Innehållsförteckning för November 2019 från Golf Australia

If you are reading this post November 4 you already know whether the next 600 words or so of this column is on the mark or fanciful. On that date, International team captain, Ernie Els, and his American counterpart, Tiger Woods will announce their four picks for the Presidents Cup matches to be played at Royal Melbourne Golf Club. Coming up with their final quartet is, by far, the hardest job either captain will have before the Cup is hoisted by the winning team on December 15. Els appears to have the easier task with Jason Day, who finished one position shy of the eight automatic qualifiers, seemingly a lock to take his place in the International team alongside fellow Aussies Adam Scott, Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith. With a…

IT WAS, amidst many over the years, nevertheless a head-shaking moment of no small magnitude. There we all were, gathered around the 1st tee at Gleneagles, waiting for the opening tee-shots on day one of the recent Solheim Cup. The four players were there. In fact, they had been there for a few minutes, taking in the scene and basking in the adulation of the somewhat raucous but good-natured gallery. It was an encouraging time, one that made me feel good about the greatest game. Then Morgan Pressel had to go and spoil it all. After being announced, the 31-year old American – a veteran of five previous Solheims and, presumably, multiple practice rounds in the lead-up to her sixth – stepped forward and teed up her ball. So far…

Things are pretty good for Rickie Fowler. He has won five times on the PGA Tour and twice on the European Tour. He’s spent most of the last five years inside the top 10 in the world. He’s finished in the top 10 of majors 11 times, including three runner-up finishes. He’s a cumulative 34-under par across the last 12 majors held, a total only bested by Brooks Koepka.The only problem is that he’s never won one, meaning he has the unenviable billing of probably the best player without a major. Having recently turned 30, Fowler tells Golf Australia that his time will come. 1 Do you feel more ready to win a major now than you were a few years ago? Definitely. Last year was big, playing well on…

FOR more than half a century Michael Wolveridge’s friends, family, acquaintances and fellow golfers have been telling him he “ought to write a book”. At the age of 82 the diminutive, effusive, erudite, articulate, humorous and urbane golf course designer and former US Tour player has acceded to their wishes. The result is Travels With My Clubs – 375 pages of recollections by the quintessential pukka Englishman of the great players and world events since he entered it on March 30, 1937. Anyone interested in golf or the people and moments, large and small, that helped shape the 20th Century will be grabbed by the opening lines: “The unmistakable roar coming from 200 Heinkel bombers flying over our house was terrifying ... it was the summer in 1940 and my…

Let’s start with the important stuff. Why do you only dress in black? It’s easier for travel. I don’t have to think in the mornings and it looks fairly smart. Plus, in the last year I played the Tour, 1979, I had a sponsor whose company colours were black and yellow. When they went bust I was left with all this black and yellow clothing. I didn’t like the yellow. Okay, I get that part of it. But why black? You could wear any colour now. I could. But I’m going to wear black until they find a darker colour. Describe yourself as a player … I was a journeyman, a percentage player. I was that way because you had to make money every week in order to play the…

SUITABILITY: Offered in lofts from 45° to 62° in one-degree increments, with three finishes and three sole grind options available, the T-20 wedges will suit almost all golfers, swing types and playing conditions. SHAFTS: A wide variety of custom shafts are available to either match or compliment shafts from the company’s shaft optimizer fitting system. LEFT-HANDED: The T-20 wedges are offered in left-handed in the chrome finish only. MIZUNO SAYS: The precision and feel of Mizuno’s ‘Grain Flow Forged HD’ process suits the manufacture of wedges like no other. Perfected for over 50 years at one factory in Hiroshima, Japan – Mizuno’s forging expertise is revered for its consistency of manufacture, distance control and incredible feedback. A reputation most commonly associated with Mizuno irons – but with even more payback…

Who has the best swing in golf? Adam Scott? Louis Oosthuizen? Ernie Els? Rory McIlroy? If you’re looking for an example of a perfect, textbook golf swing, they’re about as close as it gets. And yet, only one of them is in the world’s top 10 and none of them has won a major in the last five years. Rory aside, even regular Tour wins have been thin on the ground for the game’s most aesthetically pleasing swingers in recent years. Let’s look at it another way. Rather than examining how the players with the best swings are performing, let’s look at how the best performers are swinging. Brooks Koepka is World No.1 and has won eight times in the last three years, including four majors. His swing is hardly…

World No.1 Jin Young Ko will be looking to claim a lucrative double at the season-ending LPGA Tour Championship. The event carries a $1.5 million winner’s purse (the largest in women‘s golf) and the South Korean can also wrap up the Race to CME Globe $1 million bonus. In Dubai, the other race – the EuropeanTour’s Race To Dubai – reaches its climax at the DP World Tour Championship. At the time of writing, Open Champion Shane Lowry had a slender lead over Spain’s Jon Rahm. NOVEMBER 28 Queensland’s Jake McLeod is expected to defend his title when the $400,000 NSW Open gets underway at Sydney’s Twin Creeks G&CC. The championship begins a huge four weeks of golf including the Australian Open, Presidents Cup and Australian PGA. TRIVIA QUIZ WINNERS…

The key to Brooks Koepka’s recent rise has been an improvement in his short game, something he openly credits Pete Cowen for. Cowen himself believes that the American’s short game has gone from a two out of 10 to a four. Still room for improvement, but as Cowen says, “That’s a 100 percent improvement right there.” And if Cowen’s tutelage is good for the four-time major winner, it’s good enough for all of us. Two Steps To Better Bunker Play 1. HIT BUNKER SHOTS FROM A SQUARE SET-UP Brooks’ problem with bunker shots was not presenting the bounce and loft properly. The really good bunker players can get the ball out high and soft in the shortest distance. If you can’t do that, you’ve got poor mechanics and Brooks couldn’t…

THE BASICS The best players on the planet constantly monitor their posture, grip and alignment. 001 Get the basics right BROOKS KOEPKA Make sure your posture’s good. That’s a pretty simple one. Pay attention to those fundamentals – posture, grip and alignment. I try to make sure those things are the same every day. I’ve got a coach to help; go and see a PGA pro to see how good yours are. 002 Swing in balance VIJAY SINGH Try to start your downswing at the same speed as you started your backswing. A smooth start down encourages all the moving parts of your swing to work together. If you rush, you lose synchronisation and your chances of hitting a solid shot. 003 Hold your finish PADRAIG HARRINGTON The only universal…

T-SERIES IRONS The engineering ingenuity that has made Titleist the longstanding No.1 iron on the PGA Tour delivers three strikingly new iron designs as part of the Titleist T-Series. Powered by breakthrough technology – including ‘Max Impact’ for maximum speed and distance control across the face – the newT-SeriesT100,T200 andT300 models offer a combination of power, performance, playability and feel unlike anything Titleist has ever designed. “The T-Series represents a revolutionary step forward in Titleist iron design and technology,” Titleist Vice President of Golf Club Marketing Josh Talge said. “Our Club research and development (R&D) team is nearly six times the size it was when the first AP iron was introduced 11 years ago. It’s because of that ongoing investment that we’ve been able to make such significant breakthroughs in…

THE COURSE LOCATION: Twenty Four Lane, Moama, NSW, 2731. CONTACT: (03) 5481 3333 WEBSITE: www.richriver.com.au DESIGNERS: Geoff Parslow (West Course 1979 & East Course 1985); Peter Thomson, Mike Wolveridge & Ross Perrett (1998); Thomson Perrett Golf – TP Golf (ongoing). SLOPE RATINGS: East Course: Black 122, White 120, Blue 116 and Red 121. West Course: Black 122, White 112, Blue 109 and Red 120. (Temporary ratings due to construction work at the time of going to print). PLAYING SURFACES: Wintergreen couch (fairways) and Penncross bentgrass (greens). GREEN FEES: 18 holes $50, 9 holes $30. COURSE SUPERINTENDENT: Andrew Johnson. PGA PROFESSIONALS: Richard Caiolfa and Steve Loader. THE CLUB MEMBERSHIP: Rich River offers a range of membership options to cater to every variety of golfer, including full membership for $737, six-day memberships…

Just like big names in every sport, well-established golfers have a sizeable following on various social media platforms. In fact, social media has become the best avenue for fans to connect with their golfing idols and keep up to date with a player’s progress on as well as off the golf course. But are all connections and interactions on social media always real? Interested in the rise of social media in sports, specialist golfing retailer GolfSupport.com utilised SparkToro’s ‘Fake Followers Audit Tool’ to find out which golfers from the current top 20 in the world have the most ‘fake’ followers of their official Twitter account. The search found 2012 US Open Champion Webb Simpson has the highest percentage of fake followers on Twitter at 42.6 percent, which equates to 90,000…

November 7, 2017 South Korea’s Sung Hyun Park becomes the first LPGA rookie to reach the No.1 world ranking. November 15, 2004 Charles Sifford becomes the first African American to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. In 1961, he became the first African American golfer to join the PGA Tour. November 16, 1957 Frank Phillips defeats Ossie Pickworth and Gary Player by a single stroke to claim the Australian Open at Kingston Heath, with Peter Thomson and Kel Nagle two and three strokes back respectively. It is the first time the national championship is held in November. November 22, 1910 Inventor Arthur F. Knight patents steel shaft golf clubs. It would be another 14 years before steel shafts were approved for championship play. November 28, 1999 Victorian…

“HICKORY is the new black.” I heard it more than once. That’s not the colour hickory, but the old-fashioned version of the game: Where men wore tights from the knee down and swings were fluid. Actually, the best swings can be described as oily, maybe even greasy. Hickory golf is still golf, but not quite how we know it. This is more of a negotiation than a bullying of the course. It’s about finesse, and luck, and remembering the good shots because that’s easier than forgetting all those bad ones. Australia’s Hickory Championships have been won and done. As a first-time combatant and future zealot, I can attest to the joy of the hickory. Damn it, I’ll go further and plead the need for our past. After watching the head…

It was mid-2012 and the iconic voice of Peter Alliss was warming an otherwise chilly lounge room in the heart of Wodonga. Staring wide-eyed at the television from the comfort of his family couch was 15-year-old Zach Murray. It was well into the early hours of the morning – an important school morning at that – but two of his biggest idols, Adam Scott and Ernie Els, were battling for the Claret Jug at Royal Lytham & St Annes. There was no way he was going to miss this. Throughout his school days, Murray “always used to come home from school and watch European-based events” until he fell asleep. Now, seven years after Scott famously collapsed to hand Els his fourth major title, Murray has given himself two golden opportunities…

Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, my old man played golf on Saturdays and on Sundays with my brother and me. He worked all week, went to the pub, and took us to cricket and footy before taking off to golf. And that’s just how things rolled. And everyone was cool and the gang. Today, not so much. In these modern times of magic telephones that so demand our attention we could die jay-walking, six hours out of a weekend to play golf doesn’t wash for many family men and/or women. Thus there’s a decade, even 15 or 20 years when golf loses parents such as myself. Tens of thousands of us. There are statistics. Graphs show dips like a stockmarket crash. And the more children people have, the…

MODEL PLAYED: T-20 raw (46°-06°, 52°-09°, 56°-14° and 60°-06°), fitted with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shafts. FIRST IMPRESSIONS: The Mizuno T-20 wedges possess a classic appearance that was impossible for me not to like upon taking them out of the box. The lack of paint fill on the raw model combined with the clean lines looks great in the bag and behind the ball. Upon first strike the wedges were clearly Mizuno, the soft feeling of the forged face matching closely with the company’s irons. The spin also stood out, not only for the amount, but for its consistency, too. HOW IT PERFORMED: Mizuno has long been known for its forged irons. And for anyone who has hit one from the sweetspot, it is easy to understand…