Inhoudsopgave van August 2015 - Golf Digest

Marie Bos made her historic ace on the 154-yard 10th hole at Pacific Dunes. Happiness in a Shot Chairman and Editor-in-Chief A young woman playing in the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship made a hole-in-one, and her reaction was so typical. She first lamented the shot off the clubhead, but then it bounced and began to roll left toward the hole. Someone shouted, “Go in!” And it did. Nonplussed, she calmly picked up her tee, then realized what had happened, did a little dance and hugged her partner in joy. All captured by television cameras (see golfdigest.com/go/marieace). The happiest shot in golf is without doubt the hole-in-one. A 12,000-to-one shot for the average golfer. What made this one even more special was that the acer is one of our…

There you are in a fairway bunker, 160 out. No big deal, right? Nice little 5-iron. But you catch it thin, and the ball crashes into the lip and rolls back down to your feet. There are two things to remember before trying this shot: (1) Take more loft. If the yardage calls for a 5-iron but there’s a lip to get over, you probably need a 7 or an 8. It’s better to get out and be short of the green than to risk the ball coming back at you. (2) Stay grounded. Great fairwaybunker players have a stable lower body throughout the shot and a slight forward lean of the shaft at impact. That provides a downward strike for solid contact. Players who have a lot of body…

SOURCE: GOLF DIGEST READERS NO PEEKING! Keep your eyes down for a beat after impact. There are all kinds of putting styles, but most really good putters have two fundamentals in common: (1) They keep their heads still during the stroke, and (2) they don’t look up until after the ball leaves the putterface. Arnold Palmer was so stable over his putts because his head never seemed to move. And no matter what style Sam Snead was using, he said he didn’t want to look up until he heard the ball go in the hole. I’ve always thought that most putts are missed because golfers are too anxious to see the outcome. They look up too soon. To ensure I don’t do that, I wait one count after impact before…

Doing it ‘My Way’ I don’t listen to music while I practice. But when I’m done, I listen to rap. Fetty Wap (right) and Wiz Khalifa are on the playlist now. BROOKS KOEPKA AGE 25 RESIDES Jupiter, Fla. STORY Won the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Was 2014 European Tour rookie of the year after winning in Turkey. TRENDING UPWARD I’m nowhere close to the pinnacle I want to achieve. It’s one thing to make it on tour and win. But I want to be contending in majors and making the Presidents and Ryder Cup teams. I still have a lot to accomplish. FIND ME ON THE WATER When we’re home, anything in the water is fair game. Fishing, surfing, wakeboarding. I grew up on the water. —WITH STEPHEN HENNESSEY…

When your ball is 100 yards from the green, you expect to put it on—we all do. But executing from this distance isn’t as easy as it might seem. We skull it, chunk it, pull it, airmail it and sometimes turn birdie opportunities into desperate attempts to save bogey. Why do we botch this “easy” shot? We asked five Golf Digest Teaching Professionals to explain what happens and offer some advice on what you can do to make the 100-yard shot automatic. Here’s what they told us. —RON KASPRISKE SHORTEN IT UP Many golfers don’t have a club that carries the ball only 100 yards with a full swing, so they need to practice hitting three-quarter shots. Experiment with each of your short irons, gripping down about an inch and…

HAPPY PLACE 1 American Lake Veterans Golf Course Lakewood, Wash. Designed for Veterans Affairs hospital patients, though all veteran golfers are welcome, this course is run by some 200 volunteers who do everything: mow grass, give lessons, even provide reconditioned clubs to those new to the game. (More than 185 sets were distributed last year.) Play has increased so much in recent years that, at the urging of former PGA Tour player Ken Still, a Tacoma native, Jack Nicklaus agreed to donate his design services for a new back nine in an adjacent fruit orchard. The holes are set to open in September. Construction was done at cost, but the club is in need of about $200,000 to balance the books. Donations are welcome at veterangolf.org. 2 Baltusrol Golf Club…

HAPPY TIMES How much golf would you play if you could play as much as you wanted? Imagine all of life’s constraints—work, family, money, a nagging injury—vanished. ▶ This was the question posed in a recent study by Minnesota State University. More than 2,000 golfers participated. Every respondent had a USGA Handicap (the average Index was 13.3), and most were summer-starved Minnesotans, so a pretty serious bunch. Including time for practicing, reading about golf or watching it on TV, as well as yapping about it at the 19th hole, the magic number that shook out was 21 hours a week. Blackjack. Call it three or four rounds, plus a few extracurriculars. ▶ But in reality these golfers were getting only 10 hours. Now, that 11-hour deficit might not draw sympathy…

HAPPY ENDING A golf course is a special place. It’s a site of competition, friendship, tradition and memories. For some, though, it’s more than that. They look at a golf course—usually in the wee hours, framed by moonlight, perhaps—and think, You know what? That would be a great place to have sex. A middle-age Dartmouth graduate who asked for anonymity—we’ll call him Matt—has fond memories of golf-course hookups in his college days. “We were young and in love,” he says. Because Dartmouth dormitories didn’t have a lot of single rooms, “we had sex in a number of places outdoors” during the summer and fall terms. “The golf course was best. It was secluded, and the greens were smooth and soft, and pretty flat. Thinking about all the chemicals in them,…

As a former tour player from Utah, I knew about Tony’s power long before I became his teacher last spring. His distance is almost unbelievable. He holds the record for the highest ball speed ever recorded on the PGA Tour—193 miles per hour—from the 2007 U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee. Tony reins it in a lot of the time, but when he lets one go, there are few people who get anywhere close to him. Where does he find that power? Tony is largely self-taught and by nature is nontechnical. He’s very smart—he’s a voracious reader—but likes to approach the swing in simple language. He prefers swing keys that are visual and feel-oriented. We call them “feelmages,” a blend of things you can see and sense. Here are a few…

One of the hallmarks of my new A Swing is that it improves the flow of what is often an awkward transition move from backswing to downswing. An easy way to understand this is to visualize what a hitter does as a pitch approaches home plate: He steps toward the ball, and the bat drops from a steep position into a much shallower one. To get your club to fall onto the proper plane as you start down, follow these four steps. David Leadbetter is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional. 1. SWING IT BACK STEEP The plane of the A Swing halfway back is very upright— the shaft nearly matches the spine angle. I’ve found it’s easier to get the club on plane coming down if it starts from a…

Remember these handy tips to make your time in the sand easier. CAN ● Smooth footprints before a shot for the sole reason of tidying (as long as it doesn’t improve the lie, stance, swing, or line of play). ● Sweep away enough sand to identify a buried ball, though the original lie must be re-created before hitting. If completely buried, you may leave a small part of the ball visible before hitting. ● Lean on your club to prevent yourself from falling while trying to get in or out of a bunker (provided that you don’t improve the lie of your shot or test the condition of the sand). ● Dig in with your feet, even to make a practice swing. You can do this more than once to…

Nothing offers more power off the tee than a properly fit, full-size driver. So where does the new crop of “mini” drivers fit in? The two mini drivers and two fairway woods pictured here have plenty of face pop, but the mini—about half the size of today’s drivers—is larger and has a longer shaft than a typical 3-wood. This increased forgiveness and clubhead speed make the mini a good option off the tee on shorter par 4s. One drawback, though, is that the mini’s larger size makes it harder to hit off the turf. So if versatility is what you’re after, the mini might not be the play. Then again, if you have difficulty hitting your 3-wood off the ground, you should ditch it, too. Instead, add a mini driver…

In Cincinnati a couple of years ago, I played a round at Hyde Park Golf & Country Club, a terrific course designed mostly byDonald Ross. One of the guys in the group was Thomas Tami, an ear-nose-andthroat doctor, who was 60 at the time. Tami had an unusual swing: Except at address and for a brief moment near the middle, he never looked at his ball. I asked one of his friends about that, and he said, “Oh, Tom broke his neck.” Tami told me: “When I was in college, I woke up one morning and lifted my head off the pillow to look out the window, and my neck snapped.” It turned out that he had fractured his odontoid process—a little thumb of bone that sticks up from the…

HAPPY START To be happy. Distill our infinite dreams and ambitions to an essence, and this is what you get when you ask almost anyone what they want in life. It might come from the sense of serving a higher being, or that first spoonful of mint chocolate chip as their butt sinks into the sofa. If you’re reading this, chances are golf is a big part of your strategy to enjoy your short time on this planet. Later into our years than almost all sports, golf feeds hope. But is that enough? Each year, the question of what makes us happy produces piles of research. A lot of it suggests society’s increasing emphasis on materialism and status is driving up depression rates. Indeed, Zen golfers won’t help a golf…

HAPPY SCORES A ski-lift ticket doesn’t come with a stopwatch. Hikers win every time they make it back to the car. But golf loves a number. Only bowlers keep score more unfailingly, though for them the overhead computers don’t really give much choice. But unless you keep score with the same absolute rigor as required when millions of dollars or Masters invitations are at stake, why do it to yourself? Sure, whether you shun mulligans or putt out two-footers for triple says something about your character, but for a lot of golfers, score is an approximation, a line item on a tax return. You could make a reasonable defense in the unlikely event of an audit. “Stroke play is a nonsense game; I don’t see why anyone would do it…

HAPPY PROS SOME PEOPLE EXUDE HAPPINESS. In the case of Rickie Fowler, all his showy trappings of stardom—the fast cars, the flatbrimmed orange crush of fans, the YouTube backflips and motocross aerials, the steamy victory embrace with his fashion-model girlfriend— might make a facile impression, but they aren’t the truest indicators. The 26-yearold Californian’s centeredness and serenity are more convincing. Observing Fowler leaves one believing that behind the arresting features is a keen mind that can hold and manage opposing qualities necessary to a fulfilled life: adventure and caution, energy and patience, humility and confidence. He is both watchful introvert and charismatic performer, each persona somehow always at peace. Even when he’s making the still-too-frequent double bogeys, Fowler never actually looks unhappy. In lively practice rounds with Phil Mickelson and…

A GOLF DIGEST BEST YOUNG TEACHER When you talk about the concept of speed in the golf swing, it’s easy to get confused and frustrated. Many players’ first instinct—to make their hands and arms go as fast as possible right at the ball—leads to things that actually make the swing slower. It’s a common sight on the range and the course: The more effort and brute force players put in, especially with the upper body, the shorter and more off line their shots seem to go. Real, usable, repeatable speed doesn’t come from trying to kill the ball with your hands and arms, and it doesn’t come from creating a lot of “X-factor” in your swing, meaning a big shoulder turn against a restricted hip turn. SETTING UP POWER: STAY…

NOT HAPPY OK, it’s possible you know a guy who fits the above description to a tee, except that he’s as happy-go-lucky as they come. Our research method didn’t exactly meet Nobel scientific standards, nevertheless, we think we’ve uncovered something. In our national poll, we analyzed the downtrodden 13 percent who reported feeling “often not happy at all, but frustrated” on the golf course. Against the majority, it was little surprise they skewed shorter in stature (the direct correlation between height and things like self-esteem and income are well-documented). But the greater representation near the West Coast was curious. Maybe all that extra sunshine and medical marijuana doesn’t make up for the fact that 71 of Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest Courses are east of the Mississippi River. As for…

Tour players make such good contact on iron shots because they stay grounded as they swing down and through the impact zone. There’s not a lot of body sway, and they certainly don’t rise out of their address posture the way many amateurs do to try to help the ball into the air. You might have heard the terms “covering the ball” or “staying on top of it.” They mean feeling like your chest is pointing at the ball through impact. A great drill to reinforce that feel is to hit shots off a downhill lie. You don’t want the slope to be so severe that it throws off your balance, but it should give you the feeling that your front leg is firmly planted on the ground when you…

THERE’S NO QUESTION KHAKIS are the hardest working pants you own. “They can be worn at the office, to the club or in the yard,” says Bill Thomas, founder of Bills Khakis. “Just change your shirt and shoes, and go.” The terms khakis and chinos are mostly synonymous today, but it’s worth noting that chinos are a pair of cotton-twill pants that are often, but not always, khaki-colored. The pants are called chinos because the cloth used to make them was originally manufactured in China. Khaki comes from the Hindustani language and means soil-colored. In British India in the mid-19th century, Sir Harry Lumsden ordered his troops to dye their white uniforms an earth tone to better blend with the desert landscape. It’s fair to say khaki was the original…

I’ve laid down like an old dog. If I play 30 tournaments a year, inevitably there are going to be a few when I just mail it in. Either I’m tired or my swing’s a mess. I want nothing more than to get off the golf course and refresh for the next week. I know guys who grind even when they’re missing the cut by a dozen. Respect for giving the fans everything they got, but that ain’t me. You’re guaranteed to find a few cases of less-than-totaleffort in the first five pairings on a Sunday morning. The difference between T-70 and T-50 is probably only a couple grand, so you’ve got to go super low with 63 or 64 to pass enough players to make it really worthwhile. If…

HAPPY EXPERIMENTS The happiest golfer I ever knew was Peggsy. “Isn’t this the greatest?” was his mantra from the parking lot to the last putt, no matter the weather or what he shot. Peggsy was not only the best player on our high school team, he was also the luckiest. Twice we saw him bounce balls off power lines and back into the field of play. Who does that? We’d roll our eyes, yet we sensed his 6-handicap wasn’t all magic. There was something about his indefatigable mood that made him hard to beat. Turns out, there’s scientific proof this “happiness edge” exists. First off, if you’re waiting for good golf to deliver happiness, know that it works the other way around. “We need to reverse the formula for happiness…

HAPPY GAMES We call them Goat Hills Rules, but what they really are is a ticket to freedom from the confining formats most of us play out of habit. We created these rules—stole them, actually—from our resident legend and literary genius, Dan Jenkins, who set them forth in his classic books, The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate and Dead Solid Perfect. Goat Hills was the nickname for the woolly muny Dan and his pals played as youths in Fort Worth. The games they played were silly, daring and outrageous, and we find them as much fun to play now as Dan claims they were then. They’re not always an easy sell to straight-laced friends. But try a few of these Goat Hills Rules once, and we assure you’ll come back…

HAPPY MOMENTS IF we had any decency, what we would feel most is sympathy, not happiness, at another’s misfortune. But many emotions are boiling under the quiet atmosphere at a putting green. Give Matt Every credit for being forthright immediately after his Bay Hill victory in March, when he shared what he was thinking as Henrik Stenson attempted a birdie putt on 18 that would’ve tied him: You’re already in [the Masters]. Miss it. I need to get in. What follows are the notable misses that made somebody— or in some cases, several golfers—happy. Whether they admit it or not. 1946 Masters Ben Hogan can earn his first major victory if he sinks a 12-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole. But he runs the ball 30 inches past. He…

WITH GUY YOCOM I’M NO AUTHORITY on the PGA Tour, because I just got here. I’m a Web.com Tour graduate, and it took a while to get to the big show—I’d missed making it through the old Q school five times. I can’t get over how nice it is out here. The fact I get a courtesy car every week blows me away. The food is unreal—I love the expression “player dining.” It’s a long way from the mini-tours, where my big meal of the day was the soup and sandwiches the sponsor put out. It’s amazing how we have an assortment of range balls to choose from. I’m addressed correctly as “Mr. FEE-now” more, and “Mr. Fuh-NOO” less. It’s a whole new level of respect. I’M ONLY 25, but…