Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i Golf Magazine

“DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY…” The great opening line to a great song, “(What a) Wonderful World,” by the late, great Sam Cooke, could certainly be applied to yours truly. In all honesty, despite acing an AP History exam in high school, I haven’t thought much about history—beyond golf history, of course—since my teens. Even more honestly, what I remember most of our country’s past comes courtesy of “The Shot Heard ’Round the World,” an episode of the late, great Schoolhouse Rock series aired by ABC on cartoon Saturdays in the mid-1970s. For those who remember, sing it with me: The shot heard ’round the world, the start of the revolution… That shot (no, not the one Gene Sarazen hit on No. 15 at the 1935 Masters for double eagle)…

ON THE PHONE FROM ASPEN, COLO. Dylan Dethier: Colorado? It’s not a place a lot of golfers necessarily end up. Justin Leonard: It’s not. Back in 2015, when we moved here, I wanted to step off the grid a little bit. I knew I was going to pull back my schedule or stop playing altogether, and it seemed like a good place to just slow life down. For my wife and me, for my kids, we love being outdoors, and it seemed like the right time and right place to do it. Funny timing, though. We’re moving to Florida at the end of June. My wife has family there. And it’s a lot easier for me to travel from Florida. Also, I want to be somewhere that I can play…

IT’S HARD TO BEAT an ice-cold drink on the course with your buddies on a warm summer day. But it can be challenging to keep anything cool for hours with the sun beating down. Kanga Coolers ($40) are here to save the day. These aren’t your ordinary big, bulky coolers. Kanga designed sleek offerings for a six-pack of bottles or a 12-pack of cans to slide right in—straight from the fridge to the cooler to your hand. The best part? No need to worry about ice. This USA design features four pockets and a removable shoulder strap. The pouch takes up minimal space and won’t have any issue fitting into the back of a golf cart. Pack your Kanga and enjoy cold beverages wherever life takes you. Scan this code…

PING’S NEW i525 IRON is ridiculously fast. But instead of simply cranking up the ball speed with i525, PING focused on fine-tuning the acoustics as well, giving the new line a combo of distance and sound that’s been difficult to create in recent years. In the previous iteration of the i-Series, a hollow cavity backed a maraging steel face. Maraging steel is stronger than both stainless and carbon steel, so it can be made thinner to boost ball speed. That’s a good thing, yet the combo negatively affected the acoustics. To solve the problem in the i525, PING placed four grams of EVA polymer behind the face and in the heel to achieve a more pleasing sound and feel. The improvement has already been a positive for PING’s Tour staff,…

WITH HISTORY COMES TRADITION—AT LEAST THAT’S THE WAY IT USED TO WORK ON CHAMPIONSHIP GOLF COURSES. But this year, there was nary an eagle on the 15th hole at Augusta National. In 2014, Pinehurst No. 2—with no rough and the widest fairways on a Golden Age course in the modern history of the U.S. Open—clobbered everyone but winner Martin Kaymer. What’s a golf fan to think? Times they are a-changing, yet many of us are still drawn to the thrill of the sport’s traditions. Each season, every one of the four majors has a role to play, and it would be a tragedy if, through the increasingly routine course tweaks now being made to “test” today’s Tour pros, they morphed into similar events. Well, the site for this year’s U.S. Open—The…

Lloyd Mangrum: The 1946 U.S. Open champ, Mangrum was awarded two Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars while part of a recon outfit in Patton’s Third Army. He turned down a cushy club-pro gig at Fort Meade when he knew it would have kept him out of combat. When he returned to pro golf, there was really nothing that could faze him on the course. Ben Hogan: A four-time U.S. Open winner (with nine majors overall), Hogan—and the story of his comeback after his car, in ’49, was hit by a bus—is legendary. That he survived was a miracle. That he won after the accident was also a miracle. What made his post-accident excellence more impressive than, say, Tiger Woods coming back from his own car accident?…

In the early 1930s, Francis Ouimet found himself teamed with Ted Ray—his 1913 U.S. Open sparring partner—in a four-ball match. His opponent? A Harvard-educated banker (and fellow member at The Country Club) by the name of Edward Stimpson (left). Stimpson was a burgeoning amateur himself, a tough-as-nails competitor who had earned a reputation as one of the best players in the state. Though neither player knew it, their match would serve as a launching-off point for the banker’s starring role in golf history. Years later, in 1935, Stimpson was a spectator at Oakmont CC for Sam Park Jr.’s controversial U.S. Open win. He saw from up close how Park Jr.—a Pittsburgh club pro who’d played the course daily in the lead-up to the Open—used his knowledge of green speeds to…

WHEN YOUR TRAIL wrist loses its angle too early before impact, the clubhead either dumps into the ground (see: chunk) or it rises (see: thin). To get the correct feel, all you need is a trailhand glove and a plastic fork (see: any fast-food chain). Slide the fork into your trail-hand glove, keeping the handle in line with your index finger and the back of the fork curved along your flexed wrist (above). With a wedge, slowly make three-quarter swings. Your goal: Keep your wrist pressure against the fork. In addition to your backswing, it’s critical to feel the same pressure as you swing through impact. At the very least, don’t lose contact between the wrist and the fork until the ball is off the clubface. If you lose contact,…

WHEN A PLAYER COMES to me struggling with a slice, I immediately know that the relationship between their clubface and club path is off. To wit, their clubface is pointing too far right of the direction they’re swinging, which creates too much left-to-right spin and makes direction hard to control. If this sounds like you, reverse those two things. The next time you’re on the range, place three clubs on the ground: one parallel to your target line for your feet and two forming train tracks pointing to the right of your target (above). Place a ball in the middle of the “train track” clubs and practice swinging in the direction they’re pointing. At first it will feel like you’re swinging out to the right. This is normal at first—it’ll…

G: How did you get started in the game? MT: When I was young, my family moved from Jersey to Florida, and we lived in a development called Citrus Hills. It was mostly senior citizens. Ted Williams retired there. There were three courses in the neighborhood, and I’d hit balls with a buddy when we weren’t supposed to. G: Do you bring your clubs on movie locations? MT: Yeah, wherever I’m filming I can find a place to play and a few people in the cast or crew who are about the same handicap. G: What’s the lowest your handicap has ever been? MT: Like, an 8.6. It’s definitely not that right now. I just try to get my game good in time for Tahoe, for the American Century Championship.…

Sweet Judy Goodbyes I read with great interest Michael Bamberger’s article on Judy Rankin (This Golfing Life, May). When the Women’s U.S. Open came to Saucon Valley Country Club in 2009, I helped marshal a hole for the tournament. I was at my post (a par 3) when I saw a woman approaching an area where fans were not allowed. Just as I was about to tell this person she was not permitted to be there, she waved her press badge. Yep, Judy Rankin. She could not have been more personable or friendly. We chatted for a few minutes. She was very down to earth and treated me like a friend. After a while, she whisked off to go do her job. While I was volunteering for the event, my…

15.11 Strokes Gained Total for 2021 U.S. Open champ Jon Rahm at Torrey Pines. Rahm gained 6.17 strokes—or 40.8 percent of his week’s total—during Sunday’s final round. 39 Total feet of birdie putts made by Rahm on the 71st and 72nd holes, where two bombs delivered him his first-ever major win. +19 CUT LINE AT THE 1913 U.S. OPEN (SEVEN STROKES ABOVE FRANCIS OUIMET’S WINNING SCORE OF +12). SEE PAGE 82 FOR MORE ODDITIES FROM THE ’13 OPEN. 194 FEET FROM OUIMET’S CHILDHOOD HOME TO THE 17TH GREEN AT THE COUNTRY CLUB. SOURCE: GOOGLE EARTH PAR-BUSTING The last 10 U.S. Open winners tell us that, contrary to popular belief, shooting even par just isn’t good enough to win our national championship. As a group, the last 10 U.S. Open winners…

8 New golf ball models that deserve your game’s full attention. 1 Cool-looking cooler that keeps your suds chill without the need for ice. 24 Things we found when we dumped out 2022 Masters champion Scottie Scheffler’s bag, including a new batch of TaylorMade woods and irons. 9 New PING i525 irons engineered to sound and feel as good as they look. Bonus: A noticeable increase in ball speed. AT THE TIME GARY ADAMS founded TaylorMade in 1979 (he borrowed $24,000 on his house to lease a 6,000-square-foot office northwest of Chicago to create the company), persimmon was still the material du jour in the driver space and didn’t show any signs of relinquishing the mantle. Then, along came TaylorMade’s Pittsburgh Persimmon metalwood to shake things up. The weight savings achieved through a hollow…

How do you build a golf ball? It starts with the core. “It’s really an inside-out process,” Norm Smith says as we hit the factory floor. He’s Callaway’s VP of manufacturing, engineering and quality, and we’re touring the company’s ball plant in Chicopee, Mass., a small city 85 miles west of Brookline, the site of this year’s U.S. Open. Smith’s tan betrays the fact that he’s based out of the Carlsbad, Calif., company headquarters. But his grin suggests that he delights in this New England manufacturing town and is at home amid its whir of production. “We don’t want to be within a certain tolerance,” Smith says, showing off an X-ray machine that measures construction and core centricity in every ball that leaves the place. “We want to be on…

They call the hole “Redan,” which is a funny name for a hole that is not, in fact, a Redan. It doesn’t possess the Redan’s quintessential towering, angled green, nor its peppering of bunkers. The putting surface is missing a gentle, front-to-back slope. And please, don’t try to convince the good people of North Berwick—owners of the game’s very first Redan—that this tee shot is “blind.” Rather, the par-3 11th hole at TCC is a short, downhill chute, a 130-yard flipped wedge from an elevated tee box into a deceptively tight green. Its closest sibling might not be the 15th at North Berwick but rather the famed oceanside 7th at Pebble Beach. “It’s a target that looks big but plays small,” says Gil Hanse, who led the restoration of the…

The U.S. Women’s Open (June 2 to 5) returns to North Carolina this summer. Pine Needles—a Donald Ross design with a fresh face-lift courtesy of Kyle Franz—will play host for a record fourth time, and the top ladies in the world will head to perhaps the most iconic region in American golf. The confines may be friendly for the golfers competing under the red, white and blue, but recent history has not been so kind. It’s been six years since an American last won the Open, and just four of the last 17 winners hailed from the U.S. The talent pool is deep for the Americans, but the rest of the world has some serious talent of its own. Here are a few homegrown ladies who could buck the trend…

Golfers often slice because their swing direction is too inward (i.e., “over the top”). A common cause is forgetting to turn and “load” their right side during the backswing. When this happens, it’s almost impossible to sync your arms and body on the downswing. Instead, your arms go over the top. To avoid these errors, place one of your wedges under the heel of your trail foot. Step on it, so the shaft points toward the sky (below). Next, settle into your normal address position. Your one and only thought is to keep pressure on the club so it keeps pointing up. If it does, you’ve successfully moved weight to your trail side, “loading” your hip. It may require you to make a longer backswing than usual—that’s okay. The important…

Just in time to celebrate the year’s most prestigious major championship, Dewar’s, the world’s most awarded blended Scotch whisky, has created a 19-year-old “Champions Edition” ($80; dewars.com) that’s sure to please both malted-grain aficionados and 19th-hole newbies alike. Inspired by the USGA’s U.S. Open championship motto, “From Many, One,” three-time master blender of the year Stephanie Macleod utilized a number of new American oak and rye casks to produce one showstopping championship blend. The bold and balanced spirit features notes of heather honey, butterscotch and cinnamon spice, which resolve in a rich, fruity finish. As part of a multiyear partnership with the USGA, Dewar’s Champions Edition blend, which first debuted at last year’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, will be sold in a special limited-edition commemorative bottle, both online and…

JACK NICKLAUS OWNS SIX GREEN JACKETS. I’m more impressed with his four U.S. Open trophies, indicating wins in the toughest conditions against the toughest fields on a variety of tough courses (for Jack: Oakmont in 1962, Baltusrol in ’67 and ’80 and at Pebble Beach in ’72). They’re proof that his swing could excel anywhere and across multiple decades. A lot of what helped Nicklaus claim these national titles (in addition to his 14 other majors and 73 PGA Tour victories) can be found in his 1974 instruction manual, Golf My Way. It became the inspiration for millions of golfers, many of whom would go on to Hall of Fame careers (Greg Norman included), and, for this northern England native, the basis for much of the fundamentals I teach my…

VENTURI, CONGRESSIONAL, ’64. On TV, the colors were muted, almost like a painting. I wasn’t watching. (I was four.) But I did have the privilege of sitting with Kenny, hearing the tale right from the man and watching the highlight reel. My God, I’ve won the Open. The great tournament’s great quote. No one heard him say it. But it was in Ken’s head. My second U.S. Open was 10 years later. Winged Foot, ’74, 65 miles—and several light-years—from my childhood home. I was just falling for ye old game, and my path to the gods was not through TV but via the sports pages of the New York Times. (God bless ya, Dave Anderson.) A quote about the Winged Foot rough is in my head, though I can’t locate…

BROOKS KOEPKA hasn’t skipped a beat since he signed a full bag deal with Srixon Golf this year. A big reason for the seamless transition? The addition of Srixon’s ZX7 driver ($530). Koepka is averaging nearly 310 yards since he made the switch to the 460cc ZX7, with its traditional pear-shape profile featuring a springy Ti51AF titanium alloy face and Rebound Frame. When combined with a flexible area just behind the crown and a stiff internal rib structure, the alternating levels of stiffness in select zones produce impressive ball speeds across the entire face. “I think it’s probably one of the most underrated drivers out there,” Koepka says. “I’m seeing more distance with a noticeably tighter dispersion. I felt comfortable from the jump. The driver has every shot I need.”…

THE WALK UP THE 18TH HOLE AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL IS SUPPOSED TO BE ENJOYABLE. But on the second Friday in April of this year, the hike could not have been fun for Bob Koepka. The wind whipped 25 miles per hour as we trudged up the treadmill-worthy incline. His son Brooks was five over par for the tournament, searching for his tee shot among the pines and about to miss a second straight cut at the Masters. Bob had no reason to be smiling, but he was, lost in the memory of the first time Brooks beat him on a golf course. Twenty years ago, when Bob was a club champion, he was a perfect match for 12-year-old Brooks. And one day, with Brooks ahead after two holes of their typical…

You’ve been tracking Curtis Strange for decades now. In the 1970s, when you were shooting frozen-fingered, nine-hole 47s in your high school matches, Curtis was shooting 68s for Wake. He was a golfing god, and he and his brickhouse Wake Forest teams got regular write-ups in Golf World (a weekly and a bible), in Golf Journal (a USGA publication) and in all the better dailies. Curtis Strange was a national golf figure at age 20. Now he’s 67. Somehow life has conspired to put you in a place where you get to talk to Curtis on a semi-regular basis. You’re on the phone with him, you see him in hotel lobbies, you walk beside him at tournaments, in reach of the rope line. You’re actually comfortable around him. But this…

When amateur Francis Ouimet won the 1913 U.S. Open at The Country Club, 50 years had elapsed since the Battle of Gettysburg, and 87 years had come and gone since the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on the same day in 1826.1 As you read this, 109 years have passed since Ouimet whipped Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in Brookline, Mass. In 1913, J.P. Morgan, his nose and Harriet Tubman all died, and Bear Bryant, Jimmy Hoffa, Vince Lombardi, John “the Frozen Tundra” Facenda, Jesse Owens and Richard Nixon2 were born. Ouimet was 20 years old, hatched 10 years before Ford Motor Company was founded and debuted its Model A. The first World Series was played the same year, and, while the R&A’s Open Championship was contested for…

I’VE HAD A LONG and enjoyable career on the PGA Tour (30 years!). Over the decades, I’ve realized that you don’t necessarily make money on the good days. Those are fun, but most pros earn their living by getting through the bad ones. Salvaging a score when things aren’t really going your way is a skill every golfer needs—who cares if you don’t look “pretty” while doing it. Trust me: Grinding pays. Here are three things I always do to be in the mix. LOOK FOR THE DOTS: Each tip throughout this section features a corresponding color code to help you understand which part of your game it will improve the most. 1. Escape tough bunkers in one shot (not two) Nobody likes long bunker shots, not even Tour pros.…

TO HIT A CRISP, low-flying and high-spinning pitch shot, the shaft of your club must be leaning forward at impact. This means striking the ball with your hands ahead of the ball, which lessens the “dynamic loft” off the club at impact, delivering a lower, more Tour-like ballflight. A great drill to learn this is to plug a ball roughly six inches behind and ahead of the one you want to hit. Then, make your swing. (You can start in slow-motion first.) Some checkpoints: 1) Your hands are ahead of the back ball as the clubhead passes over it; 2) your hands are ahead of the “real” ball as you strike it; and 3) your hands are ahead of the front ball as the clubhead passes over it. Do this…