Innehållsförteckning för March 2020 från Golf Digest

GOLF, COMPARED TO OTHER professional sports, is mostly a controversy-free game. There are rules disputes, and slow play can really get on people’s nerves, but it’s nothing to get that worked up over. But this Saudi Arabia tournament the past two years sure has gotten people going, hasn’t it? I don’t usually follow player commitments—I have a hard enough time keeping track of my schedule—but whenever I see a big name sign up for the Saudi International, I think, Here we go. A quick glance of Twitter proves that premonition right, with fans ripping the decision to shreds. And, without fail, the first comment is along the lines of, “Why would he possibly participate?” One item grabs players’ attention, and that’s safety. Really? You don’t know why? Come on, brother.…

Winter is nature’s way of saying, ‘Up yours.’—Robert Byrne MATH WE DON’T HATE NOTABLE 2018-’19 SNOWFALL TOTALS VENN MURRAYGRAM THE LOOP’S TOO-MUCH-REALITY GOLF VR EXPERIENCE Can’t play actual golf? Try The Loop’s new VR golf experience, now with less virtual and more reality! • TRAFFIC SIMULATOR ON THE WAY TO THE COURSE • REAL GREEN FEES • LIFE-LIKE MOSQUITOS • REAL-TIME SUNBURN MONITOR • 4K DIVOT-REPLACEMENT ENGINE • COMBAT MODE FOR WHEN THE GROUP BEHIND WON’T STOP HITTING INTO YOU • ACTUAL SNICKERING FROM THE CART GIRL WHEN YOU SHANK ONE INTO THE TREES • REAL COFFEE STAINS AFTER YOU STOP SHORT IN THE GOLF CART • TEXTS FROM THE SPOUSE SAYING: “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HOME AN HOUR AGO” YOUR FORECAST YOUR NEIGHBOR’S GOLF VACATION FORECAST 9 STAGES…

“This is the way to create a more powerfully loaded backswing.” LOOK AT OLD PHOTOS or videos of the best swings of yesteryear, and you’ll likely see the golfer’s lead knee move toward the ball during the backswing. At the same time, the lead leg’s foot would roll inward and the heel would come off the ground. For the most part, it’s become a thing of the past. With more emphasis now on fitness and strength and swinging the club from a solid base, the best players really stabilize their lead knee (left for right-handers). They use it as an anchor to wind against as they load into their trail side. Even for amateur golfers of limited physical ability, consistency and power immediately improve when that knee is relatively still…

THE RIGHT CLUB IS OUT THERE. We’re not talking about one perfect club that works for everybody. No, the 2020 Hot List, Golf Digest’s 17th annual review of the game’s most meaningful new equipment, reflects an effort among manufacturers to optimize equipment not merely for the scientific pursuit of perfection, but for your pursuit of lower scores. Increasingly, the most compelling clubs are designed to serve the needs of individual players by complementing strengths and mitigating weaknesses. The Hot List is your personal guide for the clubs that will bring out your better golfing self. In the pages ahead are dozens of dynamic new metal-woods, irons, wedges and putters that can provide your game with the distance, accuracy, control, feel and touch you didn’t know was possible. Also, this year…

CALLAWAY BIG BERTHA PER IRON : $163 VERDICT A longtime darling of higher-handicappers, Bertha, with its oversize clubhead, thick topline and generous sole, continues to perform well in an increasingly competitive category. Despite the venerable name, this iron has the modern power of a wraparound cupface that provides a distance boost for players who often need one. Tungsten weighting positioned low in the cavity lowers the center of gravity, making it easier to get shots airborne. COMMENT “Overall proportions of the head are nicely balanced. Distance is impressive and consistent.” CALLAWAY MAVRIK MAX $115 VERDICT Technologies found in drivers eventually make their way into irons. In this case, that meant using artificial intelligence and the “flash face” cupface idea from the company’s Epic Flash and Mavrik drivers for this set…

IT’S FAIR TO SAY that if Mrs. Ethicist has heard a bad story about your private club in a non-adjacent state by listening to Howard Stern, you’re doing the whole managing-of-your-professional-reputation thing wrong. ▸ Where to begin? Like many bad dates, it started with dinner. ▸ Maryana Beyder and her husband, Igor, were just another couple of members having a meal at Alpine Country Club—a New Jersey country club in the New York City suburbs known for its fine dining. Beyder, a New Jersey real-estate agent who specializes in luxury properties, carried with her to dinner her own display of ostentatious luxury—a $30,000 Hermès Kelly handbag her husband had given her for her 30th birthday. ▸ And, like your new (and similarly priced) Toyota Camry seems to instantly attract stray…

BACK IN MY 20S, and even well into my 30s, I was one of the longest players on the PGA Tour. That’s no longer the case—I’ve had four back surgeries, and I’m only six years away from being eligible for the senior tour—so it’s more important than ever for me to put my drives in the fairway. My go-to tee shot is a slappy cut. It doesn’t go very far; I can hit my 3-wood farther. But I can count on it whenever I really need to find the short grass. You should definitely develop a fairway finder with your driver, one you can trust on that nervous first tee shot or on scary holes with trouble everywhere. In fact, it should become your stock driver swing. I reach back…

JESSICA KORDA has been “working on the same thing with my driver for years,” she says. When she started with swing coach David Whelan, in 2015, she was coming off a season when she averaged 256 yards off the tee and ranked 135th on the LPGA Tour in driving accuracy. In 2019, she was 15 yards longer and ranked 55th in accuracy. “The last six months of the season, her driving was the best part of her game,” Whelan says. It certainly helped Korda win 3½ points at the Solheim Cup in September and finish in the top 20 nine times since the end of May. Korda’s best finish in 2019 was runner-up at the Buick LPGA Shanghai. “We’ve been working on fundamentals with the goal of creating more consistency…

Tiger’s den might alter my ranking of the best par 3s in the Del Monte Forest. INSIDE THE DEL MONTE Forest you will find seven splendid golf courses, each of them special and several ranking among the best layouts in the world. Particularly outstanding—and often overlooked—is the sum quality of the par 3s on these courses. As a resident of Pebble Beach and frequent visitor to all the courses here, I’ve argued that a traveling golfer could spend a week playing only the par 3s and leave for home not only satisfied but reeling, the senses overwhelmed as though they’d fulfilled some long-cherished bucket list. The seven courses are Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, Spyglass Hill, Spanish Bay, Poppy Hills and two courses at Monterey Peninsula. Together they embrace 29 short…

CALLAWAY EPIC FLASH $300 VERDICT These clubheads don’t mess around when it comes to a low center of gravity. The lightweight carbon-fiber crown accommodates a metal-injection molding piece of heavy tungsten low in the sole that weighs nearly as much as the rest of the head. This helps elevate shots with less spin for more distance. Even more yards come from the vertical “jailbreak” bars inside the clubhead that stabilize the body and concentrate flexing in the face. COMMENT “Quiet but powerful, like the parent who doesn’t have to raise her voice to let you know she means business.” CALLAWAY MAVRIK • MAX • PRO $250 VERDICT Using artificial intelligence to design the faces in this three-hybrid family isn’t just about inputting numbers into a computer blender and hoping a…

CALLAWAY APEX 19 PER IRON : $175 VERDICT The original Apex iron enjoyed a three-year run as a top seller. Given the enhancements, expect a similar run with this club. The body is forged from 1025 carbon steel and expands the 17-4 stainless-steel cupface—where the face wraps around the top and bottom of the club to create more flex—up to the 8-iron. The cupface brings a distance benefit to a wider portion of the face with more consistency, especially on shots struck low. COMMENT “Impact felt like a trampoline. Soft and responsive. Incredible forgiveness. Love the looks, too.” CALLAWAY MAVRIK PRO $128 VERDICT The Mavrik name goes to the heart of company founder Ely Callaway’s innovative thinking. This club brings a fresh approach to iron design, starting with the use…

“I’m so lucky to have stumbled into golf.” IF YOU ENVY professional musicians and the independence their careers afford them, you might want to stop reading here. Ben Rector is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter who appeared at No. 49 on our ranking of the best musician golfers back in 2014. His handicap was 13. Since then he has whittled it down to as low as 4. Rector’s secret? About three years ago he got home from a tour and, as often happens, found himself buzzing with energy. “I was bouncing off the walls,” he says. His wife, Hillary, suggested he find a hobby, so he joined the Golf Club of Tennessee, a Tom Fazio-designed course just outside Nashville. Once just an occasional golfer, Rector was suddenly into it. “Before, I was…

“Imagine the center of the hole shifted toward the high side.” IF YOUR breaking putts tend to miss on the low side, I’d bet your problem is how you look at the putt from over the ball. Most golfers spend too much time staring at the hole, and then putt toward it—after all, that’s where you want to end up. But you have to discipline yourself to focus on the route to the hole, not the hole itself. Try this routine: Read the green from behind the ball, and imagine the first six inches of the putt as a trough aimed where you want to start the ball. When you step in, you can trace your eyes along the line, but make your last look at that trough. If your…

“If you can keep your balance, you can hit this shot.” OF ALL the tough lies you can get in a greenside bunker, perhaps the worst is when your ball comes to rest so close to the edge, you can’t stand with both feet in the sand. It’s a tough shot, but not impossible. First, take a deep breath. I want you stand over the ball feeling confident. There’s no reason you can’t look like a tour pro and execute a good shot from this lie. Next, as you contemplate the shot, remember these two words that start with “s”—stable and short. You’ve got to do whatever you can to take a stance that keeps your body stable as you attempt the shot. Also, make a short backswing. I wouldn’t…

CALLAWAY APEX PRO 19 PER IRON : $175 VERDICT The key story behind the Apex Pro is the addition of a cupface to a forged 1025 carbon-steel frame (the previous Apex was a single-piece forging). The cupface design, in which the iron’s face plate wraps around the sole and topline, is used in the long and middle irons (through the 7-iron) to enhance springlike effect across a larger area of the face. The result: more ball speed. COMMENT “Effortless power. The secret must be the little biceps in the back of the club so you don’t need to use yours to get the ball moving.” COBRA KING TOUR $171 VERDICT Improvements in materials and manufacturing allow clubmakers to go beyond what they’ve done before. This iron is proof of that.…

BETTINARDI BB SERIES $300 verdict Bettinardi putters are known for their classic shapes and American-made precision milling from solid blocks of carbon steel. But this latest line thinks beyond the head. Yes, the shapes are still traditional, with flatter, softer toplines and a glare-eliminating “glacier” black finish. But now a heavier, stiffer, tour-weight shaft adds stability to the stroke for consistent feel. The “super fly” face milling pattern is designed for a muted, crisp response. COMMENT “A classic sound to it—sharper and more distinctive than those modern exotic materials.” CLEVELAND FRONTLINE $180 verdict The forgiveness of high moment of inertia (MOI) putters might be good, but Cleveland’s point here is that the pursuit pushes the center of gravity (CG) too far back, making off-center hits start farther offline. Instead, the…