Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul 2024 - Issue 422 i Golf Australia

Graham Marsh’s sea change dream has been realised in stunning fashion – 25 years after his appointment as consulting course architect at Cottesloe Golf Club. A complete redesign of the West Australian course’s greens and bunkers, finalised in February 2024, has ensued in what is now a true testament to golf. Cottesloe Golf Club, rated at number 75 in Golf Australia magazine’s Top 100 Courses for 2024, is nothing short of an exceptional golfing experience in a spectacular and much-revered location. Over the past quarter of a decade, changes in technologies and efficiencies have been monitored and embraced, and new grasses developed to best cope in their natural environment. The club boldly took advantage of the grass evolution and has now converted all greens to a new bent grass variety,…

“IF IT WAS TIGER FACING PHIL AT TROON RATHER THAN ME, MAYBE IT WOULD BE THE BEST FINAL ROUND EVER. I DON’T MATCH UP TO THE OTHERS.” It’s eight years since you won The Open at Royal Troon GC. Have you ever watched it back? “I have. Every now and again, I pull up YouTube and watch a couple of shots. I have only been back to Troon three times since, but it’s where the finest achievement of my career happened. My boy Karl is a keen golfer and he likes to watch it.” You broke the majors record at the time with a 63 on the final day. Is that round at Troon still the best performance of your career? “I would say so. I was in the zone;…

To give someone a chance. In some instances, a second chance. To see the similarities, not the differences. To understand we are all connected in some way through our humanity and to foster that connection. This is inclusion in action. And in golf, it lives in Empower Golf. The story of Empower Golf is the story of two remarkable men who suffered catastrophic injuries and then set about helping others. It is the story of the inspiring people they serve. And it’s a story of love, fate and the game underpinning it all. It is a powerful story, all of it, and it’s not finished yet. As a youngster, James Gribble was exposed to a range of sports by his parents, but wasn’t really into golf until his university days,…

If you’re an experienced golfer, I expect you have come to view expectancy as something of a tease. You know how it goes: a fantastic practice session on the eve of a big tournament … struggling to overcome a sense of surging optimism as you try to sleep … excitement on the way to the course … a curious miscue during your warm-up that came from nowhere, amid a growing sense that things feel different today … and ultimately, a performance which emphatically fails to deliver on the expectancy you had last night. You are not alone. We have all been there. It is a rare day indeed that our actions actually live up to our expectations. The problem is that, as a race, we humans rather enjoy expectancy. This…

The Great Western Highway is one of Australia’s most historic roads and a key east-west connection out of Sydney. Over the last century it has been progressively upgraded to make it safer and more reliable. The trail today and the one your parents took when they drove you up to have a look at The Sisters in the dead of winter when you were 11 years old are vastly different, which is good news for you and your golf mates. Only a 25-minute drive from Penrith sits the village of Springwood in an area travelled through by early European explorers who were trying to get their heads around the vast Blue Mountains landscape. They used to camp by a spring surrounded by towering Blue Gums in an area known to…

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I will be honest; I have never put a set of PING irons in play during nearly a lifetime of playing golf. That certainly wasn’t a boycott by any means. I have been a regular user of the putters and fairway woods, but I have never used the irons for no real reason. But having a hit with the new i530 irons made me ponder whether I had been missing out. To start with, it is a beautiful club. I prefer classical looking with not a heap of offset, and the i530s tick both of those boxes. I was happy with how the club presented at the address; there is enough bulk in the clubhead to ensure plenty of confidence when you’re about to pull the trigger, but…

Growing up a rugby league fan and a loyal supporter of the Parramatta Eels, I long thought the best thing to ever come out of Gerringong was the legendary player Mick Cronin. Cronin famously was selected to represent Australia on a Kangaroo Tour to England while still playing first grade for his beloved hometown. He finished that Tour as the highest point scorer, but it was several years before he was enticed to head to the “big smoke” and play for Parramatta. It was there where he remained for the rest of his playing career, while still living in the little south coast beach town. Today, Gerringong’s favourite son continues to run the iconic Cronin’s Gerringong Hotel/Motel, which is just a few minutes’ drive from the golf club, which easily…

A member-elected Director for six years and Deputy Chair for the past two years, Ian Baker-Finch has officially begun his three-year term as Chair of the PGA of Australia, following an Annual General Meeting in late May. He takes over from Rodger Davis, who helped guide the PGA through a tremendous period of change in his six years as Chair. The 1991 Open Champion at Royal Birkdale, Baker-Finch, 63, has become one of the most respected voices in world golf through his television commentary in both Australia and the United States. Given his status within the game around the world, Baker-Finch hopes to use his position to further advance the game in Australia. “Throughout the world, the popularity of golf is booming and my central focus will be to leverage…

The commitment and devotion of some sports fans to their beloved athletes can seem stronger than any marriage vow or even blood connection, so was it any surprise to see Scottie Scheffler’s disciples gracing the grounds of Valhalla GC with home-printed Scheffler mug-shot tees following his arrest during the PGA Championship? In this shot, he mightn’t have looked as amped as his adoring fans, but then again, he had just been held in a prison cell – where he performed a series of stretching exercies – in the middle of a major golf championship.…

When the World’s No.1-ranked female golfer takes to the course, each and every shot she plays is a free lesson for the rest of us, particularly in this scenario. “In this image it looks like Nelly Korda is 80-90 yards away from the flag,” Moore Park Golf Club PGA Pro Ollie Neave said when we asked him to take us through her likely approach to escaping the sand and getting on with her round. “Firstly, her set up is very grounded. You can see she’s shuffled her feet in for a really solid base; there isn’t a lot of wasted movement. And she’d probably taken half an extra club or a full club extra for this shot. “Out of the fairway bunker, depending on the sand, she’s probably just trying…

It is a harsh reality and lament of many modern golf course designers that “all the good land has long been taken”. Certainly that statement rings even truer if you consider the availability of “seaside” property, as anything by the coastline is often referred to by those in the UK. Thankfully many who were able to get their hands on the good stuff, likely dating back over 100 years ago, have left a legacy of wonderful courses which continue to be a source of inspiration and enjoyment for us all today. Of course, being by the sea does not a good course automatically make, but on the bright side, the prospect of a good renovation in the hands of the right designer is never beyond the realms of possibility. The…

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Since Allan Robertson apprenticed a young Old Tom Morris in his golf shop at St Andrews in 1839, manufacturers have trotted out various materials to sell us clubs. Timbers such as beech, hornbeam, hickory and persimmon gave way to steel, graphite, chrome and carbon fibre. In 1985, Santa gave me a Ping 5-iron made of beryllium, a copper used to make “nuclear weapons and reactors, missile parts, rocket propellants, navigational systems, aircraft-satellite-space vehicle structures, heat shields, and mirrors,” according to an Australian government agency on the internet. Byron Nelson took to steel shafts in the 1930s, and people thought he was mad. Then he changed his swing and beat up on Ben Hogan, time and again. When Nelson won the U.S Open in 1939, he hit the flag-stick…

We are here with adidas talking shoes; in particular the Tour360 24. When you were a junior, did you have every model and colour, or just one beaten-up pair? I had a lot of shoes. Look, you have to match every shoe to every outfit. I get away with wearing the same all-white pair a lot. There is nothing wrong with that; I love that. I think that’s where you have to start. But after that, then you’re thinking about all the colourways you can match up, and that’s why we make them; there’s a lot of different colours to match up with your outfits. Being an adidas athlete, is that one of the major perks, alongside golf clubs? Yeah, it’s a very bad habit; not just with golf shoes,…

Lexi Thompson is to retire from full-time competition at the end of this season, ending a successful career which benefitted greatly from her a powerful game and wide appeal among young fans. Recently taking part in her 18th U.S Women’s Open in Pennsylvania, the fact Thompson is only 29 years of age shows just how young the American star was when her career took off. Thompson was just 12 when she qualified for the 2007 U.S Women’s Open at Pine Needles, at the time the youngest player to ever qualify. She also set an LPGA Tour record as the youngest winner when she captured the LPGA Classic at age 16. Both records have since been broken. “Golf has been my life ever since I was five years old; I’ve played…

In 2023, under seasonably windy and rainy conditions on the weekend, American star Brian Harman broke through against a strong contingent of superstars which included Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy, for his first major title. Harman had previously two PGA Tour wins in 340 career starts. The then-36-year-old wasT4 after round one and one shot back. However, going out early on Friday morning, he grabbed the championship by the throat and fired a career-altering 6-under 65 to catapult to a five-shot lead entering the weekend. At that point, The Open was Harman’s to lose. But if you listen to his interviews in the aftermath, he’s always relished the vulnerable nature of golf – as he describes it. He enjoys having everything on his own shoulders, with no one to blame…

CONTACT: BUILD COMPRESSION Let’s first establish that we are talking about contact when the ball is lying on the turf. A ball perched on a high tee – as for a driver – affords a more level or sweeping attack and strike, but for the vast majority of shots we face, we are looking for a contact that applies a more downward, squeezing pressure on to the ball, allowing maximum energy transfer from a lofted clubface. What would that look like? Here are two potential ‘contacts’. 1. In the first, the clubshaft is leaning forward, the face delofted and ball opposite the meat of the blade. 2. In the second the shaft is leaning back, the face shows extra loft and the ball is opposite the bottom of the blade.…

Rising Aussie star – and have you heard, an accomplished junior tennis player – Gabi Ruffels has turned plenty of heads in her rookie year on the LPGA Tour across 2024. Already ranked inside the top-50 players in the world, the 24-year-old has finished tied for third at the Mizuho Americas Open and third as well in the Cognizant Founders Cup, amongst her top-10 finishes. “Gabi hits it really, really straight. I have seen her stats; she hits a lot of greens in regulation,” offers Moore Park Golf Club PGA Pro Ollie Neaves, who is back to help us analyse a recent tee shot of Ruffels’. “She is loaded up here really nicely. She is quite flat, judging from the angle this shot was taken, but she has a really…

Say what you will about Australia’s major highway system – or don’t, because, you know, stuff talking about roads – but those civil engineers and nation builders who put it all together have, by and large, given us quick and convenient thoroughfares along the mighty passages of our great southern land. One of the very best is the Pacific Motorway – the mighty M1 – which soars north out of Sydney Town like an eight-lane runway to paradise. Or in this case Newcastle, where it ends up after 127 kilometres of bitumen beauty. Maybe not beauty; it’s a road, not Jessica Alba. But it is a beaut, the M1. Mainly because it can take you to golf in the famous Hunter Valley; 23,000 square kilometres of beaches, vineyards and rugby…

When you roll through the gates at premier golf clubs, anticipating what you are about to experience is a thrill that never wanes. As soon as you drive into The Lakes Golf Club and catch your first glimpse of the dramatic layout, you cannot help but salivate over what you are casting your eyes over; pure paradise in the form of a golf course. The property is spread across either side of Southern Cross Drive in Eastlakes, in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. As per the cliché to describe many things in this great game, it truly is a tale of two nines. Growing up in another country, this writer was never able to play or experience the layout before Mike Clayton was commissioned to redesign the iconic venue in 2006. However,…