Tabla de contenidos para Issue 7, 2022 en Golf Digest

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE to tell someone you love them. Perhaps it has something to do with turning 60, but for several years now I’ve lived by that mantra. I’ve voiced the sentiment often, in cards, letters, and when possible, face to face. I say it not just to family members but to special friends. “I love you” might be the most powerful expression in the human vocabulary. It is the ultimate way to convey appreciation to those who have made a difference in our lives. The sentiment came to mind this summer as Tom Weiskopf was in the final stages of his battle with the pancreatic cancer that took his life. When I was a young boy, Tom was one of my biggest golfing heroes. He had a towering…

HAVING WORKED at Golf Digest for more than 13 years, I’ve been fortunate to interview plenty of big names. It’s an incredible perk that never gets old, but none of those chats has left me feeling as in awe as I was after talking to Alex Fourie. Alex isn’t a PGA Tour star or a celebrity golfer, but he’s one heck of a player, and he deserves to be famous for what he’s doing on and off the course. His infectious attitude, however—especially considering all he has been through—might be most amazing. “I hit the lottery,” Fourie says. “That’s what I tell people.” Most would argue otherwise. Fourie was born near Chernobyl in 1992, just six years after the biggest nuclear disaster in history. The radiation seeped into the rivers…

IN THE EARLY 1990S, Oakmont Country Club, revered as one of the nation’s greatest courses and host of 14 men’s and women’s majors, was covered in trees. Each hole was shrouded in a cloak of timber and leaf, the views of other holes almost non-existent. The members—at least most of them—loved it that way. They and their predecessors had spent decades enhancing the course through beautification programs, planting trees by the hundreds. Although originally built in the early 1900s to resemble a links on barren, broken farmland, Oakmont had gradually matured into a prototype of parkland golf. Not everyone believed the forestation of the course was a good thing. Shortly after Larry Nelson won the U.S. Open there in 1983, former longtime head professional Bob Ford took the Oakmont green…

MUST COMPLETE A ROUND WITHOUT SWEARING (EXTRA HOLE ADDED TO NEXT ROUND FOR EACH AUDIBLE CURSE). CAN ORDER ONLY ROSÉ FROM THE CART GIRL FOR SIX MONTHS. MUST ROCK PERSONALIZED IRON COVERS FOR A YEAR. MUST HIT ONE DRIVER OFF THE DECK PER HOLE FOR AN ENTIRE ROUND. MUST SERVE AS LEAGUE CHAMP’S WALKING CADDIE FOR 72 HOLES OF HIS/HER CHOOSING. MUST CONSUME JOHN DALY’S 2008 WYNDHAM CHAMPIONSHIP DIET DURING SINGLE ROUND (21 CIGARETTES, 12 DIET COKES, SIX PACKETS OF PEANUT M&Ms, NO WATER). MUST CURTSY TO OTHER GROUPS WHEN PLAYING THROUGH UNTIL NEXT SEASON’S DRAFT. MUST WATCH “THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE” ONCE A WEEK FOR A YEAR. MUST GET NAKED GREG NORMAN TATTOOED SOMEWHERE ON YOUR BODY.…

HOW IS IT WORKING AT LIV Golf? I get asked this every day now, usually by other caddies and typically by text. I respond the same way: It’s f______ great. For the first time in my career, caddies are treated like people. Does that sound melodramatic? Not if you’re a caddie on the PGA Tour. You might recall that caddies had to sue the PGA Tour a few years back. Officially, it was about not being compensated for serving as walking billboards for tournament sponsors, but really it was about being treated with respect. That lawsuit, which we lost, did lead to a few improvements, including health care. But tour officials still looked at us as disposable, that we should be lucky a player has taken us along for the…

Thousands of courses have trees, but only a few possess trees that matter. The following are some of the sport’s most impactful and unforgettable specimens. AUGUSTA NATIONAL GOLF CLUB Augusta, Ga. The most impressive tree at Augusta National is not on the golf course. It’s the regal live oak just off the back of the clubhouse, believed to have been planted in the 1850s before Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie were even born. One of the game’s great meeting places, the oak has become a landmark. BLACKWOLF RUN, THE RIVER, NINTH HOLE Kohler, Wis. Known as “Cathedral Spires,” this drivable par 4 can be maddening because the line to the green is over an upshoot of American basswood, red oaks and cottonwoods along the banks of the Sheboygan River. There’s…

AGE 29 LIVES Jupiter, Fla. Has won six LPGA tournaments, including the 2021 Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions. SMALLER IS BETTER I remember hitting a persimmon driver a long time ago, but I haven’t tried one recently. Still, I grew up hitting really small-headed steel or titanium drivers like the Callaway Big Bertha, so I got used to the smaller heads. I still lean that way today because I think they’re more accurate. —WITH E. MICHAEL JOHNSON club yards* driver 260 3-wood 235 7-wood 220 4-iron 200 5-iron 185 6-iron 175 7-iron 165 8-iron 155 9-iron 140 pw 125 50˚wedge 117 54˚wedge 110 58˚wedge 90 * carry distance DRIVER SPECS Titleist TSi4, 10°, Graphite Design Tour AD IZ 6S shaft. My driver says 10 degrees, but it’s actually 9.25. This is one…

MY REAL NAME IS JOO HYUNG. As a child, I loved Thomas the Tank Engine so much that I had people call me Thomas. It evolved into Tom. Even my older brother calls me Tom. My family moved to Australia after living in South Korea and briefly in China. My parents wanted us to learn English. (It’s one of three languages I speak now.) I played cricket, basketball, Australian football, but nothing clicked until I tried golf at age 6. It came naturally to me. Even though my dad was a mini-tour pro turned teaching pro, golf was never forced on me. But golf was the one thing I never got sick of. The cost of living in Australia was rising, so our family chose to move home to Asia.…

IF A MOVIE WERE EVER MADE OF Lee Trevino’s life, I know where it would start. In El Paso at a hardscrabble course called Horizon Hills where a 23-year-old Trevino arrived at 5 every morning to wash the carts and open the golf shop. One day a white Cadillac rolled in, and Lee went out to get the player’s Wilson tour bag from the trunk and park his car. Out stepped Raymond Floyd, the hottest young pro on tour, in town to play a money match against “some Mexican kid.” In the clubhouse, Trevino showed Floyd to his locker, shined his shoes and got him a Coke. “So who am I playing today?” Floyd asked wearily. The door opened and a friend of Floyd came in and said, “Hey, Raymond,…

ON THE PRACTICE green, it’s hard to simulate the pressure you feel standing over a make-or-break putt—hands trembling, heart pounding out of your chest. That’s because no matter what you do in practice to try to manufacture that type of pressure, you can’t make your heart beat as fast as it does in real time—until now. One day, I was with one of my former Korn Ferry Tour players, and he was running sprints around the practice green. I asked him why he was doing this, and he said it was to increase his heart rate so he could better simulate the feeling he had standing over a big putt. It made perfect sense. Over time, I’ve made a few modifications to this exercise, and I’ve found it to be…