Tabla de contenidos para Issue 3, 2022 en Golf Digest

Now I’m finally feeling freeI’m living down by an old par 3You know I’ll be playing The last lyric that came to Adam Granduciel for the latest The War on Drugs album is the one he’s most proud of—and the one he most enjoys singing. But the frontman and creative force behind the Grammy-winning rock band didn’t need to take any artistic license in coming up with it. Granduciel actually lives down by an old par-3 course, and it played a crucial role in his band’s most recent creation. After moving to the Studio City area of Los Angeles in 2020, Granduciel stumbled onto Weddington Golf Course while on a walk with his theninfant son, Bruce (named in part for one of Granduciel’s music idols, Bruce Springsteen). It soon became…

THERE’S A wonderful scene in the new motion picture “The Phantom of the Open” in which the real-life character named Maurice Flitcroft—the Great Impersonator who five times attempted to qualify for the Open Championship under various pseudonyms—has a sweet encounter in the locker room at Formby Golf Club with a 19-year-old Severiano Ballesteros. “Are you nervous?” asks Seve of his middle-aged acquaintance. “Yes and no,” Maurice says. “You don’t get nervous?” Seve says. “See, a mistake, for me, is an opportunity to learn something new about golf,” says Flitcroft in halting Spanish. “What did I do wrong? How can I do [pause] good-er? … Love your mistakes, Seve, and you can’t go wrong.” “Until next time,” Ballesteros says. “Hasta cajones,” malaprops Flitcroft. “Until testicles,” reads the captioned translation. Flitcroft is…

LUC ESQUIVEL HITS IN SILENCE, too engaged with carving trajectories through the Knoxville sky to chat. When he does speak, the words “My bad,” or “Agh, sorry” tumble out, prompted by a shot that didn’t follow his directions. That’s the type of 14-year-old Luc is, apologizing for things that don’t need an apology. He’s dressed in a black hoodie, ripped jeans and gray Chuck Taylors, and by himself. If it were up to him, he would be practicing with the high school team. But Luc was not allowed to try out because the Tennessee state legislature said he could not. It’s hard, Luc says, to have a group of people he has never met take control of his life, to define who he is and just as importantly who he…

GOLF CAN BE INTIMIDATING WHEN YOU FIRST START to play or return to the game after a long layoff. It can feel like you need a lot of practice to be somewhat decent. Truth is, it doesn’t have to take that much work. I’m going to help you speed up the learning process so you can hit good shots and have fun on the course right away. How? I’m going to break down the golf swing into movements you already know and show you how to incorporate them when you play. It’s like tapping into hours and hours of practice you’ve already banked—it’s your cheat code. Ready for the speed version of learning the golf swing? Let’s go! THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX TO GET SET AT THE TOP This might…

YOUR GOAL FROM A GREENSIDE BUNKER is simple: Give yourself a reasonable chance to hole out with your next shot. That’s it. You can do that if you come up with a simple strategy and stick with it. Here are my keys: DIG IN AND CHOKE DOWN From an open stance, play the ball close to your front heel and keep your chest hovering over it. The key is to get low with your hands and stance. This will help you skim the club through the sand. FLARE YOUR KNEES OUT Bowing your knees away from each other at address helps keep your lower body stable when you swing. CHANGE CLUBS For longer greenside shots, like I’m hitting here, you can open or close the clubface to regulate distance, but…

CALLING ALL high schoolers, whether or not you know a thing about golf. There’s a revolution afoot to bring back the greatest summer job ever to young people. Work outside, earn cash and scholarships, enjoy daily interaction with successful folks and maybe meet someone who changes your destiny. If you play golf or try, you get to live like a millionaire once a week on caddie day. For me, it was actually three days a week: Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays after 4 p.m. at Ekwanok Country Club, the greatest course in Vermont. It was such a raw deal I caddied there only eight summers through high school and college. Like a lot of gigs, caddieing took a hit during the pandemic. But now that normal modes of human contact are…

I CARRY FOR a guy you know, but you haven’t heard his name much the past few years. Still, given what I do for a living, I’m the subject of envy in social settings, and I’d be lying if I said the attention didn’t feel good. Recently, however, I attended my high school reunion, the type of biganniversary event that motivates you to lose weight to impress your friends, and maybe more importantly your foes. This time I was the one who was envious. I saw how many of my classmates were entrenched in thriving careers with robust families who seemed genuinely happy. On that same trip I ran into an ex-girlfriend, someone who I originally thought was the one, but it didn’t work out because of my transient lifestyle.…

I’ve only ever wanted one job: to play on the PGA Tour. I wanted to have all the Pro V1s I could hit on the practice range, to play all those amazing courses week in and week out and to have the big staff bag with my name on it. Everything I did was to try to get one level closer to that dream. I was lucky to have many tour players practicing at my home course, Royal Oaks in Dallas, where they would come to work with my coach, Randy Smith. From the time I was 7, I got a front-row seat in a class that taught what it would take to play at the highest level, from the shots to the preparation to the attitude. Pros such as…

Southern Hills Country Club in the oil-rich territory of northeast Oklahoma is the setting for one of majorchampionship golf’s most memorable opening tee shots. For close to 90 years players have been launching drives toward the distant Tulsa skyline off the property’s highest point, attempting to gauge the coordinates of the fairway below as their tee shots fall to Earth. Over the decades those calculations have intensified as trees have matured, others were planted, and the fairway lines gradually shrank. Missing the landing zone meant entanglement in the uncompromising Bermuda rough that swelled seasonally in proportion to the rising heat index, and instead of being one of the round’s most anticipated moments, the first drive became a cautionary tale that set expectations for a tough day of mandatory fairway finding.…

Demi Bagby threw one of the greatest first pitches in history. She ran onto the field in 2021 at a San Diego Padres game, did a backflip, landed in a split and threw the ball from that split position. The video went viral. If you’ve heard of her, it’s probably because of that pitch. Or maybe you’re one of the 2.6-million Instagram followers on her fitness-centric account. The list of Bagby’s athletic endeavors is long: bodybuilding, soccer, CrossFit, parkour, surfing, skateboarding, cheerleading, boxing, martial arts. Now you can add golf to the list. Bagby, 21, never thought she would be a golfer. Her propensity for adrenaline-fueled sports made her think golf wouldn’t fit her lifestyle. But she does know how to slow down. She has had to do it before.…

BAD SHOTS PLAGUE EVERY golfer, from tour players to someone picking up a club for the first time. The reaction is usually one of anger or resignation, which can carry over into the next shot and cause more exasperation. Before you know it, you’re on the final hole in a daze, unsure of how everything went so wrong. Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott are here to save you from yourself. The two women were working as golf coaches—Marriott after a collegiate golf career and Nilsson after playing on the LPGA Tour and coaching the Swedish nation-al teams—when they created Vision54. It’s a golf school in Scottsdale where people can go to get on-course training from the performance gurus. Nilsson and Marriott also work with professionals on the LPGA Tour and…

There was a time when Cobbs Creek Golf Course was the showcase of Philadelphia’s collection of municipal courses and worthy of national attention. That time might be returning because the course, presently closed, is being gently reclaimed by Hanse Design, the hottest golf-architecture firm in the game, and will be operated under a business model that’s different than any other cityowned golf course in the country. Situated at a prime location west of downtown, then as now served by rail stops, Cobbs Creek was, in the beginning, a rugged but entertaining 18. Built in 1915 within a large city park, the layout was fashioned under a restriction that prohibited any trees from being cut down, so the opening holes looped around a pasture, followed by several that weaved down a…

DRIVER SPECS TaylorMade Stealth Plus, 8°, Fujikura Ventus Black 7X shaft, 45 inches, D-3 swingweight. I picked up ball speed with this driver, and it goes as straight as my old one. Since putting it in play, I fiddled around with the adjustable weight on the sole, moving it about half an inch from the fade setting to a more neutral position. FAIRWAY WOOD SPECS TaylorMade Stealth, 16.5°; Fujikura Ventus Black 8X shaft. This 3-wood went in the bag at the match play and worked really well. I used it a lot off the tee on downwind holes. I get consistent distance across the face, especially when I hit it off the heel. IRONS SPECS Srixon ZU85 (3-iron), Nippon Pro Modus3 Hybrid Tour X; Srixon ZU85 (4-iron); TaylorMade P•7TW (5-PW),…

ROBERT ALLENBY KNOWS WHAT appears when you Google his name. His 21 victories worldwide don’t show up, nor does a PGA Tour résumé of four titles and $27 million in career prize money. Instead, photographs from the Australian’s incident in Hawaii in 2015 are the top result, accompanied by a kidnapping story even he admits “sounds like the movie ‘Taken.’” Seven years on, Allenby cannot escape the story that once made headlines. “Even now when I play golf, sometimes I hear people say, ‘Oh, that’s Robert Allenby. Did you see what happened to him in Hawaii?’” The saga began January 16, 2015, when Allenby missed the cut at the Sony Open. He went drinking at the Amuse wine bar in Waikiki with his then-caddie Mick Middlemo and good friend Anthony…

KIM FOGEL SHOT 85 for nine holes in her first official round, not including 40 swings that missed the ball. In the 18 years since, she has gotten her game down to a 7.8 Handicap Index and is on her fourth set of clubs. Her progress in the game mirrors her progress in how she has selected her clubs. All those whiffed shots ago, she purchased a packaged set labeled “Ladies.” Now she’s on her second set of custom-fit irons with a men’s senior-flex shaft. Getting better meant becoming her own advocate when she went shopping for clubs. It helps to work with a technician like John Pak at Golfdom, one of Golf Digest’s 100 Best Clubfitters. Says Fogel, “When I went for this last fitting, John said, ‘What do…

ADAM SCOTT NEVER thought he would wear spikeless golf shoes. He began his career wearing the stiff, metal-spiked FootJoy Classics. He wanted structure and traction to support his golf swing. When “spikeless” shoes came out, the view among tour players was “you’ll just slip around all over the place,” Scott says. But technology evolved, and Scott began wearing a shoe with plastic nubs in 2015. He didn’t lose traction. “In golf there are myths that have been around that aren’t necessarily true,” he says. “Spikeless was one. I’d say, ‘This spikeless shoe might have better traction,’ and guys would say, ‘No way—I’d slip everywhere’ without even trying it.” Seven years later, Scott’s back in a spiked shoe, this time one with plastic cleats because he needs more structure to help…

THERE’S MORE THAN ONE way to chip, but no matter the method, one goal stays the same: You need to use the clubhead’s bounce, or trailing edge, to consistently hit good shots around the greens. By striking the ground with the bounce first—and not the leading edge—you can execute these shots without worrying about hitting them fat. You can even be super aggressive with your swing, and the club will still skim along the turf. I recommend two chipping methods for the recreational golfer: The hinge-and-old method I’m demonstrating (above) and a stiff-wristed technique that is executed exactly how it sounds. The hinge-and-hold method requires more practice but can really add some touch to your short game when performed properly. Set up in a very open stance. As you swing…