Innehållsförteckning för January 2021 - Issue #380 från Golf Australia

A new year always presents some expectation or hopes of what might lie ahead. Of course, there are dreams of more money in the payslip, perhaps an overseas holiday or even purchasing a big ticket item. I’ve no doubt, like me, you’re glad to have 2020 in the rear-vision mirror and all thoughts are for a positive 2021. With the upcoming year in mind, I began jotting down a ‘bucket list’ – not so much a menu of ‘to do’ adventures or resolutions but more a list of things I would like to see happen, at least in the golf world, in the 12 months ahead. I’d like to see … * A COVID-19 vaccine rolled out sooner rather than later. Some of my bucket list entries depend on it.…

It’s that time of year again. And as 2020 draws to a close, I’m guessing all of you out there are, like me, glad to see the back of it. May we never see the like again. So, it is time to look forward. Here is a “front-nine” of the things that should happen – or I would like to see happen – in the next 12 months. 1. This one comes under the heading of shameless crawling, but I’m confident I will have overwhelming support in yearning for the return of the ladies and gents Australian Opens in 2021. I’ve missed the annual jaunt that transports me from the darkness of the Scottish winter to the brightness of the Aussie spring/summer. 2. At least in the northern hemisphere, 2021…

In the midst of all the Ryder Cup stuff you’ve been involved in recently, it’s been largely overlooked that you turn 50 later this year. What are your plans for that and beyond? It is coming round. I’ve always said I would try to be competitive with the young lads. In some ways I’ve been obsessive about that. And I’m there at the moment. I can hit it far enough, farther than many of them on the European Tour actually. But the difference is that I’m on edge. If I miss a six-foot putt on the 12th hole in the first round, I’m thinking about the cut. What I used to think is that, no matter what happened, I’d still be in touching distance of the leaders with nine holes…

DESIGN (50%): When ranking a course, judges were advised to ask the following questions to themselves to determine where a course stands in their list. • Is there a good balance of par-3s, 4s and 5s? Is there good variety? • Is risk-and-reward a factor on many holes? • How fair is the course for all players? • Does the design offer a wide selection of shots bringing any variation of wind direction into play? • Does the course set-up (mowing lines, rough) complement the design? • How memorable are individual holes and the course as a whole? CONDITION (40%): Things to consider include: • The overall condition of playing surfaces. Take into consideration elements out of control of course staff like drought, bushfire and flood. • Are the fairways…

Where else would you find golf ’s ultimate maximalist design than Las Vegas? In creating Shadow Creek, Tom Fazio shunted three million cubic yards of earth around to force some gradient into the shapeless desert terrain. With more than 20,000 mature pines and cottonwoods among the flora shipped in to help create this mirage, it is hard to imagine a course more at odds with its landscape. The final bill was reputed to have been somewhere between US$45-60 million. It’s impossible to know whether the artifice and extravagance of Shadow Creek triggered the minimalism movement; but the fact is that even as its gates were swinging silently open in 1989, a pioneering golf course developer named Dick Youngscap was – 1,000 miles to the north-east – scrambling up and down…

766 JUNE 2016 Rahm kickstarts his PGA Tour career with a T5 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open in 2015 and is ranked 766th when he enters the 2016 US Open. 551 JUNE 2016 A T23, high amateur finish in that US Open at a demanding Oakmont [left] sees him rise 215 places in the OWGR. 285 JUNE 2016 In a month of major gains, a T3 at the Quickens Loans National sees Rahm rise another 266 places up the OWGR. 142 JULY 2016 A T2 finish at the RBC Canadian Open alongside Dustin Johnson and Martin Laird gains him 19.93 WGR points. 120 NOVEMBER 2016 Back-to-back T15 finishes at the Safeway Open and Shriners Hospital for Children Open see another significant rise, now to the edge of the top…

If you’re looking for more distance off the tee, look no further than to the man who has fine-tuned the swings of Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, grandson of Claude, son of Butch. And though you may laugh, take heed when he says you have more in common with DJ and Brooks than you may realise. “IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO HIT CONSISTENT SHOTS IF YOUR FUNDAMENTALS AREN’T RIGHT. THINK OF IT LIKE THIS. IF THE HOUSE IS POORLY BUILT, IT WILL CRUMBLE.” There are parallels between what I might coach a Tour pro and a mid-to-high handicapper. There have been times with Brooks where he’s been happy with how he’s hitting the ball and he’s said “I don’t need a lot this week. I’m swinging really good. Just make sure my…

“PUTTING IS MENTAL, BUT YOU DO NEED SOME DECENT TECHNIQUE. A COACH HAS TO DO THEIR JOB BEFORE A PSYCHOLOGIST CAN FINE-TUNE.” An apprentice to the great ‘Putting Doctor’ Harold Swash, Phil Kenyon is perhaps the greatest golf coach you’ve never heard of. This low-profile is through choice, but since taking on his first client in 2008, one Henrik Stenson, Kenyon has forged a reputation as the go-to guy putting coach among the world’s best players. Rory McIlroy Francesco Molinari, Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood and Gary Woodland have all enlisted his expertise and the softly-spoken Lancastrian has to limit who he works with. Despite the demand, he was happy to offer an insight into his teaching methods and share his expertise. Better still, as he explains here, any player of…

A common misconception is that you want both arms fully extended at impact. But if you watch the swings of the best players on Tour you will see this is not the case. Cameron Smith is no exception when it comes to his impact position and the role each arm plays. As you can see, he maintains a bend in his right elbow into, and just through, impact. When you keep the elbow tucked in close to the rib cage like Smith, the arms and club become an extension of the body – allowing you to generate serious power with the bigger muscles of your hips and legs. This right elbow bend (for right-handers) also promotes an inside-to square-inside swing path. In contrast to Smith, many amateur golfers have a…

SUITABILITY: Like the rest of the Big Bertha B21 range, the fairway woods are designed to offer forgiveness and easy launch. Players suffering from a slice or big miss in their game are particularly suited to the entire B21 family. LEFT-HANDED: Big Bertha B21 fairway woods are offered in left and right-handed in a 3-wood, 5-wood, 7-wood, with a 9-wood offered in right-hand only. CALLAWAY SAYS: Callaway’s easiest to launch fairway wood promotes more distance, more consistent contact and smoother turf interaction. With iconic Big Bertha shaping and increased offset, this forgiving design helps to take the slice or big miss out of your game. It’s easy to hit like a hybrid, from a shallower face, progressive lengths, and a larger head that create more distance and better control. Fast…

FIRST bursting onto the scene as an amateur at the 2006 Australian Masters, Aaron Pike took 12 years to win his first professional event. But the talented Queenslander didn’t take long to add a second, winning the NT PGA in October. Here, Pike talks winning at home, cooking, cricket and his friendship with Jason Day. Missing your debut at The Open but winning at the course you grew up at must have made for a surreal year. It is easy to get lost in the what ifs, but that is not going to help me. Although I don’t pretend that these things don’t exist, I wasn’t able to let myself to go down that rabbit hole. Winning Darwin, irrelevant to the year or the time we are going through would…

There has never been a better time to hit the road and explore this big, brown land with a set of golf clubs slung over your shoulder. Dreams of global golfing odysseys are going to have to wait as international travel goes on hold because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. There is plenty of quality golf to be discovered in our own backyard, which makes this presentation of Australia’s Top-100 Public Access Courses arguably the most important ranking Golf Australia magazine has ever published. If there is a positive to be drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the shot in the arm it has given Australian golf. According to figures from Golf Australia, there have been more rounds of golf played across the country in the past 12 months than…

Each of the judges, drawn from the large pool of Golf Australia readers/ subscribers, was given specific guidelines about how to rank courses, and they could only rank courses they had seen since December 2017. Brendan JamesJoe ThomasHamish WalkerFelicity ChapmanSusan JohnsonLucas AndrewsJoseph BakerNikki ScottDaniel O’KeefeMatthew GreigSandra LyonsJodie EwartGraham BradyJack DonaldsonGavin HillPaul WilsonChris DavidsonScott MatthewsAnthony BrownTerry AndersonAlex GeorgiouCraig SmartNathan BurgessJohn BlackwellAlly PetersToby McCrackenPhil NichollsRichard O’ReillyJames WalshSteven JeffreyJulian AllenSam BrookingSunny ChanDeborah HillChristian HarrisStephen JacksonBrett OldhamKen RobinsonNicole RobinsonBernie SmithTristan HolmesEdward LeeJan RichardsonDebbie WalkerJulie StokesTara Vincent…

By the time he turned 25 in November 2019, Jon Rahm had played 88 events worldwide, winning nine and finishing in the top-10 almost half the time, with 43 top-10s from 88 starts. Since the inception of the Official World Golf Ranking in 1986, only one man has bettered Rahm’s 48.9 percent top-10 ratio – Tiger Woods [57.9 percent]. By the same birthday, only Tiger Woods had won more events or amassed more top-five and top-10 finishes. You could put 25-year-old Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose together and they still wouldn’t come close to Rahm’s totals. It also took Rahm just 34 appearances on the European Tour to win four times, making him the fastest to that total in more than 40 years. He made it fi ve…

His coaching résumé includes World No.1s Tiger Woods and Justin Rose, his reputation for approaching the game from a slightly different angle precedes him. Here, the Canadian zeroes in on improving your iron play. A lot of my coaching focuses on alignment and ball position. That stuff is vital because the ball is just sitting still. You can stand to it in a way that gives you a mechanical advantage to leverage power and accuracy. In golf, so many people aim right, get the ball position too far forward and then try to get the ball back to the target. One thing we are always focused on is making sure everything is neutral. It’s not very sexy, but it helps with consistency and competency. With any iron, the ball position…

“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MUSCLE MEMORY. YOUR MIND CONTROLS YOUR MUSCLES AND IS THE KEY TO EVERYTHING.” Bob Rotella is the world’s foremost sports psychologist and author of the best-selling sports pyschology book of all time; Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect. He has worked with the likes of Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy to deliver more than 300 PGA Tour titles and a total of 74 majors. The key to better performances, he says, is to control your fears and doubts and quieten the mind. “I believe that it’s impossible to overestimate the importance of the mind in golf,” he explains. “Despite what you will have heard, there is no such thing as ‘muscle memory’ because your muscles have no capacity to remember anything.…

LOCATION: Warrigal Road, Bentleigh East, Victoria. CONTACT: (03) 9575 0595 (Pro Shop); (03) 9575 0575 (Clubhouse). WEBSITE: www.yarrayarra.com.au DESIGNERS: Alex Russell (1928); Martin Hawtree (2011); Tom Doak (ongoing). COURSE SUPERINTENDENT: Clint Raven. PGA PROFESSIONALS: Andrew Bertram (Head Professional); Travis Carpenter; Jasmine Hobb. PLAYING SURFACES: Couch/Santa Ana (fairways); Poa annua (greens). GREEN FEES: Yarra Yarra Golf Club is a private members’ club. Members may invite guests to play on most days throughout the year. Members of reciprocal clubs have the ability to experience Yarra Yarra in accordance with agreements and playing rights. Interstate and international guests are welcome at Yarra Yarra during select times throughout the year and may enquire directly with the club’s pro shop. MEMBERSHIPS: Yarra Yarra is currently open for new members. Full membership gives you access to…

Watching the first-ever “November Masters,” the first thing that struck me was how different it was – and how much the same it was too. My primary interest was in how the course would be presented so late in the year. I was less occupied by how the tournament would look without spectators. In fact, my mind wandered to how the town of Augusta must have been and how easy it must have been for the players and everyone else to get around without the normal traffic issues. Normally chaotic during Masters week, the contrast this year must have been obvious. Incredibly so. Having said that, it was the course that held most of my interest. How would it play only a few weeks after an over-seed? My years living…

EWAN PORTER When it comes to natural beauty, it’s very difficult to surpass the majestic landscape of The Coast GC in Sydney. There are a number of top-quality holes that require strategy. I grew up playing there most Fridays. Let’s face it, anyone who leaves Barnbougle Dunes and Lost Farm off the list should be criminally prosecuted! It is Australia’s best public access golf facility with two world-class courses to choose from. Sensing a theme with incredible landscapes, links-style layouts and courses that require both strategy and shot-making? You’d be right. As with Barnbougle, Moonah Links has two sensational courses to choose from. Very challenging for elite players but with wide fairways and greens that cater to running the ball up. KARIS DAVIDSON I went and played Murwillumbah recently and…

BAYVIEW GC, NSW BLACKWOOD, GC, SA BUNBURY GC, WA COROWA GC (East Course), NSW EAGLE RIDGE, VIC HORIZONS RESORT, NSW MORUYA GC, NSW MOSS VALE GC, NSW MT COOLUM GC, QLD MT GAMBIER GC, SA MT OSMOND GC, SA (pictured) NARACOORTE, SA NELSON BAY GC (10-27), NSW PALMER COOLUM RESORT, QLD PALMER GOLD COAST. QLD PAMBULA-MERIMBULA GC (Red-Yellow Course), NSW PEREGIAN SPRINGS GC, QLD PORTARLINGTON GC, VIC PORT KEMBLA GC, NSW SANDY CREEK GC, SA SHEPPARTON GC, VIC TALLWOODS, NSW THE SANDS TORQUAY, VIC TOCUMWAL G&BC (Presidents Course), NSW TOOWOOMBA (Middle Range), QLD VICTOR HARBOR GC, SA WEMBLEY (Tuart Course), WA WOLLONGONG GC, NSW YERING MEADOWS GC (Nursery/Homestead), VIC ULVERSTONE, TAS…

One of the most underrated aspects of Dustin Johnson’s game, at least in the past six months, is his putting. Believe it or not, the World No.1 has struggled with the putter for long stretches at different stages of his career. When his putting was off he had a tendency to let his right elbow drift away from his body when setting up to putt. This then sets his arms and body in a position that will actually encourage a slight outside-to-in putting stroke path, which will lead to pulling putts left of the intended line. In case you didn’t notice, Johnson has been setting up to his putts with a unique pre-shot routine where he holds his right arm against his body with his left hand. This tucks his…

“SO MUCH OF THE TIME IT’S ABOUT PLAYING THE PERCENTAGES. IT’S ABOUT KNOWING WHEN NOT TO PLAY A SHOT THAT CAN PUT YOU IN TROUBLE.” A former Tour champion himself, Pete Cowen has reinvented himself as one of the most in-demand teaching professionals in the game. His work with Rory, Henrik Stenson and Brooks Koepka has seen him amass more than 250 PGA Tour victories and eight majors. Here he presents his 10 short game commandments. 1 Don’t swing to stay in balance, swing in balance. If you watch someone who hits it down the middle all the time, they swing within themselves, finish perfectly in balance and can hold that position for 20 seconds. Most golfers can’t do that because their mechanics aren’t good enough. 2 The swing is…

One flaw common to most amateur golfers is the tendency to move laterally during the swing. Usually this lateral movement starts in the backswing, where the lateral move is away from the target, which then leads to a lateral move towards the target in the downswing. The worst lateral movers will actually slide ahead of the ball prior to impact, which results in all manner of inconsistent shots including pulls, pushes, slices and hooks. Ideally, you need to set up with your head slightly behind the ball and then your body should turn back and through with a ‘quiet’ head throughout. Your head doesn’t have to remain totally still during the swing, but it should be behind the ball at impact, just as Su Oh has done here. To encourage…

SUITABILITY: The Srixon ZX iron range will appeal to a diverse range of players, with the ZX5 suited to players looking for a combination of forged feel and forgiveness, while the ZX7 is aimed at strong ball strikers and better players. LEFT-HANDED: Both ZX iron models are offered in right and left-handed. SRIXON SAYS: Srixon remains at the forefront of iron design and performance, and the new ZX irons represent the perfect combination of beauty and power. Created with human intelligence yet perfected by the artificial kind, ‘MainFrame’ is a one-of-a-kind face design that increases ball speed on every shot. Milled into the backside of every iron face, MainFrame is a variable thickness pattern made up of grooves, channels, and cavities. After two years of learning and refining, these final…

MODELS PLAYED: Big Bertha B21 3-wood & 5-wood, fitted with Callaway RCH 55 regular shafts. FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Looking at the Big Bertha B21 fairway woods, it was noticeable to my eye that they are a bigger presence behind the ball than my own, and also more obviously aimed at those of us golfers who need a little help, more so than the driver (tested December issue). There was visually more offset to my eye, and although the look wasn’t as natural for me as the driver I certainly wasn’t uncomfortable or disliked the B21. And the feel off the face fell right into line with the driver I enjoyed so much when catching one sweetly. HOW THEY PERFORMED: Of the Big Bertha B21 range that I was sent to try,…