Golf Digestの June 2017 の目次

Great American #016 we’d like to have seen win the U.S. Open. Cock your head to the right before starting the backswing. . . . Hover the clubhead above the ground at address. . . . Pick out an intermediate spot like a leaf between your ball and the target. . . . Aim at the middle of the green and work your shot toward the hole. . . . When you want to hit it farther, take it back slower. C The first instruction tips I ever recall reading were in a cartoon series in Golf Digest in the 1970s called “Jack Nicklaus’ Lesson Tee.” Another series about tactics, “Playing Lessons,” followed. I then read Jack’s seminal book, Golf My Way. For generations, these words became the foundation for…

Great American #34 we’d like to have seen win the U.S. Open. A Any time you’ve got a 7-, 8- or 9-iron in your hands for your approach shot, you’ve got a real opportunity to knock it close. Don’t squander that chance with the notion that you have to swing under the ball to get it in the air. If you want to hit it the desired trajectory, yardage and direction—and get it to spin when it lands so it holds the green—you need to hit down on it and compress the ball. Here are four steps to get the most out of your short irons. David Leadbetter operates 34 golf academies worldwide. 1. SHIFT LEFT So many amateurs try to hit the ball high by incorrectly favoring their back…

The standard operating procedure on chips and pitches is to set up open to your target and swing the club down and left through impact. You can hit the ball solidly this way, but it’s tough to control the trajectory and direction without a lot of practice. An easier and more reliable way to hit these shots is from a square stance. That means your toes, hips and shoulders should be aligned parallel left of your target. Put a little more weight on your left leg than your right, and make sure your shoulders are fairly level. The ball should be centered between your feet for a medium-trajectory shot; a little more forward if you want to hit it higher. When you swing, focus on moving the clubhead toward the…

XXIO FORGED This traditionallength iron set’s thin, high-strength steel face surrounds a compact forged body for the combination of distance and feel. Lightweight shafts with high-balance points are designed to help you produce a faster swing with the same effort. $1,360 TITLEIST 716 AP1 SMOKE Available in only 500 sets, this traditionallength iron uses a darker finish to reduce glare and make the head appear smaller. But the look doesn’t change this iron’s distance guts, including low internal tungsten weighting and a large flexible face. $900 EQUS A1 Rather than one length, this set features three lengths for long, middle and short irons. Each group is designed to feel alike, so the force required to swing the 4-iron matches that of the wedge. $1,043 EDEL SLS-01 This single-length set has…

“HOW AM I GOING TO DRINK AND SMOKE IF I DON’T PLAY GOLF?”—charles barkley OUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS, BY THE NUMBERS 40% have won or lost more than $100 at golf 59% have snuck on without paying 29% have taken another player’s ball 12% have kept a club they found 44% think about golf more than sex or food 37% think about sex more than golf or food 19% think about food more than sex or golf SOURCE : TWITTER SURVEY MARCH 2017 GREAT MOMENTS IN GOLF THAT WERE NOT TECHNICALLY GOLF Taylor Swift smashes car with golf club in Blank Space” music video. ? Ed Sheeran smashes Justin Bieber in the face with a golf club in failed trick shot. Bored Kendall Jenner plays (mini) minigolf by converting her iPhone…

Erin Walker, the wife of 2016 PGA Championship winner Jimmy Walker, has followed her husband for roughly 1,000 rounds. Here’s her advice for getting the most out of a professional event: Following Jimmy, I like to walk to the general area where his next shot will land. It’s less crowded than where he’s hitting from, especially on tee shots, and I can still see his swing in the distance. Early morning on Thursday or Friday is hard to beat. The crowds are smaller, and usually no one is drinking (and yelling!) yet. It’s pure golf. I put an emphasis on dressing comfortably. (That means NO heels.) If it’s muddy, I wear rain boots, but I usually like walking in flip-flops. People look at me funny, but it’s a lot easier…

A LOT OF PLAYERS come to our Vision54 programs looking for help with their mental skills, but they also get a heightened awareness of what their bodies are doing when they play their best. That’s really important, too. Your physical state is constantly changing, from round to round and even shot to shot. Some days your body might feel tight. On others it feels relaxed. You might be amped up on the front nine but sluggish on the back. ▶ Our goal is to help you create and maintain a performance state that allows you to access your peak athletic ability no matter how you’re feeling on the course. You can do that if you work on our balance, tempo and tension —BTT— skills. Play nine-hole practice rounds doing one…

1 (1) PEBBLE BEACH G. LINKS 67.6991 2 (2) PACIFIC DUNES Bandon, Ore. 65.0391 3 (3) THE OCEAN COURSE Kiawah Island, S.C. 64.7249 4 (4) WHISTLING STRAITS (Straits), Haven, Wis. 64.7018 5 (6) SHADOW CREEK North Las Vegas, Nev. 64.0722 6 (5) PINEHURST (N.C.) RESORT (No. 2) 63.8751 7 (7) BANDON (ORE.) DUNES 63.4635 8 (9) BETHPAGE STATE PARK (Black) Farmingdale, N.Y. 63.3433 9 (8) ERIN (WIS.) HILLS G. CSE. 62.7274 10 (12) OLD MACDONALD Bandon, Ore. 62.5472 11 (11) SPYGLASS HILL G. CSE. Pebble Beach 62.5376 12 (10) TPC SAWGRASS (Players Stadium) Ponte Vedra Beach 62.4822 13 (13) ARCADIA BLUFFS G. CSE. Arcadia, Mich. 61.7943 14 (T-14) BANDON (ORE.) TRAILS 61.7675 15 (16) BLACKWOLF RUN (River) Kohler, Wis. 61.0481 16 (T-14) KARSTEN CREEK G. Stillwater, Okla. 60.9551 17 (18)…

INNOCUOUS Flirting with cart girl Ignoring 90-degree rule Not fixing ball mark Not helping hunt for ball Peeing behind a tree Hitting into a group Sneaking on COMMON Sandbagging “Miraculously” finding your ball Breaking a club Not yelling “fore” Angrily making divot in green Hitting someone with shot Being creepy with cart girl UNCOMMON Smoking weed Stealing range balls Sex on course at night Playing as a fivesome BAD Peeing in the open Hitting into a group on purpose Impersonating a member Selling weed Breaking someone else’s club Sex during the day…

Some golfers hate practicing, but one thing I’ve learned is that the range—not the golf course— is where your swing gets better. You might be able to make small adjustments mid-round and play OK, but any real improvements come from practice. Let’s say you’ve got at least 30 minutes once a week to work on your full swing. If you do, try these five fundamentals on the following pages that have helped me improve. Devote five minutes on each, and then use the final five minutes to mash it all together and swing away. It won’t take long before you see the value in this type of practice. And then when you play, you can focus on targets and scoring—you know, the fun stuff. BEFORE YOU SWING DON’T PULL THE…

WILLIAM MCGIRT AGE 37 LIVES Boiling Springs, S.C. STORY Won the 2016 Memorial, his first PGA Tour win in 165 starts. PROTECTING my moneymakers When I travel now, I screw all the clubheads off my woods and keep them in a hard suitcase. After a flight a couple years ago, my travel bag looked like it had been run over by a truck. I can’t let that happen again. ROAD less traveled Seven years after playing mini-tours, I earned my PGA Tour card through Q school. It’s hard to sum up what it means to be called a PGA Tour winner. —with stephen hennessey FAIRWAY WOODS SPECS TaylorMade M2 (13?, 43 inches, D-3½ swingweight), TaylorMade M1 2017 (17.5?, 42½ inches, D-3½). Fujikura ATMOS Red shafts, X-flex I dented my 5-wood…

An admittedly unscientific look at the golf you’re missing. We all know golfers whose habits are, shall we say, less than 100 percent healthy. You might even be one. To that we say, it’s a free country. But have you ever thought about how many rounds these vices might be costing you? HOW WE ARRIVED AT THESE NUMBERS: The National Golf Foundation says core golfers play an average of 34 rounds a year. 1. Nonsmokers live 10 years longer than smokers, says the Centers for Disease Control. 2. A 2012 Harvard study found 75 minutes of “brisk” walking a week adds 1.8 years to your life. 3. A 2012 University of Cambridge study shows every drink after the first drink takes 15 minutes off your life. If you drink four…

Great America #146 we’d like to se win the U.S. Open an ee n. G olf and sleep aren’t a great twosome. Between the anticipation of playing and the game’s early morning start times, it’s often tough to get enough shut-eye. We tested three modern gadgets that promise to help. SENSE SLEEP SYSTEM A quarter-size sensor goes on the side of your pillow to monitor your movement. Another object that looks like an oversize golf ball (pictured) sits next to your bed and tracks the environment. They send information to an app that suggests what can be changed—like room temperature, noise, air quality and light—to achieve optimal sleeping conditions. The Sense ($149) also produces calming, ambient sounds to help you doze of. Sadly, those soothing fake bird chirps in golf…

A statistician friend and I were going over my performance summaries recently. He said, “I’ve concluded you make the highest percentage of your birdies when you hit the green in regulation.” We laughed, because he was stating the obvious—there is no substitute for good iron play. And the key to great irons is solid contact, finding the sweet spot consistently. Over the past 18 months, I’ve worked especially hard with my coach, Todd Anderson, on improving with my irons. It’s paying off, and to prove it, there’s a wear mark on my irons about the size of a nickel. Here’s how you can wear out your sweet spot—and find more greens in regulation as a result. A HAND BUMP PREPARES YOU FOR IMPACT MY ADDRESS is standard but precise. I…

EDITOR’S NOTE Ron Whitten has been covering golf architecture for Golf Digest since 1985. In 1992, citing his inexperience— he’d never designed a golf course—he turned down Mike Keiser’s offer to design the first 18 at Bandon Dunes, giving way to David McLay Kidd. In 2000, Whitten jumped when invited to join Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry in creating a new course northwest of Milwaukee. Little did they know then that Erin Hills would develop into a course worthy of the 2017 U.S. Open. Here Whitten tells a story of the many surprises—some good, some bad— that led to Wisconsin’s first U.S. Open. IN June, Erin Hills, the mammoth rumpled blanket of a golf course in tiny Erin, Wis., will host the first of what will be many U.S. Opens.…

Great American #317 we’d like to have seen win the U.S. Open. Here’s the rest of that line: . . . you don’t hit the ball solidly. Whatever speed you might gain by trying to go harder is wasted because you lose control and mis-hit the shot. You’re probably not gaining any speed. Like I joke with some of my students: Your backswing is faster than your downswing. H If you want more distance, your focus should be finding a rhythm that allows you to produce speed without giving up good contact. Consider the swing thought Jack Nicklaus used on tee shots: Finish the backswing. You want to stay smooth and deliberate going back, let everything wind up behind the ball. Then you can come into impact from a strong…

“What to do when a fairway turns twice.” BE READY FOR A SHIFT I can see Mike Davis, the USGA executive director who is in charge of course setup, utilizing two or more tee boxes on this hole. It’s listed to play at 434 or 464 yards. The prevailing wind is against, so from the back tee most players will play to here. From this rise, the approach is about 175 yards with the left portion of the green hidden. But shift the markers up a box or two, and even shorter hitters would be tempted to play more to the right. GARDEN SPOT Successfully challenge the tall fescue and catch the fast downslope of the fairway, and you could have a wedge shot left for your second. Davis wants…

“The one constant: Hit behind the ball.” Your ball landed in a greenside bunker. Now you’ve got to get it on the green and hopefully close to the hole. Before you swing, ask yourself one question: How thick is the sand? Y If it’s fluffy, think shallow swing. Widen your stance, address the ball toward your front foot, and set the clubshaft so it’s vertical. This will promote a swing where the club skims lightly through the sand. Any deeper and you might not get through it. As the clubhead passes under the ball, let your wrists hinge it upward to create more height and spin—great for steep bunker lips and holes that are close by. When the sand is firm, think steep swing. Play the ball in the middle…

“If you nap after landing, just be sure it’s a brief one.” You know that feeling when you get off a plane and your body is heavy and you’re totally exhausted? When you fly as much as I do, you figure out ways to combat the fatigue and illness that can follow long flights. Maybe my tips can help you. WATER ISN’T A HAZARD Best thing you can do on a travel day: Hydrate. Drink water the day before the flight, on the way to the airport, on the plane and after the flight. Most people don’t drink enough water during a normal day. It’s even more true on a travel day. When I’m on the flight, I’ll add some vitamin C, too. By drinking enough, you’re helping your body…

Shandies are ideal for lazy, hazy days. It was one of those hot, sticky days, and after we finished golf, Uncle Steve poured us glasses of beer mixed with lemonade. That nostalgic sweetness of lemonade mixed with the crispness of a light beer made for the perfect thirst-quenching, slightly buzz-inducing drink. What I thought was mixology genius was actually a homemade version of a drink that has been around since the 1800s: the shandy. “A shandy is something you’re drinking during the day, when it’s hot out, and usually when you’re doing something active,” says Andy Hurt, an instructor at New York’s Columbia Bartending Agency and School of Mixology. In the United Kingdom, shandies are typically a mixture of beer and a carbonated soda, such as 7Up, which many Britons…

I grew up on the lesson tee. Sometimes taking lessons, but mostly watching my dad [teacher Mike Malaska] give them or listening to legends like Jim Flick and Bob Toski. Now I’m teaching, too, and I can say that one thing hasn’t changed: Golfers hit slices. And the more they use their instincts to try to stop those slices, the farther right the ball goes, which we’ll get to in a minute. ? That’s my dad playing the slicer (left), and me holding the rings. We’re showing the difference between the target and what a slicer sees as re they use their instincts to try to stop those slices, the farther right the ball goes, which we’ll get to in a minute. ? That’s my dad playing the slicer (left),…