Golf Digest Issue 8, 2022

What is a paunchy pro ranked outside the top 100 doing shirtless and tatted on the cover of Golf Digest? It’s a reasonable question if you love the sport, at least in part, for its elevated decorum against society’s ever-slipping standards. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Joel Dahmen denuded. The one-time PGA Tour winner enjoyed a viral moment this spring when he and Harry Higgs bared chests to enthrall the beer-soaked crowd at the WM Phoenix Open. If exposed golf tans outside the locker room is an affront, forgive my instinct to pat your head. Never has pro golf been through a pressure cooker of a season like the one it just had. The rise of an alternative tour generated moral outrage over “blood money” and alleged traitors, dictators,…

Do caddies on the LPGA Tour hook up with players? I get this question a lot, and if it’s not a close friend, I’ll usually ignore it because if I say “yes,’’ salacious questions always follow. The truth is that it happens, and there’s nothing salacious about it. It’s a tight group out here—without the flunkies and minions that you see on the PGA Tour. Coaches rarely make an appearance. Just a few national writers cover the sport. It’s more communal than on the PGA Tour or DP World Tour. I know because I have worked both. Here’s the deal: A large contingent of LPGA Tour players are younger than 30. The same goes for caddies. I don’t care what your profession is, if you get a bunch of 20-somethings working…

Golf wasn’t incredibly popular where I grew up in Australia. I wasn’t a massive fan of it right away, but I played because it was family time with my dad and grandfather. Other sports were faster paced, more fun. But when I was 11, kids started getting bigger. I was small and scared of getting knocked around. That pushed me toward golf. I made the primary school team, and suddenly golf was all I wanted to do. My dad’s no golf genius, but he taught me how to hold the club and what a swing should look like. I started working with Dom Azzopardi when I was 13 and still work with him today. Now I can look after Dom financially, but back then, after a lesson, my dad would ask…

IT’S A TRANQUIL FALL MORNING AT Shorehaven Golf Club—just not on the patio where Chris Russo is ranting to the delight of a longtime listener, first-time caller. Only I’m not holding a phone but rather sitting next to one of the most popular—and animated—sports-talk-show hosts ever. Russo, better known as “Mad Dog,” has been talking mostly about golf for an hour, but as we start to wrap up a lively conversation, we begin riffing on topics like the recent retirements of Roger Federer and Serena Williams, the greatest NBA teams of all time, and Chris Paul versus Bob Cousy. We disagree on the latter—let’s just say Russo is a staunch defender of the old guard, including old point guards—but I still emerge smiling from the spirited back-and-forth chat like countless callers…

PLEASE DON’T TAKE OFFENSE to this statement of fact, but public-course golfers tend to nudge their golf balls to a better lie more often than private-course players do. I consider myself somewhat of an authority on this subject because I’ve played half my life at public courses and the other half at private clubs. IT’s not a moral judgment. Publinxers are just as honest, ethical and serious about the rules of life as anyone, but the natural convention at your average public course is such that conditions allow for The Nudge. You know what I mean: the gentle prod with a clubhead just a few inches to a slightly upgraded patch of turf. No harm, no foul. Jack Nicklaus has always argued that the rules should let you roll your ball out…

AGE 35 HEIGHT 5-11 CLUBHEAD SPEED 111 MPH DRIVING DISTANCE 292.1 150-YARD CLUB 9-IRON MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS 9* CAREER EARNINGS $9,631,471 STRENGTHS DRIVING ACCURACY, BALL-STRIKING JOEL DAHMEN *PLAYED IN SAM WEINMAN AGE 48 HEIGHT 6-0 CLUBHEAD SPEED 93 MPH DRIVING DISTANCE 230 150-YARD CLUB 7-IRON MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS 55** CAREER EARNINGS $268*** STRENGTHS SPELLING, METAPHORS, ALWAYS HAS TEES ** MEDIA CREDENTIAL *** SHOP CREDIT ★★★★WHAT WOULD YOU SHOOT IF A TOUR PLAYER HIT ALL YOUR DRIVES? Joel Dahmen and I had known each other for only a few minutes, and he could already smell fear. It was just after dawn in the Arizona desert, and the PGA Tour veteran and I were standing back-to-back for a photo before teeing off on video. “I can feel Sam’s heart beating through his shirt,” Joel said. It wasn’t quite a competition, and even if it was, Dahmen was more like my partner. We were there to resurrect an idea Golf Digest had executed three decades earlier between writer Peter Andrews…