Golf Digest Issue 2, 2022

BIO-ENGINEERED TURFGRASSES grow on drips of reclaimed water. The PGA Tour’s Waste Management Phoenix Open is carbon-neutral. Our governing bodies are cooperating on sophisticated strategies, and even Rory McIlroy is adding awareness by talking about his footprint. But what can a regular golfer do that’s meaningful? Of all things, the lowly tee lets us glimpse in microcosm the conundrum of being an eco-conscious consumer. Most bamboo grows at least five times faster than hardwood, but milling both creates excess sawdust that gets burned in smog-producing factories. Molded tees waste not, but plastic and other materials can have thorny source implications. All things considered, “Play a biodegradable tee that decomposes quickly on the course,” says Jonathan Smith, executive director of the GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf. Carpool to the course. Carry a stain-less-steel…

MY KIDS SAY THAT FOR ONE of my favorite weeks of the year, I don’t seem to enjoy the Masters very much, and my wife says I’m unusually curt and anxious. They’re right, of course, but they don’t have to figure out the wind at Golden Bell. I love the Masters. It’s the Holy Grail of American golf. If you’re there, you matter. But there’s also a reason why Harbour Town, where most of us head afterward, is beloved on tour; it’s the first time we can exhale in a week. Caddies are generally a loose bunch, but everyone is wound a little tight at Augusta National. Conversations are more formal, and we stick to our job. The club and its members treat us well, and we want to reciprocate, but we…

MARDY FISH GAVE HIS LIFE to tennis, but he sure looks like a golfer in retirement with a smooth, powerful swing that prompted Jack Nicklaus to declare him “the best non-professional golfer I’ve ever seen play.” Nicklaus undoubtedly would have been even more impressed if he knew that Fish has never taken a golf lesson. Fish recalls a less-structured setting in which he developed his left-handed golf swing as a toddler in Edina, Minn, because it’s the same place where the righty tennis player grooved his backhand that “paid the bills.” “My mom tied a string with a tennis ball to the ceiling in the basement,” says Fish, who carries a plus-2.8 Handicap Index at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles. “I’d pick up a baseball bat, tennis racket or whatever and…

THE IDEA CAME TOGETHER on the golf course, naturally. Chad Mumm, head of entertainment at Vox Media Studios and a self-described golf sicko, pitched his vision to Chris Wandell during a round at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas: a behind-the-scenes documentary following golfers throughout a season. This had been Mumm’s dream project for a half-decade, confined to the “one day” category until a confluence of factors turned Wandell, the PGA Tour’s vice president for media business development, into an intrigued listener. Deep-pocketed streaming platforms had shown a willingness to invest in premium sports documentaries. A generation of 20-something stars had shown an eagerness to share their lives with fans on social media. Crucially, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan was intrigued by the benefits of presenting golf less filtered. Wandell knew they…

“There’s a new day about to dawn at the most magical setting in golf.” That day was Sunday, April 13, 1997, when Tiger Woods changed the game of golf forever. For the hundreds of us at CBS who had the honor of broadcasting the tournament, it was the biggest assignment of our careers. “A place where legends are made, where dreams have been realized …” These were my words for the opening of the show, known in TV parlance as a “tease.” I narrated the script against the grand yet reflective musical strains of “The World of the Heart,” the title track of the movie “DragonHeart.” It replaced another tease we had in the can for Sunday. Producer Chris Svendsen and I had dubbed it “Triumph and Tragedy,” and it outlined the many…

I had these plans that I would go straight from college to the LPGA Tour, and it would all go so smoothly. It didn’t. I spent 135 weeks as the No. 1-ranked amateur in the world, but when I turned pro, I didn’t make it through Q school. From the beginning, I had a built-in practice partner. My twin sister, Lisa, and I grew up minutes from our local course. We started with three clubs each when we were 9 and added clubs, shoes and a coach as we got older. My dad read golf books and taught us as much as he could. When my sister and I were 12, he realized that we needed help. I’ve worked with Shane O’Grady for 15 years now. Golf can be lonely. Being a…