Innehållsförteckning för June 2024 från Golf Digest

WHERE IS THE BEST golf town in America? At first the mind wanders southerly, looking for clusters of famous or at least very good courses with warm weather. But that’s a narrow approach. Maybe a better consideration is where would you raise your children if you were hellbent on cultivating within them your love for the game? A properly golf-obsessed mom or dad can do that anywhere, of course, but it’s easier if there’s a village. We should be able to find places in this country where the whole golf ecosystem is thriving. Perhaps a private club has a caddie program that’s initiating kids with the lure of cash for pleasant outdoor work. Alongside that, hopefully there’s a public course with a solid design that offers affordable tee times and…

One Golf Digest+ member who reluctantly moved up a tee box during a recent round was 84-year-old Curt McClure (above, second from the right), who typically plays from 6,000 yards but appeased his buddies and joined them at 5,200 yards at his home course of Lubbock Country Club in Texas. The move sparked a special round for McClure, a 2-handicap who made his third career hole-in-one en route to a three-under-par 69—a score 15 shots below his age. “I said it was cheating because I was playing so far up,” says McClure, who averages about 230 yards off the tee, meaning a 5,200-yard course is a comparable distance to what Rory McIlroy plays from on tour, relative to driving distance. “It was just a normal day,” McClure says. “I just…

It should come as no surprise that our 2024 ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Holes, the first of its kind since 1999, is heavily populated with representatives from America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses ranking. These holes are largely why those courses are considered great. To formulate this ranking, Golf Digest compiled a list of more than 1,200 candidate holes and then asked our course-ranking panelists to judge each on a scale of 1 to 10 in four categories: Aesthetics (the visual and emotional power the hole evokes), Challenge (the degree of skill required to play it well), Uniqueness (how original it is compared to other holes) and Overall (sometimes a hole is better—or worse—than the sum of its parts). The survey introduces 22 holes that didn’t exist in 1999…

TO HIT A HIGH, SPINNY greenside bunker shot, you need a fair amount of clubhead speed. However, the way you generate that speed is critical to being able to stop the ball close to the hole. Many golfers, based on past experiences with taking too much sand, use their bodies to try to create more speed. They either pull the club down hard with their shoulders or over-rotate their body through the shot. This makes it really hard to control the low point of the swing and achieve a consistent entry point in the sand—hugely important to success from the bunker. It’s the hands and arms that you want accelerating and providing the speed, not the body. Turn the page to learn how to get your sequencing correct and add…

When Golf Digest+ members play the right course yardage, good things happen AT THE INTERSECTION of the argument about the golf-ball rollback and the game’s slow-play epidemic is the debate over what course yardage we should play. Move up a set of tees and we might play faster and shoot lower scores, but at what point do we sacrifice the integrity and challenge of the game? To better understand what tee boxes we should play from, we have contextualized just how short courses play for pros and how long they play for Golf Digest+ members. The results are astounding and can be taken two ways: Either tour pros need to play much longer courses, or we need to move up a set of tees—or three. Last year on the PGA…

THE FIRST ENTRY in the entrepreneur’s handbook would probably say to find a popular, painful problem to solve. That’s how simple it was for Stephen Lease, who grew up around golf. His father was a greenskeeper at a Colorado public course. About 10 years ago, as a newly addicted distance runner, Lease was looking for affordable, stylish sunglasses that wouldn’t bounce or slide off his nose when he was putting in miles. Finding nothing that ticked all those boxes, he and co-founders Ben Abell and Keri Blunt bootstrapped Goodr, an affordable eyewear company, in 2015. “I had gotten really good at starting companies cheaply, figuring out if they were going to work quickly and shutting them down if they didn’t,” says Lease, who also worked in marketing for sports-equipment maker…

Last July, Steph and I played a round at Cypress Point. I gave him a few ideas for his game, but he didn’t need much. His swing is solid, and what a gentleman. Of all the superstars I’ve been around, he might be the nicest. A week later, he won the big celebrity event at Lake Tahoe on national TV—with a walk-off eagle on the last hole! Looking at these photos above, I’m reminded how athletic and powerful Steph is swinging the club. What you don’t see here is his rhythm, which struck me right away when we played. Elite athletes have exceptional hand-eye coordination, but Steph also has a natural smoothness in the way he moves the club and sequences his swing. His technique screams power. He grips the…

WHEN THE U.S. OPEN RETURNS TO PINEHURST NO. 2 (JUNE 13-16), THERE’S A good chance you’re going to see some of the world’s best golfers hitting shots they seldom try. The design of this Donald Ross classic, with its famous turtle-back greens, collection areas and links-style contouring, practically implores you to adjust from your normal game—even nudging the pros to putt from off the green! If you want to avoid double bogeys and lower your scores, there’s a lot to be said for taking what a course gives you. It’s certainly a big part of what we teach everyday golfers who visit us. For example, on a firm-and-fast course like No. 2, it’s often a lot easier to keep shots low and let them run to their destination than it…

I spent a good three months worrying about all the possible disasters that could derail this experiment, including versions of the one that happened. Some days I preemptively cursed the editors who dreamed up the concept: How can a professional caddie help an average player like me, a guy who has broken 80 once in his life? I worried that I would disappoint Paul Tesori, the caddie fool enough to waste his time with me. I worried that, legend or not, he couldn’t do anything for me short of swinging the club—and there were times when I wish he could have. The one thing Tesori and I shared, which would prove to be an asset, was a love for competition. It’s true that as a former member of the University…

LAST FALL an 11-year-old named Holden Bautista made two holes-in-one in a single round, and, even better, Tiger Woods was an eyewitness. The kid asked Tiger if he had ever made double aces—“I mean you’re the GOAT, so it would be expected?” “You had to go there,” replied Tiger, laughing. “I’ll give you that one.” There is no real equivalent to a hole-in-one in other sports. It’s the perfect combination of skill and good fortune with an emphasis on the latter. The closest is a “perfect game” in bowling, but I would argue rolling a 300 requires much more aptitude than luck. The same for pitching a perfect game in baseball. Even with an imperfect swing, every golfer can make an ace. I read recently in the LIV media guide…

If it has been a decade since you’ve been to Pinehurst, it’s time to go—much has changed. There are several additions to the scene, and most of the major courses have undergone serious transformations. Although Pinehurst (and neighboring Southern Pines) is still Pinehurst, a quaint, historic village that’s not like anywhere else in golf—or even like anything outside its small geographic radius—the overall environment of the golf, resorts, lodging and restaurants is more evolved than it was 10 years ago, the last time the resort hosted the U.S. Open. What hasn’t changed is the difficulty of selecting where to play. Choosing how to divide your rounds in such a target-rich environment can tie visitors in knots. These are my top choices to help guide where you should be playing. 1 Pinehurst…

I’ve had bigger caddie jobs. My players have won U.S. Opens and Players Championships. When it comes to high-stakes moments in a pro-caddie career, my round with a golf writer on a random Monday shouldn’t have registered. Why was I so nervous before my round caddieing for Shane? It’s because I can always help tour players get more out of their game, but with a middle-handicap golfer like Shane, I sensed it wouldn’t be as easy. It’s one thing to hand a club and point to a target for one of the best players in the world but quite another to hand it to a guy who makes his living in front of a keyboard. As Shane’s 91 at Deerwood Country Club that day proved, physical ability is only part…

BEING NAMED THE PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year in 2023, 50 years after my mom, Laura Baugh, captured the same award on the LPGA Tour, was quite an honor. Fortunately for me, both of my parents were pros—my father Bobby Cole won the 1977 Buick Open on the PGA Tour— and I spent much of my childhood watching them play and practice. My dad hit it well past me, so I spent more time playing with my mom. Although she never won, she had 71 top-10 finishes across her 25-year LPGA career. One thing I noticed about her warm-up was that she always started with her fairway woods. Most pros begin with wedges and work their way up to the driver, but my mom believed that by hitting some…