking for sand, leaves and other debris. It will dispatch someone to clean up between groups, a tour spokesman says. Ditto the USGA and the LPGA Tour. We just don’t usually see it on TV. Are they perfect at it? No. There will be times when the pros have to tidy up another group’s mess, just like us amateurs. I’ve been looking for some…

FOR THE REMAINING few who argue that the modern golf swing is in a slow creep toward production-line sameness, July 2019 was a rather disastrous month. That’s when Matthew Wolff, a 20-year-old PGA Tour rookie playing in his fourth event, lifted, looped, squatted, jumped and powered his way to victory at the 3M Open in Minnesota. Never mind that he blithely rolled in a bomb on the last hole for the win. It was his full swing that had everyday fans—and more than a few smart teaching traditionalists—hitting rewind on their DVRs, squinting and smiling as they tried to comprehend what they were seeing. What they witnessed was an unorthodox power player who, unlike previous weird-swing wonders such as Jim Furyk, Miller Barber and Eamonn Darcy, delivers a blazing 132…

YOU ALREADY SEARCH for a companion’s lost ball as intensely as if it were your own. You exclaim, “Good shot,” “Let me rake that bunker” and “The rest of that putt is good” with the best of them. Honest self-evaluation has left you feeling that on the course you’re a nice person, maybe even nicer than in real life. Yet, unlike a few people you know, your phone isn’t lighting up on Tuesday with text requests to play on the weekend. It’s those people we really want to be like—to be so loved, that our most frequent words are, “Thanks, but I already have a game.” Is there a way to up your nice-guy game without undergoing a full personality transplant? Can the magical gravitas of the popular individual become…

JOAQUIN NIEMANN is an athlete. He comes from athletic parents (field hockey for Mom, basketball for Dad). The genetic hand-me-downs of body awareness and balance—plus the coordination gained from playing soccer and running track—are easy to spot in the way he swings the club, says Golf Digest Teaching Professional Jim McLean. Niemann grew up in Chile near a golf course and says he played every day with the dream of becoming a tour pro, which happened in 2018 after he reached No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and won the Latin American Amateur. That victory earned him an invitation to the Masters and a handful of other PGA Tour events on sponsors’ exemptions, which he then parlayed into full-time status with four top-10 finishes. Although he struggled at…

MY BASKETBALL GAME IS A DIRECT REFLECTION OF HOW MANY ROUNDS OF GOLF I CAN GET. SO THE MORE ROUNDS OF GOLF, THE BETTER I PLAY. SO WE GOTTA GET SOME SUNSHINE.—ANDRE IGUODALA / MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES BLACK FRIDAY GOLF-SHOP SUGGESTIONS TWO-FOR-ONE BALL MARKERS “BODY BY PHIL” FITNESS DVDS 12-PACK OF MARTIN KAYMER “BUFFS” REFURBISHED GOLF SOCKS LEOPARD-PRINT IRON HEADCOVERS BROOKS KOEPKA'S "OFF-WHITE" NIKES GOLF-THEMED TIEBREAKERS FOR POLITICAL CANDIDATES YOU DON’T KNOW SO WELL STAUNCH PROPONENT OF PENALTIES FOR SLOW PLAY FIRM BELIEVER IN ABOLISHING BREAKFAST BALLS REFERS TO PLAYING PREFERRED LIES AS “LIFT, CLEAN AND CHEAT” OPPOSED TO ANCHORING SINCE 1985 MANDATORY SUSPENSIONS FOR ALL UNREPAIRED BALL MARKS THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR IN 2019 A strong PGA Tour rookie class Royal Portrush being back in the Open rota Mickelson’s…

“A strong core is the first step to bigger drives.” AS THE DAYS get shorter and your course becomes less playable, turn your attention to working on your game for next year—especially getting longer off the tee, says golf-fitness trainer Kaitlyn Pimentel. She particularly likes the two exercises on this page because of the way they complement each other. “With only these two exercises, you can work on most of the key muscle groups needed for power,” says Pimentel, who trains golfers online (felixfortisgolf.com). “Do them a couple times a week, and your body will be primed to swing harder without ruining your timing.” The exercise above—a modified Turkish sit-up—improves strength in the abdominals and upper back. You can’t control the club at faster speeds without stability in the core…

EVER SINCE ANIMALS first dug into the sides of sandhills in search of shelter from chilly winds, golf links have had deep, dark, foreboding bunkers. Naturally, golf architects soon began imitating nature, and the results are classic hazards like the Road Hole Bunker at St. Andrews in Scotland. Today, it’s a rare golf course that doesn’t sport at least one notorious pit or pot bunker. Sometimes its creation is pure happenstance, conceived not on a drawing board but on the spur of the moment in the field. When workers were initially grading a fairway at the Greg Norman-designed El Cameleón Golf Club on Mexico’s Caribbean coastline, they uncovered a cenote (Spanish for sink hole), a swimming pool-size hole that connected to a deeper network of underground canals that meander through…