Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2018 i Golf Magazine

SCAN THIS PHOTO TO WATCH A VIDEO OF THIS LESSON AND ADD YARDS NOW See page 6. HOW IT WORKS Invisible watermarks on select photos act as gateways to bonus videos. With the Digimarc app, your smartphone or tablet recognizes the watermarks and automatically delivers the content to your device. 1 Download and open the Digimarc Discover app on your smartphone or camera-capable tablet. The app is free and is available at the iTunes store for Apple devices and at the Google Play market for Android devices. 2 Position the phone four to seven inches above any photo bearing the yellow SCAN THIS PHOTO label (example, right), as if you were taking a picture (flash optional). If you have access to a Wi-Fi connection, downloads will be faster. 3 Hold…

WHICH AUGUST STORIES AND COLUMNS DREW THE MOST LETTERS? Phil Mickelson 57% Tour War 23% Alan Shipnuck 10% Other 10% THRILLED FOR PHIL All the things you hear about Phil and the fans are more than true. I was a USGA volunteer at the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, stationed at the player dropoff area for the 10th tee. Phil arrives, and not only does he stop and say hello, he goes on to thank us for volunteering. He tells us how the players know that without the volunteers, there wouldn’t be a tournament. Then he takes the time to ask how we’re doing and if there is anything we need, because if there is he’ll let the USGA know about it. I think he would have stayed and…

For much more from Alan, go to GOLF.com/the-knockdown STANDING OVER a birdie putt on the first hole of The Cradle, the new Gil Hanse par-3 course at Pinehurst, there is a most unexpected distraction: a Creedence Clearwater Revival guitar riff. Yes, stately old Pinehurst is getting its groove on, and the most obvious manifestation is pouring out of the hidden speakers scattered around The Cradle, a rollicking little layout with a beverage cart that features beer on tap. Adjoining the Cradle is another new addition, Thistle Dhu, a topsy-turvy putting course on which the tee markers double as drink holders. A couple of hundred yards away is the 18th green of the venerable No. 2 course, framed by a new sports bar called The Deuce. What was once a pair…

U.S. PLAYER WHO MOST OUTPERFORMED EXPECTATIONS Patrick Reed, at 1.9 points earned above expectations (in two singles matches and seven team matches). EURO PLAYER WHO MOST OUTPERFORMED EXPECTATIONS Colin Montgomerie, at 4.0 points above expectations (in five singles matches and 18 team matches). SECOND PLACE: Ian Poulter, at 3.4 points above expectations. BIGGEST RYDER CUP UPSET In 2004, the Euros earned 5.6 points above expectations.…

Follow Jessica Marksbury on Twitter @Jess_Marksbury Today, I’m enjoying a vodka soda with the man with the best beard in baseball. Am I right? I’m just going to say it’s a good beard. And I happen to play baseball. When was the last time you shaved? The last time an actual razor touched my face was October 31, 2016. I had a teammate kind of push me to grow out the beard, so I shaved with the intention to let it grow. And then spring training started. I had a beard. And the next thing you know, I still have one. And it took off. It was on T-shirts. It was on posters. It was everywhere. Do you miss seeing your whole face? Yes, in a way. I’m at the…

1 GET SET From the top of your backswing, your body needs to shift toward the target before and ahead of when your hands bring the club down. This allows you to create and maintain the width and separation you need for a powerful impact. The Step Drill will help. Set up with a narrow stance and place the ball off your left instep. 2 STEP UP As your hands pass your chest on your backswing, tilt your left foot and begin to step toward the target. The secret to getting this right is to keep your left shoulder low and your torso “on top” of your lower body as you step, instead of falling away from the target. 3 LEVEL OUT As you transition at the top, complete your…

I’VE HAD A fortunate start to my pro career: A TOUR Championship title, a ROY award and three top-10 finishes in my first seven majors. And this being a Ryder Cup year, I at least played myself into consideration for a captain's pick. Like most Tour players, I attribute much of my success to great coaching (thanks, Dad!) and a ton of hard work. But I know the former isn’t always available to weekend players, and that’s where I can help. On the following pages, I’ll show you the keys I use to gain consistency across the board, from splitting fairways to controlling irons and scoring on and around the greens. These keys—my X-Factors—are simple enough for any player to incorporate into their game. You can even nail some of…

Poke is an extremely popular food in Hawaii. It can be anything you want it to be. I describe it as different kinds of raw fish, or even shrimp or octopus, marinated in a soy-based concoction that I don’t really know how to make but absolutely love. Sometimes you can liven things up with a spicy aioli, which really goes well with ahi tuna. I know you can get poke on the mainland, but trust me, it’s nothing like how we do it in Hawaii. Even the poke from a grocery store in Honolulu is better than the poke they serve in restaurants where you live. When you go to a poke store, like Fresh Catch on Oahu (freshcatch808.com), you can either get a bowl or buy it by the…

PINE NEEDLES LODGE & GOLF CLUB/MID PINES INN & GOLF CLUB SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. Average October Daytime Temps 72° WHY YOU HAVE TO GO A double dose of playable yet formidable Donald Ross 1920s classics is enticement enough. Pair them with the intoxicating scent of longleaf pines and ideal-in-the-fall, firm-and-fast course conditions and you have an unbeatable pair of sibling resorts that are situated across the street from each other. The downhill par-3 third over a pond at Pine Needles might be the prettiest hole in the Sandhills, while Mid Pines’ par-4 18th is among the region’s most memorable, its green backdropped by the stately Georgian-style inn. Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb and Cristie Kerr have captured U.S. Women’s Opens at Pine Needles, although the shorter Mid Pines layout may actually…

OGIO CIRRUS All seven pockets of the loaded Cirrus are placed with a purpose, from the front ball pocket, to the insulated, walking-accessible water-bottle holder, to a non-zippered “Rapid Access Pocket,” perfect for snagging your laser. Best tech: A four-point “Fit Disc” connection continually equalizes the weight on your back. SUN MOUNTAIN 2.5+ Minimalism is the name of the game here, yet the 2.5+ manages to pack on five pockets while keeping weight under three pounds. Its carbon fiber legs are as strong as they are light. Best tech: High-density foam in the shoulder straps, which are designed to work as well over one shoulder as they do two. PING HOOFER LITE The venerable Hoofer line has few peers in terms of durability and versatility, and the Lite addition to…

Q Do foam inserts do anything to a shoe other than add comfort? GRANT KNUDSON, GLOBAL HEAD OF FOOTWEAR AND ACCESSORIES/PUMA GOLF A: A high-quality foam should reconstitute after being compressed by the player’s foot, bouncing back or rebounding with every step. This takes a lot of the force exerted by the golfer and directs it back to the foot, sapping less energy and reducing fatigue. The result actually makes it easier to walk—it’s sort of like having springs in the bottom of your shoe. But make no mistake: Foam also provides exceptional comfort, which is a very significant factor for us at Puma Golf. We believe comfort is absolutely critical to performance, because players typically perform much better when they can forget about their shoes and just play. We’ve…

Q: If you nominate one U.S. course to become a first-time Ryder Cup venue, which would you choose? The PGA Championship proved that Bellerive Country Club and St. Louis would be the perfect spot. Brad Lehman TPC Scottsdale. Can you imagine number 16 in a Ryder Cup? Steven Barr Augusta National. I bet Bobby Jones would smile from ear to ear! Marty Roberts Q: The Ryder Cup never fails to produce unforgettable moments, both on and off the course. What’s your favorite Ryder Cup memory? It has to be Ian Poulter’s performance on Saturday at Medinah 2012, an unbelievable stretch of golf to deliver a point for Europe when it seemed lost. Still with a mountain to climb on Sunday, it was made possible by Poult’s birdie run. @thfcnut Justin…

You can watch video rulings featuring Rules Guy himself! Visit GOLF.com If my putt settles in an aeration hole on the green, can I fix the hole before putting, or is a local rule required? —CHARLIE DAILY, VIA E-MAIL Sorry, Charlie. Players may only repair damage caused by the impact of a ball or an old hole plug on the green. Repairing an aeration hole that your ball rests in puts you in breach of Rule 16-1c, with a penalty of two strokes (stroke play) or loss of hole (match play). The relevant local rule doesn’t permit repairing the (aeration) hole but rather allows the player to place the ball in the nearest unaffected spot not nearer the (actual) hole. Holy cow, that’s a lot of holes (and parentheses)! I…

Most high-handicappers have no idea what the clubface is doing at the top of their backswing. Here’s a hint, banana-ballers: It’s probably way too open, because you’re cupping your left wrist. To cure this power- and accuracy-sapping condition and get that clubface square prior to transition, stick a Band-Aid on the clubshaft, on the target side and just below the grip. Take the club to the top at 50 percent speed, tracking the shaft with your eyes. If the Band-Aid enters your field of vision, your left wrist is cupping—and the face is opening. Work to keep your left wrist flat or even a little bowed. Not only will it stop the face from opening, it’ll make it easier for you to start the club down on the proper inside…

FACT: If you set up with a clubface that isn’t square to your target line, your mind will manipulate your body to square up that face when you return to impact. That can mean all kinds of wacky contortions, not to mention wild inconsistency. Here’s what to do. Take your normal address with a 7-iron. Raise the club so it’s in front of you and parallel to the ground (photo, above). I’ll bet the face is closed. Fix it by holding the club straight out with your left hand only. Adjust the grip in your palm so the face forms a right angle with your elbow and shoulder joints. Put your right hand on the club and lower it back down to address. It might look open to you now,…

What’s really on the minds of the best golfers in the world? In the polite confines of the PGA Tour, it’s often hard to know. Until now. With the goal of letting players let it fly, we granted them anonymity and picked their brains on a wide range of hot-button topics (cheating on Tour! Tiger v. Phil! Brandel Chamblee!). Over two days of surveying, at the PGA Championship and the Wyndham Championship, 59 players participated, including four major winners, one 2018 major winner and three of the top-20 players in the world. The result? Sweet, sweet candor. DO YOU LIKE THE PGA CHAMPIONSHIP’S MOVE TO MAY? YES: 76% NO: 10% NO PREFERENCE: 14% HOT TAKES “I just want to play in one. I don’t care if it’s January in Alaska.”…

Last year, [fellow LPGA Tour player] Marina Alex came to visit me. We did a hop over to the Big Island with my friend Jen Hong, who used to play on the Symetra tour. We had booked rooms at Volcano House (hawaiivolcanohouse.com), situated on the eastern rim of Kilauea crater. It was awesome—we were literally on the edge of the volcano! We drove around a little, then decided to go on a hike. Our quest: Find lava. Like, flowing lava. We looked up the cost of a tour guide: $150. We agreed: “Nah, we can do it on our own.” So we started walking. We went about four miles—maybe more—and suddenly there was no one else around. I mean, literally, not a soul. We had no idea where we were…

JIM FURYK has been a model of consistency for decades now. One unique swing. One golf teacher. (Mike, his father.) One wife. (Tabitha.) One caddie for the past 19 years. (Mike Cowan, aka Fluff.) One famous Tour record—the 58 he shot at TPC River Highlands in the last round of the 2016 Travelers Championship. Fifty-eight! Furyk has won 17 times on Tour, including the 2003 U.S. Open. That victory impacted the rest of his life. For one thing, he would never have been named as the 2018 American Ryder Cup captain without it. Listening to Furyk talk about his captaincy, it’s clear he has two principal goals: to get his 12 players in a place where they can play their best golf, and to contribute to an existing American Ryder…

With iron lofts stronger than ever, it’s easy to develop serious yardage gaps in your set, most noticeably between your longest iron and shortest fairway wood. The smart folks at TaylorMade get this, and have created a new category of golf club—GAPR—to solve the problem. Packed with a ton of tech (headlined by a hot face insert for ball speed and SpeedFoam for improved sound and feel), the three GAPR models ($249 each) are designed to fill all gaps and fit all players. If you’re a faster swinger who works the ball, the LO is your stick (Tiger uses it). Want a more traditional Rescue design with a wider sole and higher trajectory? Grab the HI. And for those who are in the middle, there’s the aptly named MID. Ten…

SOME OF OUR ISSUES work harder than others, never letting up—page after page—to bring you the stories and service that make watching and playing the game the rewarding experience we all know it to be. This one, in addition to its usual, busy 9-to-5, feels like it has tacked on weekends and night shifts. It’s an October issue—shoulder season in GOLF’s editorial calendar—but there’s oddly a beehive of activity. The buzz this month? Inside access to a downtime Michelle Wie, recharging her batteries on her island home of Oahu (p. 54). A one-on-one playing lesson from one of the game’s most polished comers, Xander Schauffele, told to one of GOLF’s youngest—and talented—reporters, Sean Zak (p. 44). And there’s certainly been a stir created by our poll of nearly 60 Tour…

Mexico hasn’t produced a ton of professional golfers. What inspired you guys to take up the game? ROBERTO DÍAZ: I picked it up when I was, like, five. My uncle took me to play. I really liked it. I started competing when I was young. When I was 14, I decided to come study [in the U.S.] in college, so I took it a bit more serious. In Mexico, your family belonged to a golf club. What was your experience like there? DÍAZ: It was a nine-hole course. Not a lot of money around it. Greens rolled at about five or six every day. Nobody played, so we could go out and play it in an hour and 30 minutes. How about you, Abe? You were born in Texas, moved…

Follow Mark Broadie on Twitter @MarkBroadie FORMER YANKEE catcher Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Indeed. And it’s a tall order to call a Ryder Cup competition still six weeks away as of this writing. Currently, I don’t know the captains’ picks; four FedEx Cup events have yet to be played; and the host course—Le Golf National, in Paris—is an X-factor because a Cup has never been competed there. But this is what predictive analytics is all about. Even with the rosters in flux, we have a good idea of the caliber of players who’ll make up each squad. No hurdle there. The essential ingredient in predicting the Cup winner is a means to predict match outcomes between players who may never have…

Follow Dave Pelz on Twitter @PelzGolf LET ME TAKE you back to the late 1970s for a moment. I was just launching my work with my first six PGA Tour players, having spent months analyzing their games from tee to green. I had accomplished this task by following each of them during tournament play (for 40-plus events), measuring, recording and plotting how accurately they hit every shot relative to their targets, from tee shot to hole-out. I logged many miles stepping-off distance markers around the various courses. (Sadly, my analysis preceded the advent of laser rangefinders!) I measured and marked sprinkler heads, trees, sand traps and other obvious hazards so I could record data for all four players in whatever group I was following. After plotting and analyzing the data…

LEVEL OUT Keep your torso vertical and lined up with the rest of your joints. The idea of pre-tilting your upper body is outdated. LIGHTEN UP A lighter grip pressure allows you to fire the clubhead through the ball. Using a death hold only robs you of speed. GROUND RULES Kick in your right knee toward the target. This creates a stronger support system, fueling a bigger turn as you leverage the ground. CONNECT “Pin” your left arm to your chest and maintain the connection there all the way back and through impact. HIP CHECK Don’t tilt your hips back at setup. The idea is to rotate them around on a level plane, building ground force as you go. TEE IT UP Play the ball off the instep of your…

1. CONTACT POINTS The unique loft and bounce built into your sand wedge are designed to help you use the turf to hit pitches that fly high and land soft. That includes the turf behind the ball, an area I call the “slide zone”—your wedge hits the ground and slides into the ball like a baserunner sliding into home plate. If you can’t get comfortable sliding the club in this area, you’re toast. 2. RETURN ENGAGEMENT Try this: Place the ball slightly forward of center with three coins lined up behind it along the target line (photo, above). Hold the shaft of your sand wedge straight up and down in the middle of your body (don’t lean it!) 3. CHANGE FOR GOOD Your goal is to return the shaft and…

I remember my parents taking me to the golf course every day when I was a kid, and we would drive next to the cliffs and water and everything around Honolulu, and I’d be like, “Oh, please get me off this rock!” Funny how things change as you get older and—I think!—wiser. What I wouldn’t give now to be able to experience that like I did when I was a girl. When people ask me where I’m from, I feel a great sense of pride building as I answer. I’m just so fortunate. I feel like my upbringing was special. And I didn’t really realize how special it was until I moved away. (I’m based in Jupiter, Fla., now.) Luckily, the LPGA Tour makes a stop on my home island…

THE BEACH RETREAT Average October Daytime Temps 76° It doesn’t take a travel guru to suss out what makes Myrtle Beach, S.C., the ideal buddy-trip stop. Start with the price tag. It’s affordable no matter the budget. And whether your group consists of single-digit sticks or once-a-month duffers, you’ll find seamless fits at multiple courses. The ease in booking tee times and hotels can’t be beat, thanks to a slew of packagers, large and small. And when your 36-hole day has ended, a feast of eateries and nightspots await. MUST-PLAY (OLD SCHOOL) The Dunes Golf & Beach Club is a 1948 Robert Trent Jones Sr. creation that features the master’s signature runway tees, elevated greens, sprawling water hazards and heroic shot values, notably at the unforgettable 640-yard, par-5 13th, which…

Manufacturers understand that one iron won’t suit all players, which explains why you see multiple head offerings in the same line. Case in point: the Callaway Rogue family. Here, the choice is simple: Rogue is for those who want the ideal balance of game-improving distance and forgiveness, while Rogue X is for players who want the same forgiveness with maximum distance. “The Rogue X is a whole new category for us,” says Dave Neville, Callaway senior director, brand and product management. “The standard Rogue might be the biggest-selling iron out there, but the Rogue X is the longest.” Take a look at both to see which one is right for your mindset and game.…

Many design elements can make a particular putter appealing: the weighting of the club, its sound and feel, the look as it sits behind the ball. And don’t sleep on the sight lines, either—the alignment markings on the top of the putter and the shape of the head itself can have a huge impact on your ability to start putts on your intended line. Options here abound, and we’ve seen some dramatically creative ones lately. Here are four models that are pushing the sighting envelope, with natural lines to keep those pushes—and pulls—at bay. ODYSSEY O-WORKS-WORKS 2-BALL FANG The original 2-Ball putter debuted in 2001, and it has since become the top-selling club in history. The O-Works 2-Ball Fang utilizes the same unique alignment system as the original—proven tech that…

The advantage of “dying” the ball into the cup, rather than taking a more aggressive “charging” approach, is that you’re less likely to face a long comebacker should you miss. At a slower speed, the ball is also more likely to lip in than lip out. For these reasons, most pros tend to favor this less aggressive approach. Here’s how to make it work for you. 1. LOCATE THE SWEET SPOT The ideal speed for a putt that dies is one that allows the ball, should it miss the hole, to finish no more than 18 inches or so beyond the cup (top). This means that the ball should be slowing down when it reaches the hole. To program this speed into your putts, you must hit the sweet spot…

The popular “X-Factor” swing theory from the 1990s states that the more you turn your shoulders relative to your hips on the backswing, the more energy you’ll store for the downswing. This is true, but only if you have the flexibility to turn your shoulders back while resisting with your hips—not an easy move for most golfers. For an easier power boost, let your hips turn freely on the backswing. Keep your right knee flexed and rotate your belt buckle behind you, like an archer pulling back his bow. The farther you can rotate your right hip, the more you can turn your upper body and the faster you’ll unwind your hips on the downswing. This will impart more clubhead speed, allowing you to hit longer drives. STRAIGHT HITTER You…