Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 8, 2022 i Golf Digest

What is a paunchy pro ranked outside the top 100 doing shirtless and tatted on the cover of Golf Digest? It’s a reasonable question if you love the sport, at least in part, for its elevated decorum against society’s ever-slipping standards. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Joel Dahmen denuded. The one-time PGA Tour winner enjoyed a viral moment this spring when he and Harry Higgs bared chests to enthrall the beer-soaked crowd at the WM Phoenix Open. If exposed golf tans outside the locker room is an affront, forgive my instinct to pat your head. Never has pro golf been through a pressure cooker of a season like the one it just had. The rise of an alternative tour generated moral outrage over “blood money” and alleged traitors,…

IT’S A TRANQUIL FALL MORNING AT Shorehaven Golf Club—just not on the patio where Chris Russo is ranting to the delight of a longtime listener, first-time caller. Only I’m not holding a phone but rather sitting next to one of the most popular—and animated—sports-talk-show hosts ever. Russo, better known as “Mad Dog,” has been talking mostly about golf for an hour, but as we start to wrap up a lively conversation, we begin riffing on topics like the recent retirements of Roger Federer and Serena Williams, the greatest NBA teams of all time, and Chris Paul versus Bob Cousy. We disagree on the latter—let’s just say Russo is a staunch defender of the old guard, including old point guards—but I still emerge smiling from the spirited back-and-forth chat like countless…

Forgive the low language, but there’s really no other way to describe them. As golfers, you know one when you see one. Sometimes bigger but mostly small, these are the actions that reveal a crack where you can peek into a person’s true soul. They are committed by all genders, and if the cast of Seinfeld were all golfers, the following could inspire 26 episodes. To protect the guilty as well as themselves, the members of our editorial staff have forgone bylines. Slow Exit We’re all for the post-round handshake or bro hug. Once done with that, though, get out of the way. Other people are ready to play to the green, and what they don’t need is you fumbling for your phone, keys and wallet, or putting away your…

Making mistakes is an inherent part of golf: attempting to hit a hero shot instead of punching out, misreading putts, even white belts, for pity’s sake. However, the biggest danger facing modern golfers is Twitter. The social-media platform can be a source of good, yet it often proves to be the opposite. That might sound moralistic, but the following golf-related tweets make the point. We gathered the more controversial Twitter posts in recent years, ranging from the relatively harmless to the profoundly dumb to the disturbingly callous. If there’s a throughline through these, it’s this: THINK BEFORE YOU TWEET! 1 GRAYSON MURRAY-KEVIN NA CLATTER CONTEXT: It started innocently when Golf Channel reporter Chantel McCabe wrote on Twitter, “Kevin Na walking in putts does not get old” during the 2022 Sony…

Let’s pretend congratulations are in order. You just joined a private golf club, a place where you can let loose with friends, indulge in a few cocktails, play, practice and escape such mundane matters as career and family. Plus, if you’ve plonked down the cash for initiation and dues, odds are you’re not living paycheck to paycheck. Take a moment to appreciate your place in life. Many golfers would sacrifice a pinky toe to be in your position. You’re doing swell. With those pleasantries out of the way, let’s move on to a more pressing (if slightly awkward) conversation. Having a membership number does not give you carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want. There’s a line, and crossing it can get you kicked out—which, reputationally, is worse…

Do caddies on the LPGA Tour hook up with players? I get this question a lot, and if it’s not a close friend, I’ll usually ignore it because if I say “yes,’’ salacious questions always follow. The truth is that it happens, and there’s nothing salacious about it. It’s a tight group out here—without the flunkies and minions that you see on the PGA Tour. Coaches rarely make an appearance. Just a few national writers cover the sport. It’s more communal than on the PGA Tour or DP World Tour. I know because I have worked both. Here’s the deal: A large contingent of LPGA Tour players are younger than 30. The same goes for caddies. I don’t care what your profession is, if you get a bunch of 20-somethings…

PLEASE DON’T TAKE OFFENSE to this statement of fact, but public-course golfers tend to nudge their golf balls to a better lie more often than private-course players do. I consider myself somewhat of an authority on this subject because I’ve played half my life at public courses and the other half at private clubs. IT’s not a moral judgment. Publinxers are just as honest, ethical and serious about the rules of life as anyone, but the natural convention at your average public course is such that conditions allow for The Nudge. You know what I mean: the gentle prod with a clubhead just a few inches to a slightly upgraded patch of turf. No harm, no foul. Jack Nicklaus has always argued that the rules should let you roll your…

IF YOU’RE PLAYING LIKE TRASH, TIME TO DUMP YOURGAME PLAN. MY ADVICE? EXPECT LESS AND DON’T TRY SO HARD. (LIKE AFTER YOU HAVE THAT BEER AT THE TURN.) On the Tee Let’s start where it all starts: the first tee. But before we get to that opening shot, consider how you got there. You raced to the course, checking texts and chugging coffee, then bolted to the range and hit a flurry of drivers (no good ones), zipped past the practice green and landed on the tee box, frazzled and all nerves. Then, in an act of utter cluelessness, you grab that same unfaithful driver and expect to stripe one. Instead, you flare it O.B., turn to your buddies and say, “What the hell was that?” That was exactly what…

ANYONE CAN PLUNK DOWN hundreds, if not thousands, and take a lesson from one of Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers in America. But you’re really missing out if you don’t heed the advice of this guy. He has been giving lessons at Ed’s Golf Range and Bait Shop since 1986, and he guarantees to impact your handicap by at least five shots. GRIP “Hold the club gently like it’s a baby bird? Wrong! Grab it like you’re trying to strangle a banana. Ever see someone hold a sledgehammer gently? Plus, if you hold on tight enough, you’ll never need to replace your grips.” BACKSWING “When should it end? It depends on how far into the pond you’re trying to throw your driver.” CHIPPING “Let the bounce of your wedge do…

“BOOMER SOONER” IS THE FIGHT song for the University of Oklahoma’s athletic teams, but it just as well could be the nickname for former Sooner golf standout Chris Gotterup. Last year, in eight PGA Tour starts, the 2022 Haskins Award winner (national college player of the year) averaged a whopping 326.5 yards per drive. Had he played in enough events to qualify, he would have won the distance title by more than five yards. Gotterup’s average clubhead speed also ranked among the leaders at 128 miles per hour, and that’s just his “cruising” speed. He says he can crank it up to 133 mph. Gotterup will tell you there’s no big secret to crushing drives—“I just make as big a turn as I can, and let ’er rip!”—but he does…

AGE 35 HEIGHT 5-11 CLUBHEAD SPEED 111 MPH DRIVING DISTANCE 292.1 150-YARD CLUB 9-IRON MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS 9* CAREER EARNINGS $9,631,471 STRENGTHS DRIVING ACCURACY, BALL-STRIKING JOEL DAHMEN *PLAYED IN SAM WEINMAN AGE 48 HEIGHT 6-0 CLUBHEAD SPEED 93 MPH DRIVING DISTANCE 230 150-YARD CLUB 7-IRON MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS 55** CAREER EARNINGS $268*** STRENGTHS SPELLING, METAPHORS, ALWAYS HAS TEES ** MEDIA CREDENTIAL *** SHOP CREDIT ★★★★WHAT WOULD YOU SHOOT IF A TOUR PLAYER HIT ALL YOUR DRIVES? Joel Dahmen and I had known each other for only a few minutes, and he could already smell fear. It was just after dawn in the Arizona desert, and the PGA Tour veteran and I were standing back-to-back for a photo before teeing off on video. “I can feel Sam’s heart beating through his shirt,” Joel said. It wasn’t quite…

The elements that make a great golf hole have been debated since shepherds started swatting stones through the whins. Architects from Alister MacKenzie to Tom Doak have written about the merits of strategic design, hazard placement and the virtues of playability and options. Scribes like Bernard Darwin, Herbert Warren Wind, Charles Price and Dan Jenkins had their scotch-fueled beliefs, each making eloquent and wit-laced cases for what constituted good, better and best. For more than 50 years Golf Digest has done the same, if more soberly, tasking an army of data-driven course-ranking panelists to assess the degrees of excellence of thousands of courses across the land. Golf’s grand thinktank chews on the issue endlessly, staking positions and advancing great-hole theories that invariably evaporate the harder one bites into them. For…

JOEL DAHMEN IS DESCRIBED by some as a bit of a cornhole, em, exponent. I hear he’s even considering entering Cornhole Tour School (not to be confused with Korn Ferry Tour school). That said, let’s get to his action. Joel’s motion is very easy on the eyes. His rhythm jumps off the pages at you. Known for extreme accuracy and controlling his trajectory, he throws every bag like he’s carving a 5-iron into a tight pin. Looking at this toss more closely and breaking it down, he’s very smooth in his approach, as you can see in the first few photos here. He starts using the ground, lowering his body and allowing vertical forces to come into play—he’s perfectly poised for a quality release. I particularly like—and this is important…

THE DREADED SHANK: Just the sound of it sends shivers down any golfer’s spine. Why in the world would anyone want to hit the ball sideways? Well, I'll tell you why. Firing off a couple of dead shanks is my specialty. I’ve been doing it ever since high school. Though unintentional at first, it soon became a way to draw a few laughs and loosen up my team and me before a big match. For example, back in 2015 I was playing in my second-ever college tournament for Pepperdine. It was early before a long 36-hole day, and a number of guys from each squad were warming up on the range, including players from Arizona State and the host school, Cal Berkeley. You couldn’t have drawn up a more perfect…