Golf Digest Issue 5, 2022

THE 18TH AT THE OLD COURSE lacks the bite of other famous drivable par 4s. Sharing a fairway with the first hole, the landing zone is as generous as it gets. Pros often take less than driver to knock it on the green or comfortably bail left, flag-high, then chip it close for an easy bird. The Valley of Sin, shaped in part by Old Tom Morris in the 1860s and from whose eight-foot depth Costantino Rocca holed the putt to force a playoff he would lose to John Daly in 1995, has become half a hazard at most. When Zach Johnson won the Open here in 2015, the hole ranked as the easiest par 4 on the course with a scoring average of 3.76. Still, it’s the greatest finishing hole…

GARRICK HIGGO AGE: 23 FROM: STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA MY DAD LOVED THE GAME. He taught me how to play when I was a child growing up in South Africa. When I was 9, my family made the 13-hour drive to Johannesburg to visit our newborn cousin. I can barely talk about what happened. My dad, Guillermo, my mom, Susan, my older brother, Michael, and my younger sister, Calis, and I were all in the car when another vehicle struck us. My father didn’t survive. I got a letter from Gary Player, whom I’d met through my former swing coach and lifelong mentor, Cliff Barnard. Gary’s mother died when he was young, too. We developed a special bond. We call each other and talk about everything. Before the 2016 U.S. Amateur at Oakland Hills, where…

MAYBE YOUR BOSS IS A JERK. Perhaps you’re working in a temporary job or you’re not happy with what you do, but nothing better is on the horizon, and you have bills to pay, right? Now you know why we work with cad-die killers—players who hire and fire so many loopers you wonder where they all go. They’re actually not the monsters that name conveys. When fans think of caddie killers, they think of the players with short tempers who lose it on their caddies or the high-profile break-ups of a caddie leaving his player mid-round. Those dustups are dramatic and make for good headlines, and yes, the players involved are usually branded for life as beefheads, but the truth is that this is a normal aspect of our profession, and…

LANDO NORRIS is a young man always on the move—usually at speeds that would cause my Subaru to spontaneously combust. So it’s only fitting that I caught up with the Formula 1 star while he was in a moving vehicle—though not behind the wheel—on his way to the airport. Because when the British-born Norris isn’t driving, he’s often flying around the world. Racing has taken the 22-year-old to some cool places, and now it’s taking him to some cool golf courses. Norris made a May trip to the United States for a big race, but the highlights of the journey were away from the track, including a more leisurely drive than he is used to down Magnolia Lane. In addition to playing Augusta National (Norris beamed as he showed off his…

THE MOST reverberant golf quote I know actually comes from John Ford’s 1962 Western called “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” starring John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, who were leading men in their day the equal of Tiger Woods and Ben Hogan. In the mystery over who shot whom, a crusty old editor summarizes at the end, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” It came to mind earlier this year when a set of Titleist 681-T irons and two Vokey wedges stamped “TIGER” sold at auction for $5.15 million, the second most valuable pieces of sporting goods behind Babe Ruth’s game-worn jersey that went for $5.6 million in 2019. The legend is that Woods used these clubs to win his wrap-around Grand Slam in 2000-’01 and gave them to…

I’ll absolutely confess to being something of a swing nerd. When I work on my game with my main coach, Mark Blackburn, I want to see all the data behind what I’m doing and understand what’s happening under the hood. However, the conversations we have on Wednesday of a tournament week are very different than those in a practice session. When it’s time to play, you need to think about position, not perfection. How do you leave this shot in a spot where you can hit the next one? If you do make a bad swing, how do you absorb that and move on without throwing your round away? That’s much more about mind-set, decision-making and discipline than it is about technique. I’ve learned to be tough on myself for making…