Indholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2023 i Golf Digest

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the power of potential embarrassment. English engineer Martin Wyeth was on a project with some golfer colleagues who promised him a round at the prestigious Wentworth Club outside London at the end of the assignment. Wyeth was psyched to play, but there was a problem: He had never played golf before. He went to bang some balls at the range. Basketfuls of slices and tops later, he hit the one majestic shot that gets a beginner hooked. “It looked like it had wings and kept going up,” Wyeth says. “The engineer in me couldn’t figure out what the difference was between that one and the terrible one before. In engineering terms, you change one variable at a time and see if things get better or worse.” Unlike most…

Editor’s note: For many competitive golfers, school is a means to an end—a bridge from junior golf to competitive college and amateur events. That wasn’t the case for Collin Morikawa. His parents insisted school and golf progress together—and that transformed him into the multi-dimensional athlete he is today, one who earned a business degree from one of the top schools in the country, Cal-Berkeley. With two majors and three other PGA Tour wins already to his name, Morikawa, 26, doesn’t freewheel around courses with brute strength. He problem solves his way through them. “I remember that from the first time I met him,” says the PGA Tour’s Max Homa. “He was 19, but he had a better head on his shoulders than most pros.” To use a business metaphor, Morikawa…

Golf retail’s past dealings with crime have been a vexing annoyance but hardly the existential threat that recent events may be inspiring. What used to be known as “shrinkage”—a putter slipped down a pant leg or sleeves of Pro V1s hidden in a box of Pinnacles—is becoming an epidemic. Smash-and-grabs, in which criminals break the front glass doors to steal clubs by the armload, might happen just as often with the back end of a Hummer than with a hammer. When you see an online ad on a consumer-to-consumer website like eBay, craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for, say, a plastic-encased Taylor-Made Stealth 2 driver for $450, or 25 percent off its current retail price, chances are it’s stolen. “It has trickled into golf for one simple reason: The game has…

HERE COMES THE SUN A euphoric George Harrison reacts to a turn in the forecast ahead of an upcoming buddies trip. HELP! Ringo Starr’s case of the shanks reaches a new level of desperation. LONG, LONG, LONG Originally penned as a protest song against golfball rollback. FOOL ON THE HILL John Lennon laments coming up woefully short after not accounting for slope when going for the green. DRIVE MY CAR The original title was “Drive My Cart,” but cart didn’t rhyme as well with “star.” LET IT BE Paul McCartney identifies a glaring issue with George’s putting stroke but decides to not say anything. HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE Written by Paul during a phase in which he had no clue where his driver was going. WAIT Known as “The Ballad…

PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES are inundated with “romantic overtures,” and tour players are no different. Most of these guys are young and in shape, and having a level of fame and fortune doesn’t hurt. If a guy is single, great for him. I once caddied for a player who was such a homebody that I encouraged him to get “in the mix” with the ladies so that he could live a little and free himself up on the golf course. However, a lot of tour players aren’t single, and this is where problems can arise. To be blunt, sometimes golfers cheat off the course. Ever since Tiger Woods’ sex scandal in 2009, one of the questions I get asked the most by fans is, “How often on tour does this go on?”…

DWIGHT FREENEY vividly recalls his first hole at the 2003 Michael Jordan Celebrity Invitational. Then a young defensive star for the Indianapolis Colts, Freeney knew he wasn’t ready for the celebrity golf scene, but who turns down an invite from one of the greatest athletes of all time? As Freeney stepped onto the first tee box at the Ocean Club Golf Course in the Bahamas, it wasn’t the luminary tournament host or his lack of rounds played that worried him the most but rather his playing partner that day, the legendary—and equally intimidating—Lawrence Taylor. “When I tell you I was whiffng, I was literally whiffng because I was so nervous playing with LT,” Freeney recalls of being paired with his football hero. “To this day, Lawrence calls me ‘Hack’ every…

A common reaction to our most authoritative ranking, America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, is that a majority are largely inaccessible—only 15 of the first 100 courses and just 31 courses in the top 200 are open to the public. Our 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses ranking was founded in 2003 as a democratic counterpart, a guide to the best courses anyone can play. This year’s list might be the deepest yet, showcasing an extraordinary range of architecture, settings, climates and experiences. However, in assembling the 2023-2024 ranking, one truth became evident: There is a distinction between a course being available to public golfers and a course being accessible. Yes, a round of golf at each of these 100 courses is on the table for anyone who can get to them,…

HE PEGS THE BALL IN DARKNESS. ABSENT people and even cars on the surrounding road, Nolan Krentz likes the feeling of being alone, as if the entire nine-hole course is his while the world sleeps. It will be at least an hour before he sees anyone except for the superintendent, who likewise knows the only other shadowy figure must be Krentz. No practice swing, no waggle, no waste. Krentz, 32, walks fast in the dark over ground he has known since childhood, where last year he clocked the majority of his 18,018 holes. He takes only 45 minutes to play nine, and when he finishes that loop, Mike Woodward, Norsk Golf Club’s general manager, is just pulling in. “He is usually here before I arrive, and I get here at…

I’m a swing junkie. I look for things great players do and try to figure out why they do them. A couple years ago, I noticed that the longest hitters swing into impact with some bend in the trail arm. The arm is straightening, but it’s not straight. I also found that power players in other hitting sports—tennis, baseball, boxing—don’t fully straighten the trail arm at impact. I began training this move into my swing, and the results were shocking. A year ago, my ball speed with the driver was 147 miles an hour max. Now, I can get it up to 157! That’s 20 to 30 more yards. This straightening of the trail arm has a major effect on other parts of the game, particularly iron play and pitching.…

AMERICAN FRIENDS—“the winner of the gold medal and the Champion Golfer of the Year is…” These are the words used by the chief executive of the R&A to introduce the new Open Champion each July, just before the claret jug is presented. The winner of “The Open” is so declared! Strange as this may seem, both history and logic explain what many Americans may feel is a quaint, even archaic, idiosyncratic and … er, British ritual. But please don’t call our championship “the British Open” or worse still, “the British” because it’s just plain wrong. Why? Let’s start at the beginning. First, the words engraved on the outer lip of the claret jug simply read: “The Golf Champion Trophy.” Hence the winner, as the recipient of that trophy, is announced…

AMONG GOLFERS there is a belief that the world would be a better place if more people played golf. Part of the narrative for LIV Golf’s raison d’être is that it will promote the game as a force for good in society. They’re right but not for the reasons they think. It’s failure at golf that teaches us how to live, not the winning of trophies or millions. It’s falling down and getting back up and falling down again. It’s going for a green you cannot reach. It’s building confidence on a scrap heap of foozles, slices, chunks and misses. It’s loving a game that so often doesn’t love you back. It’s when the best player in the world loses nine out of 10 tournaments but still is No. 1.…

THE UNITED STATES HAS MORE THAN 5.7 MILLION ADAPTIVE GOLFERS, according to the National Golf Foundation. The U.S. Adaptive Golf Alliance conducts over 30 national tournaments a year and has 40 chapters nationwide. Last year, the USGA debuted the U.S. Adaptive Open in which players compete in one of 10 categories based on impairment with the field determined using USGA handicaps and the World Ranking for Golfers with Disability. Ahead of the 2023 U.S. Adaptive Open on July 10-12, we’re sharing the inspiring stories of four golfers who will be competing. We asked each to explain how they developed their unique golf swings and then asked Sasho MacKenzie, a sports biomechanist at St. Francis Xavier University, to help us understand what makes them work. “Each joint has several muscles capable…

MOST GOLF CLUBS IN THE OPEN Championship rotation possess characteristics that define them: the Old Course’s history, gravitas and charming symbiosis with the town of St. Andrews; the elevated rocky coast of Turnberry; the shaggy, heaving dunes of Royal St. George’s and Portrush; Carnoustie’s twisted sadism and pernicious loops of Barry Burn; Troon’s gorse-studded out-and-back trod along the rail line. At a casual pass, Royal Liverpool Golf Club in the seaside town of Hoylake, England, just west of Liverpool, appears rather bleak and absent the distinction. Except for a run of holes through modest dunes off the vast Dee estuary mud flats, the golf grounds are generally docile and project an agricultural origin, more hay field than great links. There’s little sense of nature or the escape one feels at,…

SOUTH KOREA’S SI WOO KIM has one of those swings that is hypnotic—you could watch it all day. The technical flaws are so minute, they are hard to identify, let alone correct. “His good days are as good as anybody’s,” says his swing coach, Chris Como. “He’s one of those guys who can just run with it. He has zero apprehension about going low.” How low? How about back-to-back 64s on the weekend to win the Sony Open in Hawaii in January. Or the 63 on Sunday to finish T-2 at the AT&T Byron Nelson in May. Kim, who turns 28 in June, certainly seems like a player capable of winning a major—especially when you look closely at his mechanics. “When we first started working [in 2022], I could see…