Innehållsförteckning för June 2020 från Golf Digest

THIS IS A NORMAL (I almost never use that word as a compliment) issue of Golf Digest but for two things. It’s the first in the title’s history finished entirely by a remote staff, a necessity that was quickly put into action after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on a higher floor in our office building, One World Trade Center in Manhattan. At the risk of sounding tone deaf when people are losing lives, I must commend our staff for finding a new gear of collaboration across a purely digital workspace. Magazine-making, despite a lot of tech upgrades, remains at its core a physical product borne out of healthy debate with colleagues often at closer than social distance. The second exception to normalcy is that one of the…

“THERE’S A CERTAIN ZEN QUALITY TO IT,” says Asha Rangappa. “You have to detach. You have to trust that if you perform all the elements without trying to control the outcome, you will get the outcome you want.” ▶ The former FBI counterintelligence agent is talking about learning to shoot firearms at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. But it turns out that experience is a lot like golf, a game she took up five years ago. ▶ “If you can just let go and trust the physics of the golf swing, that’s when it works for you,” says Rangappa, now a CNN contributor and senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Rangappa, 45, first tried golf at a women’s clinic promoted by the Connecticut Bar Association,…

MATT NESMITH PGA TOUR AGE 26 LIVES AIKEN, S.C. “I gave myself four years to make it as a pro, as if it were grad school.” TWO AND A HALF YEARS after graduating from the University of South Carolina, I was sitting in a hotel room in Canada, alone. I’d stopped rooming with former teammates because faking it through post-round conversations when they played great got too exhausting. I was happy for them, but more than anything I wanted it for myself. I’d just missed four Mackenzie Tour cuts in a row, and I was just like, What am I doing here? IT DOESN’T MAKE IT EASIER WHEN GUYS LIKE VIKTOR HOVLAND AND MATT WOLFF PLAY AS GREAT AS THEY HAVE. Coming out like that is unrealistic, but that’s what people…

BROOKS KOEPKA WAS TALKING ABOUT Tommy Fleetwood, someone he played a lot of golf with when they were competing on the European Tour several years ago. “He was fun to play with because he was funny,” Koepka says. “Sneaky funny. Underrated funny. A lot of times he’d say something, and a minute later, you’d get it and start to laugh. He’s that quick.” Koepka pauses for a moment, smiles and adds, “The Europeans are just funnier than we are. Maybe it’s because they don’t take themselves that seriously.” There’s no better example of European humor than the video Fleetwood made with Francesco Molinari during the 2018 Ryder Cup victory party in Paris. Fleetwood and Molinari had become the first European team in history to go 4-0 in foursomes and four-ball…

FOR STARTERS, there’s the Samson-like mane of hair, which Kyle Berkshire hasn’t had cut since 2017 and which during competition conceals a heart that beats a chest-bursting 200 times per minute. As he strides to the tee, you see the outline in his back pocket of the notes marking firm spots and tiny slopes of every yard of the grid he’s about to attack. Unseen but going on in his head, is his favorite “music”—Chic Anderson’s call of Secretariat’s 1973 Belmont Stakes victory to win the Triple Crown. And the vision of actor Robert Duval whispering in the golf movie, “Seven Days of Utopia”: “Feel it…. Trust it.”Then comes the good stuff. After teeing his ball so high that his driver could easily pass clean under it, he begins a…

IN AUGUST 2019, flight cancellations on the eve of the Tennessee Big Shots left Alexis Belton with no clubs, no suitcase and seemingly no way to get to Kingsport, the host city. “I’d missed the cut in a Symetra Tour event earlier that day and was feeling a little low, which is unusual for me,” says Belton, 26. An inveterate journal keeper who handwrites her thoughts and experiences nightly, Belton soon would have a remarkable tale to tell. After hitching a rental-car ride with a Golf Channel employee caught in the same predicament, she arrived in Kingsport at 4 a.m. Using a driver borrowed from Phillis Meti and wearing clothes from the night before, Belton ground her way through qualifying and match play, and in the final she hammered a…

golfdigest.com COMPETITION Golf at Home Putting on the carpet is fine, but we believe it’s important to stay competitively sharp in these stay-at-home times, so we came up with some inspired golf games to play with the family. DIGITAL EDITION Download our New App Don’t wait on the mail. Get the quickest access to our most recent issue—plus a news feed and bonus content—when you download the Golf Digest Digital Edition app from the Apple Store or Google Play. VIDEO SERIES Pump it Up! Andrea Doddato, one of the 50 Best Golf-Fitness Trainers in America, tests your stamina in her new four-video series, “Next-Level Fitness.” Each golf-inspired workout is harder than the next. They can be found at Golf Digest Schools.…

YOU MIGHT not believe this because I don’t smile very much on the golf course, but the truth is, I love this game. I really enjoy myself out there. Specifically, I love the process of improving and becoming a better ball-striker. Understanding the work you need to do to get better, understanding your body to give you more control and power, understanding the swing in a way that makes it simpler—all of that is interesting to me. Because I enjoy the intensity of this game and the process of getting better every day, I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’ve been like that from the beginning—even when I was 7 years old and sitting on the range at Virginia Country Club, bugging tour pros like John Cook, Paul Goydos and…

There’s a feeling that professional long driving today resembles ordinary golf only in the way a Nerf basketball hoop over your trash basket resembles the NBA. Kyle Berkshire, the reigning king of World Long Drive, swings at 150 miles per hour and has hit a 474-yard drive in competition—at roughly sea level. Cameron Champ, widely considered the longest hitter on the PGA Tour, has a clubhead speed of 130 mph, a popcorn hitter by Berkshire’s standard. “I don’t even play regular golf anymore,” says Berkshire, 23. “I love the PGA Tour, but let’s be honest: I can’t do what they do, and they can’t do what we do. They’re two different games.” ▶ The vibe at the 2019 World Long Drive championship was sensory and primal, a theater of stunning…

MARTIN BORGMEIER makes no secret of his mercenary plan of attaining long-drive fame in America so as to promote the European Long Drive Games, a series of overseas events he and a partner co-own. Worldwide fame might not be far off. Borgmeier, 28, a personable and hirsute German (he’s known as The Beard in European long-drive circles), was runner-up to Kyle Berkshire in the 2019 ROC City Rumble in Rochester, N.Y., and reached the quarterfinals in two other World Long Drive events. Before that, in 2018, he won three times on the now-defunct European Long Drivers Tour, in Belgium, Russia and Italy. Though Borgmeier is still largely unknown in America, a couple of performance snapshots warn of his might. At the Russia event in 2018, he won with an astounding…

BAILING OUT AKA SPINNING OUT MEANING As the club approaches the ball, abruptly straightening up and wildly rotating so the entire body finishes the swing facing the target. IN A SENTENCE “He bails out so hard when he swings, a golf instructor suggested nailing his left shoe to the ground.” CASTING THE CLUB MEANING Making a downswing in which there’s an early unhinging of the wrists in in an attempt to fling the clubhead into the ball.” IN A SENTENCE “Let me tell you, I haven’t seen casting this bad since they added Ashton Kutcher to ‘Two and a Half Men.’” CHICKEN WINGING AKA FLYING ELBOW MEANING Letting the arms bend during the swing so that the elbow or elbows jut away from the club and the arc of the swing narrows. IN A…

"If you fix your setup, you can fix your impact." CONSISTENCY. Whenever you ask golfers what they want, you're likely to get that one-word answer. I'm no different. When I first got on the PGA Tour a few years ago, I realized I wasn't going to last out here very long unless my swing-and my game-were more repeatable. I'm a cause-and-effect guy. I want to know the root reason for everything I do. What I found was that the why for my ball-striking issues often got back to simple things-like how I was setting up or starting the club back. The lesson learned was you can't overlook fundamentals. Simple adjustments can make a big difference. Let me show you some easy changes that can help you hit more fairways and…

NEARLY every piece of golf equipment can be tested and optimized for your game, but the golf ball tends to be forgotten. Almost 40 percent of the balls purchased today are the cheapest options that focus on tee-shot performance only, according to Golf Datatech. We believe this one-dimensional approach is shortsighted. The Hot List is meant to guide your search to the most beneficial balls on the market. We consult scientists, retailers and everyday golfers to identify which balls perform best in all phases. This includes a week in which we tested 72 balls at the Marriott Grande Vista Resort in Orlando. Our process involves multitudes of shots in different situations, but despite this collective effort, here’s the thing: You need to evaluate your golf-ball choice with just as much…

FOR YOUR GAME IN 60 SECONDS The 2020 series takes the young German company to a new level of performance – improving on an already battle tested. Answer the three ball fitting questions for your game, mark the corresponding numbers and find the recommended Vice ball matching the number combination. BALL FITTING TOOL PICK YOUR AVERAGE SCORE 1 < 80 2 < 90 3 < 100 PICK YOUR DRIVER CARRY DISTANCE 4 < 220 yds 5 220 - 250yds 6 > 250 yds YOUR PREFERRED SHORT GAME FEEL 7 Less Spin & Solid Feel at Impact 8 Greater Spin & Soft Feel at Impact 9 Greater Spin & Extra-Soft Feel at Impact ENTER YOUR BALL FITTING CODE HERE COMPARE PERSONAL NUMBER CODE AND FIND THE PERFECT BALL. Vice Golf‘s mission…

I DON’T HAVE TO SEE a bunker shot to know someone hit a good one. I can tell by the sound—a slight thud and then a splash. If you dig into the sand too deeply—or catch the ball cleanly—the sound is harsher. The goal is to strike the sand behind the ball with the sole of the club—not the leading edge—and then let it skim through the sand. Let me show you how with two adjustments before you swing. First, open the face so it’s pointing more toward the sky than at the ball. And make sure you do that before you take your grip, otherwise you’ll struggle to keep the face open all the way into the follow-through. You can see in these photos that it stayed open. The…

AGE 30 LIVES Ponte Vedra Beach STORY Won the 2019 RSM Classic, his first win in a multiple-day event since the 2011 Indiana Amateur. FIRST STICKS When I was young, my grandfather built custom clubs for some of his friends in town. He would order clubheads, shafts and grips from GolfWorks and then go build them. He made me a 3-wood, 8-iron and putter, and those were the first clubs I ever had. I thought they were so cool. They were really short because I was so young. —WITH E. MICHAEL JOHNSON club yards* driver 280 3-wood 255 2-iron 230 4-iron 210 5-iron 197 6-iron 185 7-iron 175 8-iron 162 9-iron 145 pw 133 50˚ 120 54˚ 103 58˚ 84 * carry distance DRIVER specs Titleist TS2 (9.5°), Aldila Tour Green Graphene TX…

WHEN PATRICK CANTLAY isn’t swinging a golf club, you can usually find him turning the pages of a book or dealing out a game of gin rummy. Reading and card games are two activities he credits with sharpening his mind when he’s away from the course. But if you’re looking for a book suggestion from Cantlay, 28, don’t expect a breezy read. The books on Cantlay’s shelf resemble textbooks in length and topic. And if you’re hoping for a leisurely game of cards, keep walking. Cantlay is a fierce competitor. Hoping to join his book club, we caught up with Cantlay to hear what he’s reading and who he’s playing cards with these days. WHAT ARE YOU READING? Principles by Ray Dalio. I haven’t gotten into the meat of the…

ON ONE HAND, Chloe Garner fits the brash, iconoclastic template of the modern World Long Drive competitor. As we saw at the nationally televised final of the World Long Drive Championship in Thackerville, Okla., in September 2019, Garner’s right thigh, upper back and both arms are fantastically embossed with tattoos featuring characters from the cartoon show “Adventure Time,” Hindu words, motivational phrases, Mother Nature and an indigenous woman from her native South Africa. Add to that her quirky bucket hat tipped back, untucked polo, blaring Metallica walk-up music and the insane violence of her golf swing through impact, and she exudes the smackdown persona one might expect. But talk to Garner and you find that body art is only skin deep and that Metallica plays soft music, too. At 29,…

THE MODERN golf ball is virtually indestructible, its urethane and thermoplastic materials impervious to rocks, cartpaths and sometimes, mowing equipment. But in Ryan Steenberg, golf balls apparently have met their match. “I’ve had the centers burst through the covers on me,” Steenberg says. “Another time, we cut one open, and the center was like the crumbled yolk of a hard-boiled egg.” Whew. Steenberg, who won the 2019 Exchange: Fort Jackson WLD event by outdriving Kyle Berkshire by 25 yards, is not to be trifled with. A nine-year veteran from Rochester, N.Y., who at 5-10 and 240 pounds is still the most physically imposing player in long driving—fellow-competitor Paul Howell describes him as “scary”—Steenberg has produced some of the most legendary drives in history. Foremost among them was a 485-yard blast…

I’M OVERSIMPLIFYING A BIT, but there are two camps in pro golf. There are players who hold off releasing the club until around impact. And there are players who release it as soon as they start the downswing. Hold-off players include Jordan Spieth, Zach Johnson and Lee Trevino. The releasers: Adam Scott, Patrick Reed and Jack Nicklaus. I mention these guys because they’re all major winners, which proves there’s more than one way to swing the club effectively. And when I say “release the club,” I mean letting the momentum generated in the downswing propel the clubhead through the impact zone without trying to restrict it. The feeling is that you’re letting go; there’s no tension in your swing. To find out what type of release would improve your swing,…