Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Golf Magazine

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 the camera steady. The app will click and buzz when it recognizes the image and then begin…

Your statement in the October issue that Brooks Koepka became just the fifth golfer to win three majors before turning 30, joining Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, is both incorrect and misleading. Young Tom Morris, Gary Player, Seve Ballesteros, and Rory McIlroy have also accomplished this feat. Perhaps you meant to say fifth American golfer? BARRY JIROUSEK, VIA E-MAIL We wish we could say that we meant the fifth American golfer, Barry, but Koepka is actually the tenth Yank to pull it off. In fact, a grand total of 18 golfers have now won three majors before the age of 30. Our apologies—needless to say, a tough day at the office!…

PERHAPS YOU RECALL that last year, in these pages, I predicted that the young, talented U.S. team was about to embark on an era of sustained dominance in the Ryder Cup. My conviction was expressed with considerable hyperbole, because why not? If you believe in something you might as well push all your chips to the middle of the table. Going totally over-the-top made the column more fun to write, hopefully more fun to read, and it certainly led to endlessly entertaining banter on Twitter in the long run-up to the Cup. All of the grief that I got from European fans—and some players and caddies, too—did put me in an awkward position, though. When it comes to the Ryder Cup, I’m usually a fairly impartial observer traveling on no…

TALK ABOUT bringing it. Three of Brooks Koepka’s four career PGA Tour wins are majors. So it stands to reason that there’s a statistical disparity in Koepka’s play in majors compared to his play in non-majors, right? To sort it out, I crunched the data on all players who recorded at least 30 rounds in majors between the years 2014 and 2018, looking at their strokes gained per round (adjusted for course conditions and strength of field) in majors versus non-majors. I then ranked the players by what I’ll call their “strokes gained outperformance in majors.” Topping the list was—you guessed it—Brooks Koepka. In his 68 major-championship rounds from 2014 through 2018, he played an incredible 1.6 strokes better per round in majors than in non-majors. Koepka’s greatest strength is…

I had a big issue with bringing my range game to the course, until I began attaching consequences to every swing. When I visit the range now, I actually “play” a round as I’m emptying the bucket. In my head, I envision certain golf holes, and award myself points (on a scale of 1 to 10) based on how well each shot would have helped on the course, and bonus points for confidence and trust. On this swing (left), I’m picturing a par 3 at Troon North, where I often play and practice. The yellow flag is my target. I remember giving this shot a “9.” Practicing with a purpose works. It’s also a ton more fun.…

Today we’re drinking your favorite beverage, chocolate milk. I drink it every day, at least once a day. I love it. You have a reputation as one of the most fun players on the LPGA tour, and chocolate milk seems to fit right in with that narrative. It’s so good that I might drink yours, too! Let’s talk a bit about your golf career. You qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open at age 14, less than two years after you picked up a golf club for the first time. How is that possible? I had actually played golf for just over a year at that point. My brother signed me up. I went and qualified. Then he said, “You’re going to this thing called sectionals.” So I went and qualified. Next…

1 HIT THE TRAIL On every swing, your right side delivers the power while your left is there to keep things in order and in sequence. These are two very important—and different—roles that you should train independently to create a smooth, consistent overall motion. This month, let’s work on your trail-side move. Grab a mid-iron using only your right hand and swing to the top like I’ve done here. (You don’t need a ball for this drill.) 2 DROP AND GO Without feeling rushed or hurried, let your right arm and the club drop from the top. Feel as if both are moving toward your right hip. As the club continues to get closer to the ball, let your right arm release the lag you created on the backswing, unhinging…

Analysis by Top 100 Teacher Michael Jacobs, X Golf School, Rock Hill G.C., Manorville, N.Y.…

It wasn’t the Grand Slam. Or even the Tiger Slam. But it was a sparkling feat by any measure. With his wins this year at the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship, Brooks Koepka joined a rarefied list of golfers who have captured two majors in a single season. The first was Gene Sarazen in 1922. The most recent before Koepka was Jordan Spieth, in 2015. In the intervening decades, 18 other players have pulled off twin killings. Some have done so more than once. For those of you keeping score at home, here is a ledger of every double-major season in the history of the game, with a spotlight on six feats that stand out. Gene Sarazen 1922 He wasn’t yet The Squire. Just an unsung Pennsylvania club pro.…

I decided long ago never to allow preconceived notions and ideas to affect what I teach. I go off what the best wedge players in the world do. In studying these swings for the better part of a quarter century, I’ve been able to piece together commonalities and distill them down to five basic finesse short-shot fundamentals. The longer I preach these basics, the clearer the message becomes: Elite wedge players create balance in their setup and motion that affects the angle of attack and the location of the low point of their swing, while poor performers create an imbalance. The stability comes from managing the fact that two of the five fundamentals are steepening elements, while two tend to shallow your motion (the fifth is neutral). The lesson? If…

Bubba Watson Switches Golf Balls Those pink Volviks sure were pretty. Less so Bubba’s play. So at the close of 2017, when his endorsement deal with the company ended, Watson swapped his Volvik for the Titleist ProV1 and went on to a resurgent season, punctuated by three wins. Universal Handicaps There will always be sandbaggers, and vanity-caps, and handicaps that travel better or worse than others. But with plans in the works for a universal handicap system, one that applies to every golfer on the globe, there will be far fewer of all those unwanted things. Rickie Fowler Opts for a Stand Bag The best player to never win a major is also the best player to bail on his bulky, caddy-busting staff bag, having swapped it out for a…

Most golfers underread the amount of break on a green, and when they do get it right, they often miss the putt because of faulty aim. Here’s how to match your setup to the break so you can start rolling in more putts. SQUARE YOUR SETUP Place the ball so that the logo points directly at your starting line. Grip the putter with your left hand and set the putterface down behind the ball, perpendicular to the logo and the putt’s starting line. Hold the face steady and align your feet parallel to the line. Now add your right hand and complete your setup, aligning your knees, hips and shoulders parallel to your stance. This simple routine squares your setup and prevents you from opening your shoulders and aiming off…

HERE IT IS, your moment of zen: Tiger stepping into the ring on the 600-yard 17th hole, Sunday at Bellerive, the edges of the tee box crammed with photographers and fans and old-guy officials in short-sleeved shirts, all drenched. St. Louis in August. Everybody, Tiger included, knew that if he could find a miracle—an eagle-birdie finish—he still had a chance. A chance to win his first tournament in five years, and his first major in eleven. Now he had to use all his training to block out those thoughts. Self-coached this year (how old-school) and looking to re-create his boyhood feel for the game, Woods needed a smash-mouth drive. But at age 42, his golf ball doesn’t follow orders as it did back in the day. He hit a slice…

WITH THE CLOSING of this December issue, it’s natural to think ahead to next season. I’m going to play more, that’s for sure—rounds, sadly, came at a premium for me in 2018. That’s got to change. And my boys, 7 and 10, are at their introduction-to-the-game prime. I will not mess that up. I’m going to tune-in more, too. I’m talking serious TV time. I can’t think of any Tour season I’ve been more anxious to watch unfold than the one looming post New Year’s. (I know 10 events will already be in the books by the time we flip the calendar, but like many of you, I still equate the onset of Tour play with the two-week swing through Hawaii in the first half of January.) Much of my…

DRIVER 1) PXG 0811X (10.5°), Fujikura 661TR Speeder X shaft, 290 yards; $N/A FAIRWAY WOODS 2) PXG 0341X (15°), Fujikura 661TR Speeder X shaft, 270 yards; $N/A, Nike VR Pro Limited (18°), 250 yards; $N/A. DRIVING IRON 3) PXG 0311X (3-iron), with Graphite Design Tour AD 120X shaft, 240 yards; $N/A IRONS 4) PXG 0311 T Gen2 (5-PW), Project X LZ 7.0; $N/A 5-iron: 212 yards 6-iron: 198 yards 7-iron: 187 yards 8-iron: 175 yards 9-iron: 158 yards PW: 140 yards WEDGES 5) PXG 0311 Milled Sugar Daddy (51°, 55°), PXG 0311T Milled Zulu (60°), 51°, 125 yards; 55°, 110 yards; 60°, 100 yards. All with Dynamic Gold S400 shafts; $N/A PUTTER 6) Piretti Capri GSS, 35”; $2,250 BALL Titleist Pro V1x; $48/doz. “My PW-7 irons are my favorite clubs.…

HELLO, GOLF READERS! I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of this great publication. But before we get going on this journey together, I think there are a few things you should know about me. First of all, I’m not just the Paige who “Stars in the World’s First Bikini Trick Shot” (a clickbait headline if there ever was one). Nor am I just the “Instagram Beauty” who “Crashes, Burns in Pro Debut” (thanks for that one, New York Post). I’m not ashamed of my social media following, my Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot, or the tough time I had in my LPGA debut, but these small facets of my life are easily manipulated by the Internet to get views, and they don’t define me as…

THE TJ Best Tiger Impression (For Two Holes) On assignment with Tiger Woods at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas—to talk course architecture and, especially, his par-3 designs—I thought it wise, before we chatted, to sample the 12-hole Oasis Short Course that TGR Design created in 2016. Joined by Diamante domo Ken Jowdy, I birdied the first two holes and entertained visions of a Tiger-like course record. Alas, the weather warmed, my putter cooled and I three-jacked the final hole to shoot even par. Still, walking the round with just a few clubs and balls, and experiencing compelling yet utterly playable golf holes, convinced me more than ever how committed Tiger is to providing family-oriented fun in his designs. THE TJ The Two Kings Down Under Award When I toured but…

Most golfers have been taught to lead their downswings with their hips, then add upper-body rotation and, finally, arm speed so that everything lines up correctly at impact. Advanced 3D motion capture, however, proves that swinging like this doesn’t allow you to accelerate your arms (and club) fast enough to compete in the modern power game. Plus, it overemphasizes rotation. Turning’s great, but all power drivers tilt as well as rotate, getting their right sides to point toward the ground as they swing from the top toward impact. It’s the tilt that adds speed. An effective way to groove a power tilt is to imagine decreasing the distance between your right shoulder and right hip as soon as you start down. It should feel like your right side is working…

LAUNCH Golfers are often told to rotate hard through the ball. That works for some players. If you find yourself getting stuck in your downswing or hitting lots of fat shots, you may consider launching. Instead of staying in your posture and turning after impact, use the ground underneath your left foot to post up and get nice and tall through the ball. Picture Bubba Watson or Justin Thomas. ROTATE If launching doesn’t work, try more rotation through the ball, á la Dustin Johnson. Focus on staying in your posture, and wait until you near impact before turning on the rotational jets (too much rotation too soon will cost you). It should feel like the club and your torso are moving left through and after impact. E.A. Tischler, San Juan…

The Year of Brooks Koepka looked pretty bleak back in April, when he and I sat down for lunch at the Floridian, his home club in Palm City. A wrist injury had taken Koepka off the Tour and put him on the couch for Masters week. He didn’t know when he was coming back. He didn’t know if he was coming back. But six months and two major victories later, here we sit, 30 miles south, at the Bear’s Club, recapping Koepka’s extraordinary 2018 Player of the Year campaign. Talk about a heel turn. By late May, at Colonial, a fully recovered Koepka felt his game kick into gear. By mid August, he was polishing silver from wins at the U.S. Open and PGA Championship. His season ended in Paris,…

The challenge in ball design is that the more you lower compression (good for feel and distance for moderate-speed swingers), the less the ball spins (bad for short-game performance for everyone). It’s why you see a bifurcation of options: Tour balls that spin like tops around the greens for fast swingers, and lower-compression models that feel better and fly farther for everyone else. Srixon’s new Q-Star Tour looks to change all that. It’s a three-piece Tour model complete with urethane cover and third-generation Spin Skin coating (the same as the Tourcaliber Z-Star family), firm mantle and low-compression gradient core. According to Srixon, this unique design reduces spin rates on drives by approximately 200 rpm for those who swing in the 85 to 95 mph range (we’re talking to you, Bub),…

Your wedge was designed to slide through the sand, so if you get steep and bang the leading edge into the surface of the bunker, you’ll kill the club’s momentum. Remember these basics: Open your stance and the clubface, and get the grooves on the clubface pointing at the sky. This deploys the club’s rounded sole, or bounce, and makes the sharper leading edge less likely to dig. Hinge your wrists on the backswing to create extra speed, and then skim the sand with the trailing edge of the clubhead. You want the “thump” sound of the bounce hitting the sand, not the “thud” of the leading edge digging in. These may sound similar on paper, but on the course, the “thump” sounds like a chance to save par, while…

Your approach shot takes an unfortunate bounce into a bunker and comes to rest close to the lip, on an upslope. It’s so close to the edge, in fact, that your only option is to hit the shot with one foot out of the sand. Unlucky? Yes. Impossible to get close? Not at all. To make the best of this situation, dig your right foot into the sand to stabilize your stance. Hover the clubhead behind the ball with the clubface square, then hinge your wrists up quickly, so that the club can work in a more up-and-down direction. Accelerate the clubhead down into the sand a few inches behind the ball, as though you were playing the shot from a half-buried lie. The force of the descending blow combined…

In 2018, your first full season on Tour, you had seven top 10s and a win at the Shriners. Can you pinpoint why you experienced such solid success? Part of it is that it doesn’t feel like my first full season. I’d played a lot of the golf courses already, and I felt ready to play great golf. You ranked pretty high in several strokes gained categories. What’s the one area of your game you most need to improve? You can always improve in all areas of the game. I didn’t have a great year putting, but it doesn’t feel that off, so keeping a good mindset and expecting putts to fall is important. Most of the year, it felt like most of my game was on, but I don’t…

TICK-TOCK, Tick-Tock, Click…Tom Jenkins is practicing his putting stroke in a hotel room. The only two sounds are the consistent rhythmic beat of a metronome and the occasional click of putter on ball. Sweat is beading on his forehead as he tries to complete 100 strokes in a row without his putter touching the sides of a Putting Track, one of my inventions (photo, above). He completes stroke No. 99, steps back and shakes out his arm muscles. He confidently steps back in, addresses the putt and perfectly executes his putting stroke to the tick-tock-tick-tock-click rhythm, sending the ball rolling into a pillow. That’s my recollection of a very intense practice session with my great friend, Tom—one of the best PGA Tour players I’ve ever had the pleasure and privilege of…

DESTINATION: MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. I recently made a trip to the South Carolina lowcountry as part of my partnership with Visit Myrtle Beach. This shot is from the Legends Golf Resort. The original plan was to play with some contest winners, but we decided to move the round to next spring to let some facilities recover a bit more from Hurricane Florence. The good news? Most of the courses along the Grand Strand are up and running and in great shape! And the fall season is a wonderful time to visit.…

Several players in our local golf group have a two-way (right-hand/left-hand) chipper in the bag, and this type of club has suddenly become controversial. Some players say it’s illegal. Others argue that it can be used but must count as two clubs toward the 14-club limit. Still others say it’s just a normal club. Is there a specific rule that covers it? —CHARLES SCOTT, ROTONDA WEST, FLA. Being two-faced is never a good thing, right? But if you need more proof, just check Decision 4-1/3, which informs us that a single-faced chipper can be A-OK (not to mention delightfully retro), but a chipper with two striking faces is nonconforming. Make just one stroke with this or any nonconforming club, and the offending player is disqualified. If it remains unused in…

When my ball-striking gets inconsistent, especially with my irons, it’s often because my weight is moving around too much in my swing. It’s why I’ve been working a lot on improving the stability in my lower body. The goal is to keep my legs as quiet as possible and my center from moving too much off the ball. My trainer, Randy Myers, has me in the gym more than ever, helping me strengthen my legs and build the stable foundation I’m looking for. That’s work you can’t skip in this day and age. On the range, I have a drill I use to further instill in-swing stability. It’s so simple, and it can help improve your ballstriking all the way through the bag, from wedge right up through driver. If…

FORESIGHT GCQUAD ($11,000) This launch monitor gives me the ability to accurately measure lie angle and face rotation, see how lie angle affects face rotation and path, and compare the differences. It’s great. —Kevin Sprecher, Sleepy Hollow C.C., Scarborough, N.Y. HACKY SACK (less than $5) We use it to help students keep their head in a quiet position. We have them place it on their head and leave it there while they’re swinging. This teaches them to stay tall through the swing and use their body property. The goal is to not let the hacky sack fall until they make contact with the ball. —Jamie Mulligan, Virginia C.C., Long Beach, Calif. TOUR STICKS ($20) These alignment sticks help students feel the arm connection to the core rotation. Golfers of all…

You’re a strong hitter who requires a tip-stiff driver shaft that produces mid-launch and low spin, and you’re in the market for something new. Try Fujikura’s Ventus ($350). Available in 50, 60, 70 and 80g weights, it features a multimaterial bias core and a new low-torque design. Like the clubhead it’s probably attached to, the Ventus is designed to increase MOI and decrease twisting. A shaft that hits the ball straight and in the center? You bet.…

All long hitters maximize clubhead speed at impact. The secret? The clubhead lags behind their hands well into the downswing, allowing them to generate a burst of last-second speed when the angle between their left arm and the clubshaft straightens, or releases, through impact. Master this and you’ll be the biggest hitter in your foursome. SETUP GET BEHIND THE BALL Play the ball well forward in your stance, opposite your left instep and shoulder. This will position your upper body more behind the ball at address, which encourages the clubhead to lag behind the hands more on the downswing. Hike your left hip, which makes it even easier for your upper body to stay behind the ball through impact. You won’t hit it very far if your upper body gets…