Golf Digest Oct-15

Chairman and Editor-in-Chief The offer still stands: One of these days, we’re hoping for Bill Murray on the cover. “Did you know golf kills more people than any other sport?” The job of the editor is to decide who’s on the cover. This is my 368th cover. Two subjects have utterly eluded me over the past 30 years: Sean Connery, for decades listed as “007” on the members’ board at Pine Valley, and Bill Murray, who doesn’t have an agent but simply tells people to leave a message on his 800 number that he won’t answer. I’ve never met Murray but had one encounter with Connery. The phone rang in my Connecticut office, and my assistant, Jeanmarie Ferullo, not normally given to giddiness, burst in and exclaimed, “It’s Sean Connery calling from the Bahamas.” A…

The little wedge from 20 to 50 yards is one I’ve always felt comfortable with. When I was in college at Oklahoma State, I’d hit a shag bag full of wedges to a practice green at Karsten Creek, then hit them from off the green back to the bag. I obviously didn’t want to damage the green, so it meant clipping the ball perfectly. My teammates and I would have wedge contests, and the losers had to tote the other guys’ bags 600 yards uphill to the clubhouse. We all worked on our short wedges just to avoid the humiliation of toting. But this shot gives even good players fits. I have a series of keys that make it easy to nip the ball just right. Once you have those…

How do you aim a long breaking putt? Well, you have a few options. Dave Stockton and Arnold Palmer have advised me over the years to pick a spot right in front of the ball on the path to the putt’s apex, or highest point of the break. Another strategy is to aim farther down the line, about halfway, at the actual apex. My preferred method is a little different. First, I figure out how much the putt will break. Then, I pick a spot that’s an extension of that path to the apex, all the way out to hole-high (above). This allows me to treat a big breaker like it’s a straight putt. I simply aim at that spot even with the hole. Average golfers tend to underplay break, because their…

“Most people are going to take a run at it because they can.” The fifth hole at Quivira Golf Club in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, is the kind of drivable par 4 I’d never seek to build. But when I saw this knob of cliff just big enough for a green, I couldn’t pass. Mostly, I’m not a fan of severe downhill tee shots. It’s displeasing to stand on your toes and wonder when your ball is going to stop. The goal was to find a way to play golf here that wasn’t gimmicky. If you’re in a stroke-play event on a hole like this, lay up off the tee. But if your objective is fun, maybe go for the green. I could’ve built a more traditional hole away from the cliffs,…

Danny Lee is not your ordinary tour pro. Not even close. Most of today’s young players are bred on the college circuit and come out ready to win, but the Korean-born Lee took a different route. At age 11, Danny moved with his family to New Zealand when his father became ill. They stayed for six years while he received cancer treatments. So Danny learned golf as a Kiwi of sorts, which explains his unique way of talking. “He’s caught between Korean and English with a New Zealand accent,” says his teacher of 18 months, Drew Steckel. Lee’s father recovered, and the family immigrated to the United States. Danny was working with Jim Flick and won the 2010 U.S. Amateur at age 18, then the youngest-ever winner. But after Flick died in…

“Our pro made the paper again. One day it’ll be the sports section.” Chances are, you have a decent setup, but you struggle with the transition from going back to coming down. When people send me videos on Twitter, I see that a lot. If you tend to slice—which is 90 percent of players—you probably hang back as you start down, pushing the club away from you and cutting across the ball. Using your lower body better can break that sequence. From the top, make your first move a bump of the hips laterally, so that the side of your lead hip would hit a club standing outside your foot (below). Once you make that bump—with your upper body staying over the ball—turn your hips and swing through. That sets up a downswing…