Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i Golf Digest

SERGIO GARCIA turned 40 in January. This is noteworthy for two reasons. First, he’s been on the PGA Tour longer than recent tournament winner Matthew Wolff has been alive. Second, Garcia is still competing at a level that makes him a threat to win. “He’s one of the greatest ball-strikers I’ve ever seen,” says Golf Digest Teaching Professional Jim McLean. Garcia was a top-25 performer on tour in strokes gained/tee to green and strokes gained/approach the green in 2019, two key statistics that verify his ability to consistently work the ball any way he wants. “And he’s got all the power he needs to compete,” McLean says. “The way he loads, creates width and unleashes all that energy in his signature downswing has always been impressive. Last year he averaged…

IF YOU’RE NOW pulling a 6-iron out of the bag where you used to reach for an 8, your lack of power likely has something to do with your angle of attack, says Gene Parente, president of Golf Club Laboratories in San Diego. “If you want your irons to perform better, you probably need to hit down on the ball more,” he says. It’s a conclusion reached after Parente did some testing, calibrating his golf-swing robot to hit iron shots off the ground from three angles of attack at two different swing speeds (80 and 92 miles per hour). Parente found that hitting down on the ball at 7 degrees, which is typical of a tour pro’s attack angle, would give the average golfer 10 to 23 more carry yards…

Utility irons aren’t just for elite players anymore. THERE MIGHT not be a shot that says “player” more than a low, boring 2-iron laced off the tee with driver-like rollout. Who among us hasn’t dreamed of ripping one of Tiger Woods’ low-slung “stingers” on command? Well, modern technology might be bringing this shot to more players. The latest utility irons have thinner and hotter faces attached to hollow bodies that are weighted low for launching the ball higher. These clubs can even make a case for replacing the hybrids in your bag—at least for golfers with above-average swing speeds. For sure, there’s no reason for anyone except the most elite players to carry a traditional 2-, 3- or 4-iron. If you have one, and it’s not being used to stir…

DRIVER SPECS Cobra King F9 Speedback (9o set to 7.5o), Fujikura Ventus Blue 60x, 45 inches. ‣ My loft is low, but I swing from the inside and hit up, so I launch it high. I always test drivers in the wind. I need to see that driving flight on good shots and mis-hits. Looks matter, too. If I don’t like the shape, I’ll rule it out. I’m switching to the Speedzone soon. FAIRWAY WOOD/UTILITY IRON SPECS Fairway: King LTD, 13.5°, (Lexi Blue), Graphite Design GP 6S shaft. Utility iron: Srixon Z U85, 3-iron, 20° /span>‣ I hit the 3-wood off the tee a fair amount. I can launch it lower than my driver so the wind doesn’t affect it as much. I have a bit more control over it,…

ON JAN. 21, Jack Nicklaus had a birthday and attached his name to a number that has always been foreign to him: 80. It’s hard to comprehend that the ageless summer of “Jack is Back” at Baltusrol and Oak Hill occurred half his lifetime ago. Jack would be the first to tell you that the pace of play in life definitely speeds up on the second nine. But what a turn back to the clubhouse this has been for Jack and his beloved wife, Barbara, who also posted an 80, on Feb. 28. Together they have teamed up for what this July will be 60 years of a blissful partnership. As if it’s not enough to be the greatest player in the history of golf, along came the second act,…

?WILL TIGER WOODS WIN a major this year? Will he still be competitive at Augusta National when he’s 60? Will Rory McIlroy eventually win the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam? Who’s the funniest player on tour? How often have you seen a player break a rule and try to get away with it? We posed these and other questions to 46 PGA Tour players, and their answers (and comments) might surprise you. Note: Some players didn’t answer all the questions. Might have been the ones about marijuana and performance-enhancing drugs. YOU GET TO CHOOSE ONE TOUR PRO TO BE ON YOUR SIDE IN A BAR FIGHT. WHO ARE YOU PICKING? Ernie Els 27.5 Jason Kokrak 10 Scott Stallings 7.5 Ricky Barnes 5 Tony Finau 5 Brooks Koepka 5…

MANY OF MY CLIENTS who play golf have asked me if they should be doing yoga. My short answer: Sure, why not? Yoga is great for improving flexibility and strength, while relieving stress. But my longer answer is that if you’re interested in enhancing your golf game at the same time as those yoga benefits, there are better moves you can do. In fact, I’ve built a whole program for Golf Digest Schools that was yoga-inspired but is much more sport specific. The “Better than Yoga” videoseries is at golfdigest.com/betterthanyoga. To give you a taste of what it’s all about, turn the page for four exercises that look like yoga, feel like yoga but are supercharged poses for golfers. Give them a try. They’re a great warm-up if you’re playing…

GRABBING A BAG on a professional tour means you’re perpetually on the hot seat. I’ve been carrying for nearly two decades, so I’ve been charred good and proper by now. That doesn’t make getting consumed by the flames any easier. ‣ I’ve been lucky to partner with 18 players on the PGA and developmental tours, four of which were longtime appointments. I’ve also been fired 17 times—and among my friends, that’s on the low end of the spectrum. Find me another profession, outside of working for the Cleveland Browns, with that type of turnover. “Each week working is a chance to hit the lottery.” The majority of the time, the breakups are amicable, and done in person. I consider myself friends with almost all the players I’ve worked for, and…

“The big mistake? Starting down with your weight in the heel of your front foot.” ONE OF THE MOST coveted shots in golf is a draw (the shot curves slightly left for right-handers). You can learn to hit this shot if you focus on your feet. As you reach the top of the swing, you want to have roughly two-thirds of your body weight supported by your foot farthest from the target. And of that two-thirds, you should feel most of it in the heel. At the same time, the remaining weight should be felt a little more in the toes of your front foot than the heel. Remember: front-foot toes, back-foot heel. Now here comes the interesting part: In research (left) taken from biomechanist J.J. Rivet, draw players maintain…

get it while it’s hot The seventh hole at Bay Harbor Links, overlooking Little Traverse Bay in Michigan. A golf trip with your buddies anytime is a beautiful thing. But a summertime trip, well, that’s next level. ✸ The days are long and dependably warm, so you can play 36 holes—or even more if you’ve got the stamina. ✸ The golf season has been underway awhile, so you’ve had a chance to groove your swing a little. Or even if you haven’t, there’s still hope. Summer is full of optimism. ✸ And let’s not forget, the courses in so many summertime destinations are amazing: the startling elevation changes of tree-lined Northern Michigan, the rugged glory of unfrozen Wisconsin, the rolling, seemingly endless fairways of Ireland and Scotland. Places that are…

UNITED STATES 1 OREGON COAST Bandon Dunes exerts a stronger gravitational pull than almost any place in golf not named St. Andrews. Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes, Bandon Trails and Old Macdonald all rank among Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Courses in America, and the Sheep Ranch, opening in June, could be the best of them all. 2 CARMEL / MONTEREY PENINSULA, CALIF. Before Bandon Dunes, the Monterey Peninsula was the king of public American destination golf. Pebble Beach is No. 7 on our list of America’s 100 Greatest. Spyglass Hill, the Links at Spanish Bay, Poppy Hills and even modest Pacific Grove highlight a deep bench that gets better with age. 3 PINEHURST / SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. The “home of American golf” has experienced a major revitalization with upgrades to No.…

Pitch Perfect “When I was on the first tee at Augusta, the shaking…” JUSTIN VERLANDER can handle more pressure than most. The Houston Astros ace has won two Cy Young awards, a World Series, pitched three no-hitters and surpassed the 3,000-strikeout mark. “If I’m in front of 100,000 people, put a baseball in my hand and I’m comfortable,” he says. Yet put him on a golf course and he feels butterflies. “With golf, if there are five people and a ball on the ground, I’m like, Oh, God,” he says with a laugh. The most nervous he has ever been was the first time he played Augusta National. “When I was on the first tee at Augusta, the shaking… I don’t know if I’ve experienced that anywhere else,” Verlander recalls.…

Join a private club and you’ll probably see him the next time you drive in the parking lot. ‣ The lifer. ‣ Usually retired (and almost always a man), the lifer is ready to tell you all about what a travesty it is that new members like you are paying a quarter of the initiation fee he did—while simultaneously extracting enormous value from his dues by getting ready to play his sixth round of the week while using a pull-cart and discount balls he bought online. ‣ Granted, listening to grousing about the new assessment for grillroom renovations is easier to endure when the lifer is paying the appropriate dues. That concept of economic fairness came up for a challenge recently at the venerable and exclusive Sunningdale Golf Club, southwest…

IT WOULD BE CLEVER to say that to build TPC Sawgrass, Pete Dye had to drain the swamp, but it wouldn’t be quite accurate. The 415 acres south of Ponte Vedra Beach that became the PGA Tour’s new headquarters was a man-made bog, created when a coastal highway was built in the early 1920s, blocking the natural flow of water to the Atlantic a few hundred yards to the east. So the water settled and putrefied vegetation, creating a thick layer of muck. When Dye associate David Postelthwait, the construction superintendent (pictured, left), and the tour’s Vernon Kelly, the chief engineer (right), first walked the site in 1978, they carried machetes to chop away undergrowth and kill snakes. Postelthwait once got lost on the site; Kelly once stepped into a…

“A good image is back-handing the ball, like a tennis stroke.” A LOT OF GOLFERS never get over the instinct to lift the ball off the ground. They swing off their back foot or flip their hands through impact, both of which make the club bottom out too soon. As a result, they hit the ground first (fat shot) or catch the ball on the upswing (thin shot). If that sounds familiar, let me give you two simple keys. First, make your initial move from the top a little bump onto your front foot. Feel like you’re shifting toward the target, so your chest is over the ball. Second, get to impact with the back of your top hand facing the target (left), not pointing upward. A good image is…

“Nothing will throw off your swing quicker than an aggressive leg drive.” THE ONE REQUIREMENT from fairway bunkers is, hit the ball first. Catching even a little sand before the ball results in a shot that goes nowhere. So let’s tweak your technique with the goal of making clean contact. First, a few setup adjustments. Grip down an inch to promote a steeper swing into the ball, and open the face to counteract the ball being slightly above your feet, which happens when you stand in the sand. Also, angle in your back foot so your weight favors your front side. Next, swing the club back with an early (and full) wrist set, but restrict your hip rotation. A big hip turn can cause your feet to slide out of…

OUR EXPERT IS HERE TO TELL YOU, AND IT’S NOT PRETTY You might have had the opportunity at some point to play a golf course that is the site of a PGA Tour event, and maybe you played reasonably well. But what if you played that same golf course when it was prepared for tournament week? And what if that course was already renowned as one of the most difficult tests the game can offer? We take you to Ponte Vedra Beach and the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, annual site of the Players Championship, to be played March 12-15. Go in knowing that the creation of the late Pete Dye is a headache for even the best players in the world. The tournament field typically averages about a half stroke…