Innehållsförteckning för July/August 2025 från Golf Digest

AS WE READY FOR THE OPEN at Royal Portrush and fall in love with auld links golf all over again, two hot new destinations in the United States remind us how differently we play the game—when it comes to drinking, that is. At the private and exclusive Fall Line Golf Club in the Georgia sand hills, a dedicated beverage cart can stay with your group the entire round, its operator trained in both mixology and how to linger just so on the periphery. At The Lido at Sand Valley—C.B. Macdonald’s lost gem of classic templates recreated in Wisconsin—alcohol is not permitted on the course. An advance email apprises guests of the policy. Post-round libations are available in the member’s bar, and beer is sold on the resort’s four other courses,…

IN DECEMBER 2023, A SMALL grey envelope dropped through my letterbox—nondescript, save for the crest of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, of which I had been a member for some years. Its matching grey letter asked if I would accept the invitation of the Past Captains to become Captain of the Club, starting in September 2024, a singular honour. The Royal and Ancient, founded in 1754, originally appointed its Captain on playing ability alone. Members historically competed for a Silver Club, the winner of which became Captain for the next year. In 1804, however, the Past Captains decided that they should appoint the Captain but that he must still “win” the Silver Club. How to ensure the Captain-elect would win the Silver Club? Easy. He is…

FOR MOST OF HIS CAREER, Nicolai Hojgaard has had the upper hand on his younger twin brother, Rasmus, in terms of ball speed and distance off the tee. When Rasmus edged past him in ball speed following this year’s Truist Championship (186.88 miles per hour versus 186.70), big brother likely took note: “Oh, Nicolai won’t like that,” says their swing coach, fellow Danish professional golfer Soren Hansen. The two brothers are so competitive that “they would bet on which fly on the wall would leave first,” says Hansen, who was a two-time winner on the European Tour. “That’s why they’ve become so good. They train and do everything together. If you were a boxer and always fought your brother, you’re going to come out stronger.” The twins might have very…

MOST SLICERS ARE doomed from the get-go. On the takeaway, they roll their forearms and fan the clubface open, cupping the lead wrist (the left wrist for righties). Once they do that, the wrist will likely remain cupped and the club fanned at the top of the backswing, all but ensuring a poor downswing path and an open face at impact—slice city. Fortunately, you can easily remedy this backswing-breaking mistake at home or on the range, and it doesn’t require hitting a single golf ball. All you need is another set of eyes, so to speak. Tee up a ball at driver height and make a slow rehearsal of your takeaway. As you do that, imagine there is an extra pair of eyeballs attached to the face of your driver and…

WHAT’S THE MOST important performance metric when you’re looking at new irons? In this era of ubiquitous launch monitors, it’s easy to get excited about things like ball speed or dispersion or even smash factor (ignore that, please) as the readouts flash by. But there’s a data point buried in your launch monitor report that you should be paying attention to because it might be the difference between hitting greens and just visiting them on the way to the back bunker. It’s called descent angle, or landing angle, and having a steep enough landing is the key to holding greens. Research from Ping characterizes three potential ranges for what it calls “stopping power” (low, mid and high). For average-golfer speeds, the range of landing angles runs from the mid 30s…

Replace your divots, fix your ball marks, rake the sand. Golfers know the basics of course maintenance etiquette yet are still making a common error that one superintendent calls his “worst nightmare.” You’ll often see the grass around cart paths is often dead or nonexistent, the result of golfers leaving two wheels on the path and two off. Why is this such a common mistake, what damage does it cause and why should golfers care? Those are the questions we put to two top supers: Jason Meersman of the Patterson Club in Fairfield, Conn., and Paul Dotti of Arcola Country Club in Paramus, N.J. Golf Digest: Jason, I’ve seen so much damage around cart paths recently, what’s going on? Meersman: Oh, my God, it drives me up a wall. You…

‘Uh, I Can’t Make It’ Golf Digest staffers debate when it’s OK to bail on a tee time HOW LATE IS TOO LATE TO SAY you can’t make a tee time? That’s the question we recently put to Golf Digest staffers. We’re not talking about the times you ditch for a better course or bail because of that playing partner. To be clear, it’s less about the backing out and more about the timing. Here’s where our group of devoted golfers feels like the line is. —GREG GOTTFRIED Shane Ryan, contributing editor: This question is so context-dependent for me. If it’s my close group of friends, who I play with all the time, and it’s just an ordinary round? I’m fine canceling that morning, ideally with an hour to spare,…

AFTER COLLIN MORIKAWA had a close call at Bay Hill earlier this season he didn’t stop for questions. He got into hot water the next week when he tried to explain, “I don’t owe anyone anything” and then later doubled down with “I don’t regret anything I said.” I felt for Collin. I understood what he was trying to convey, but he was fighting a battle that doesn’t need to be fought. As a PGA Tour player, I’ve learned that dealing with the media isn’t combat; it’s a dance. We didn’t face this attention and scrutiny in college like the football and basketball players did. Media coverage on golf’s minor tours is practically non-existent. When suddenly we get to the PGA Tour, and microphones and recorders are being shoved in our…

THE 60-DEGREE WEDGE is perfect for greenside shots where you need to carry a bunker or stop the ball really fast, but I see a lot of golfers making full swings with these clubs from 70 or 80 yards out in the fairway. I’m not a fan of that, and the results usually aren’t very good. For one, the bigger the swing, the lower your chances of hitting the ball solid. There’s a reason you see good players making a lot of less-than-full swings on shots into greens. With a more controlled motion, high-quality contact is almost a given. Also, when you try to smash a lob wedge, you really only hit the ball higher, not farther—and higher brings more variables into play and means you have to fly the…

When David McLay Kidd debuted Gamble Sands in central Washington in 2014, it marked a shift in his design philosophy—away from tough and taxing courses toward more spacious landscapes that allow better scoring. The “hard birdie, easy par” revelation has taken a pause at his follow-up course there, Scarecrow. Named for the figures that frighten scavengers from the nearby apple orchards, Scarecrow plays across a series of rugged plateaus and broken gorges above the Columbia River. It’s every bit as dramatic as Sands but not quite as broad. Opening for play in August, Scarecrow gives Gamble Sands two marquee 18s and the diabolical Quicksands short course.…

GOLF TRIPS ARE GOOD FOR the soul. They’re also getting harder on our wallets. Travel to any top-tier resort, and you expect to pay thousands of dollars for golf, lodging, food, etc.—that’s before travel. The boom in golf post-Covid has led to green fees increasing by 20 percent since 2019, per the National Golf Foundation. That might be in line with inflation and what we’d expect to pay, but it doesn’t make it any easier to pay. So we’re championing some of our favorite destinations that are more palatable on our bank accounts. Our guiding light were locations that still provide epic golf but with tee times usually less than $200. It’s tougher to do in 2025, but for those seeking a deal, you’ve come to the right place. TRAVERSE…

The most common affiction in golf is not the slice but the driving range swing that has mysteriously vanished. For many players the typical practice session involves a bucket of balls, a series of swings and the occasional sense that a problem has been solved. If it rarely works out, it’s because this way of practicing has little to do with golf. The moment this idea really sunk in I was hitting wedges at The Grove XXIII, and not particularly well. The Grove is Michael Jordan’s South Florida golf oasis. It has plush leather chairs in the clubhouse and drinks and snacks delivered on the course by drone. Most of the experience is built around maximum comfort, but the practice area is designed around the opposite. On the Grove range,…

Like the tools on a carpenter’s pegboard, each club in the bag performs a specific job—in the case of utility irons, very specific. These clubs, descendants of the old driving iron, will be in abundance at the Open Championship—75 were in play a year ago. Especially in the wind, they let elite players hit longer shots lower. Are they a better option for you over a hybrid or a 7-or 9-wood? Well, what are you trying to achieve? A utility iron’s flexible face and deeper center of gravity adds speed and stability, with more shotmaking versatility than a typical wood-like club, but they won’t offer the forgiveness and easier launch of a fairway wood. If you hit those clubs too high, the utility iron is a good choice. It’s all…

VIEWERS ACCUSTOMED to watching the Open Championship contested at the same venerable eight or nine courses each summer, not to mention the players competing on them, became smitten with Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland when the competition traveled there in 2019. It was the first time the major had been held outside of England or Scotland since 1951, when it also visited Portrush. We’re still getting to know Royal Portrush, but we like what we see. That first flush of feeling will be rekindled when the club’s Dunluce Links course hosts the Open again July 17-20. With all due respect to those who might have been on hand 74 years ago for the initial foray into Northern Ireland, won by Max Faulkner, the 2019 event was the real coming-out party…

Last year at Royal Troon, after the speeches were done and the crowds were gone, my dad and I finally had a moment to reflect and enjoy it all. I remember, he was scanning the names on the claret jug, then looked up at me and said, “You still suck.” We had a good laugh over that one. Maybe you have to understand my dad to get his little jokes, but those words actually packed a lot of meaning. He was reminding me that, despite the success of the day, there’s always more to do, more you can achieve, a higher bar. That’s how we look at it. Winning the PGA last May and then following it with the Open Championship was amazing to me but not unbelievable. I’m a…

When the ball disappeared, Ryan Peake’s arms went up, and a primal roar came out—an explosive release after many hard years questioning if this moment would ever come. Before teeing off in the final round of the 2025 New Zealand Open, Peake, 31, had received encouraging calls from his coach Ritchie Smith and PGA Tour player Min Woo Lee, both assuring him he was “already a winner” regardless of the outcome, but Peake had journeyed too far for mere moral victories. The significance lay not entirely in the win nor its rewards, like a DP World Tour card and a spot at the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. That made eight-footer allowed Ryan Peake to finally outrun the shadows of his past. A DECADE EARLIER, PEAKE CONVINCED HIMSELF prison was…

201. Grandfather G. & C.C. Linville, N.C. One of the country’s great mountain designs fell out of our top 200 for the first time by less than two hundredths of a decimal point. 202. Karsten Creek G.C. Stillwater, Okla. The home of Oklahoma State’s golf program just finished a major renovation by architect Andrew Green, so it will be interesting to see if the brawny Tom Fazio design returns to our top 200 soon. 203. Dismal River (Red), Mullen, Neb. The highest-ranked course at this 36- hole facility, the Tom Doak-designed Red course had been listed inside our top 200 since it debuted in 2017. 204. Tradition G.C., La Quinta, Calif. Known for fields of perfectly manicured wildflowers adorning the playing surrounds—a nod to Arnold Palmer’s wife, Winnie—Tradition fell out of the top 200…