Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 442 i Today's Golfer

I'd love to know what someone like Old Tom Morris would make of the modern game, with its plethora of cuttingedge technology. Not just club and ball technology, either; but launch monitors, golf watches, GPS systems, coaching aids, simulators… There's so much tech in the game these days, and we've picked our Top 50 products in this issue. Would Old Tom have worried about his spin rates or launch angles? Would he have wanted to know the carry to the bunker on the corner of the dog-leg? Would he have needed to know the flag was 15 yards on and 18 from the left, and it played 12 yards downhill with a 15mph headwind? Quite possibly, if that information had been available to him. The beauty of tech is that…

CHRISTO LAMPRECHT Big things are expected of the South African, and not just because of his 6ft 8in frame. The 22-year-old beat Ronan Kleu 3&2 to claim the British Amateur and is now exempt for the 2024 Masters and US Open. ROYAL BRIKDALE The links course, in Southport, will host the Open Championship for the 11th time in 2026. We can't wait to see if their range is considered out of bounds after Jordan Spieth's antics in 2017! ALLISEN CORPUZ First time wins in the pro ranks don't get much better than this. The Hawaiian's victory in the US Women's Open at Pebble Beach booked her ticket to the Solheim Cup and earned her $2 million, a record in the women's game. NATTHAKRITTA VONGTAVEELAP The Thai rookie had a US…

The Major season may be over, but there's still a lot to play for before attention turns to the Ryder Cup and the revamped Rolex Series. Only the top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings after the Wyndham Championship will take part in a series of three playoff events, beginning with the FedEx St. Jude Championship on August 10. Everything leads to the season finale at East Lake, from August 24-27, which pays out $18 million of the $75 million bonus pool to the winner. We'll still have to make do with the staggered start format, but the outcome could yet determine the make-up of the two Ryder Cup teams. PLAY IT WIRRAL GOLF CLASSIC Inspired by what Liverpool has to offer? We recently stumbled upon this 54-hole midweek…

Ticking off items from my golfing bucket list shouldn't be that difficult when you consider that one of the things on the list is ‘watch live golf’. But nothing could have prepared me for what would happen over a blissful four days at The British Masters. First off, yes, I got to see golf live from the terraces and stands for the first time ever. This might surprise you, given that I've been writing a column about golf for nearly three years, but I've always been an armchair viewer up to this point. There are few things I rank higher than toilet access when considering venturing to any kind of event, and here at Average Golfer HQ it's a 1:1 ratio of toilets to spectators. Watching players fly balls over…

GET IN TOUCH As well as email (editorial@todaysgolfer.co.uk) and post (Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough, PE2 6EA), you can contact us using any of these social platforms… @Thetodaysgolfer @TodaysGolferBauer @Todaysgolfer @Todaysgolfer PING LETTER OF THE MONTH WINS… A BRAND-NEW PING PUTTER RRP £250 SAFETY FIRST Given the windy conditions on the final day of the Scottish Open, it was inevitable that even the best players in the world would occasionally hit a wayward shot. However, even when loose shots were heading directly for and potentially endangering spectators, the lack of warning or cries of “fore” from the players was alarming. Surely it is not beyond current capabilities to link Toptracer technology with some form of audible warning system, so that as the ball is launched from the tee, spectators are…

Step 1: Featured on cutting-edge devices like Shot Scope's X5 watch and Pro LX+ laser rangefinder, Strokes Gained allows us to compare our performance with every section of the bag against our handicap peers, and discover where we are better – and worse – than them. Here, in just a couple of clicks, is revealed our biggest weakness, detailed in statistical fact. Step 2: Dig deeper into the data to see what is actually happening – for example, your driving may be costing you the most shots per round, but is that down to distance or accuracy? If accuracy, what is the miss pattern? Step 3: Enlist professional help to work out what is causing the problem and put a plan in place to deal with it. Professional help like…

Had more golfers taken the Rio Olympics seriously, it is highly unlikely Seamus Power would be in the conversation now as a potential wildcard to make the plane to Italy for this year's Ryder Cup. He was a little known journeyman at the time, plying his trade on the Korn Ferry Tour and struggling to step out of the shadow of fellow countryman Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry. Those 2016 Olympics gave him that platform to shine, a chance to make a name for himself and to feel like he belonged. It had been a long time coming. While McIlroy's star power was evident early, and Lowry would famously win the Irish Open as an amateur in 2009, Power opted to get an education first but couldn't secure a scholarship…

A sudden cardiac arrest is one of the biggest killers in the UK. Often it strikes without warning and it doesn't discriminate by age, gender or even fitness level. Golf courses are the fifth most likely place for people to suffer a cardiac arrest, but not enough golf clubs – or golfers – are equipped to help save a person's life on the course. Often there's little time to react and even less time to think, which is why learning CPR and having a defibrillator nearby is so important. We believe every club has a duty of care to its members and visitors. That's why we've extended our ‘Drive for Defibs’ campaign with Motocaddy – whose electric trolleys and app can pinpoint defibrillator locations – to help make every golf…

Watch hundreds of video tips at www.todays-golfer.com HERE TO HELP YOU SAVE SHOTS QUICK TIP BACK-TO-BACK TAKEAWAY In a good takeaway the hands carry the handle, without interfering in its direction or path. This allows the club to remain on-plane through the first part of the swing, setting up a sound path for the entire motion. By far the most common problem for the club golfer is an early wrist roll, the hands and wrists overworking to get the club away from the ball. This moves the handle away from the body and pulls the club off the ideal path. To work on this, hold the club in your gloved hand but bring your trail hand across so the backs of the hands are touching. Swing the club back from…

Every golfer knows the concept of visualising a line to the hole as they survey a putt. Helping us to factor in the breaks and picture a successful outcome, it gives our brain and muscles something positive and tangible to react to. But while this is on the whole a valuable practice, it does have a drawback. A ‘line’ is by definition narrow; when we represent a successful outcome to ourselves as a thin line, we are giving an exacting instruction to our brain. With the chances of missing a line being high, it's not hard for this supposedly positive image to create a fear of failure… with nerves and tension never far behind. 1. Broad band For a positive visualisation, picture a wide brush painting a broad whitewash path…

Getting blocked out by trees is a fact of life for golfers… and very often we are too close to the timber for an aerial route to work. Unless we are to chip out sideways, the only option is a low punch that sends the ball scudding under the limbs and chasing up the fairway towards the green. While this is undoubtedly a useful weapon to have, it comes with a warning; as most of us will have experienced, failure to keep that flight seriously low is usually followed by an ominous clonk as your ball pings off a branch into the undergrowth. Follow this process and you can make sure this is something that only happens to other people… KEY CONCEPT: MORE CLUB, LESS SPEED There are two massive…

Sometimes, the answers to golfing performance issues are staring us in the face… and here is a good example: if you want to create more club speed, you need to move faster. OK, the explosive motion of the tour-pro athlete may be beyond us; but if we can spend a little time training motion that's more dynamic than our bodies are used to, our ability to move the club with more speed will improve… and so will the distance we hit the golf ball. Based on the press-up, this simple exercise is a great starting point. Go with as much intensity as you can safely manage… but as ever, stop immediately if you experience pain, light-headedness or shortness of breath. Always consult your GP before adopting any new fitness regimen.…

As far as clerical errors go, forgetting to seal 357 pages of emails, documents and investment agreements from the PGA Tour ranks right up there. The revelations, which have been seen by TG, show that the PGA Tour viewed the European Tour Group (ETG) as an “underinvested and borderline distressed asset” with an “unsustainable events model” during analysis of a potential merger last year. Although it never came to pass, the merger (which reads more like a buyout) was expected to cost the PGA Tour between $40m and $60m over five years. Lawyers have since been scrambling to seal the documents, which detail how the PGA Tour wanted to take advantage of the ETG's stake in the Ryder Cup and the profits associated with it. Other eye-opening revelations include: an…

FRONT NINE There has been many a hot debate in golf recently, often revolving around the LIV breakaway tour and more recently the merger of the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf. But for once, let's park that topic and focus on another conversation on the lips of golfers, both amateur and professional. The wee white beastie that makes it all possible in the first place, the ball. Why is everyone debating the future of the golf ball? Well, perhaps that is the question we should first asses. In the amateur game, golf's health is at an all-time high, with global growth in both the men's and women's game apparent. It has been noted that the golfing world has a real opportunity now to try and keep new…

LETTER OF THE MONTH I have bought my husband, Philip, a yearly subscription to Today's Golfer for many years. Therefore, I wanted to draw attention to his recent achievement at Worthing Golf Club, in West Sussex, where he hit two holes-in one during an 18-hole senior matchplay knockout competition, which he won. His first ace came on the 2nd hole and he repeated the feat on the 12th. I am very proud of my husband as he has rheumatoid arthritis. He has previously had both hands operated on, one of which saw his knuckles replaced in his right hand, and also had his wrist and elbow replaced in his left arm. Sally Derbyshire, email…

IRONS THE PROBLEM: SHORT AND RIGHT Club golfers often come up short because they pick a club for their best shot, not their average shot. However, this is not Nick's issue: through Shot Scope he has a very good idea of how far he hits each iron. As we will see, his shot pattern of short and often right approaches is down more to a technical issue – an overly square lead foot which is stopping him getting through the shot. Short-term solution: Adjust targeting In the immediate future Nick could simply pull his target to the back left quadrant of the green, irrespective of where the pin is. This would drag his dispersion forward and left, meaning more shots would find the putting surface. Long-term solution: Fan lead foot…

For a game where the sole intention is to get a little ball into a little hole in the fewest strokes possible, golf is overflowing with technology to help. In fact, there has never been so much tech available to help average golfers shoot lower scores – and we celebrate it all in our first Tech 50. Our panel of experts have hand-picked 50 products, many of which are brand new, which they believe will shave shots off your handicap. Plus, they've highlighted game-changing tech that is making golf more enjoyable for everyone. There are watches, lasers, GPS, launch monitors, shafts, electric trolleys and gadgets galore in the list. But you won't find any golf clubs; while we are huge advocates of new club tech, we wanted the Tech 50…

Michael Campbell never tires of telling his underdog story. There have been many in golf, but the New Zealander's is surely one of the best. This is a man who worked as a telephone repairman for five years after leaving school at 16; who topped his first-ever tee shot as a pro; and two years later squandered a two-shot lead at The Open having stayed up until 2am playing Minesweeper on his computer. There are other moments which confound belief, like the time he missed 12 cuts in a row and won the 2003 Irish Open on his next start. Of course, most people remember ‘Cambo’ for what he did as a 150-1 long shot in the 2005 US Open at Pinehurst, when he beat Tiger Woods in his prime…

Three-time Ryder Cup captain Bernard Gallacher has become the latest golfer to join our Drive for Defibs campaign and is calling on every golf club to install a defibrillator, 10 years on from one saving his life. Research by Golf Care in 2019 found that around two-thirds of UK golf courses do not have an on-site defibrillator. Currently there are more than 2,000 golf clubs in the UK, of which fewer than 700 have officially registered their defibrillator(s) on the National Golf Course Defibrillator Register. Although progress has been made in recent years, Gallacher is urging all golf courses to install a defibrillator. It comes as the 74-year-old reflects on the sudden cardiac arrest that left him ‘medically dead’ and in a coma for seven days in August 2013. “Luckily…

Let's begin with a lesson in expectation. We all expect to hole putts of around 5ft and shorter, and feel waves of embarrassment or irritation should we miss. But consider this: putting tech tells us that if our blade is just two degrees open or shut at impact, we will miss a five-foot putt. That's an exacting degree of precision for any golfer, and one we can't truly hope to possess without tour pro levels of practice. So give yourself a break. Instead of expecting to hole everything, accept you'll miss some and focus instead on improving your hole-out percentage. Naturally that will change with ability; but however good your current putting, we have a drill here that will help you take it up a level. Good luck! YOUR COACH…

Every club tested and rated at www.todays-golfer.com HERE TO HELP YOU BUY BETTER DEMONS ON THE DANCE FLOOR Meet TaylorMade's new TP Reserve putters, a nine-strong family vying for a place in your bag WYNDHAM CLARK What's in the bag of your new US Open champion? ALLISEN CORPUZ What's in the bag of your new US Women's Open champ? KEEP IT ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW Meet three of the best alignment balls designed to help you drain more putts…

Wyndham Clark won his Major title at the US Open at Los Angeles Country Club just weeks after lifting his first PGA Tour title at the Wells Fargo Championship. The American held off Rory McIlroy to win on just his seventh Major start. His previous best finish had been a T75 at the 2021 PGA Championship. Clark has rocketed up the world ranking and finds himself comfortably inside the top 50, with high hopes of making his Ryder Cup debut for Team USA in Italy. Here's what's in his bag… Driver Titleist TSi3 driver (9º) Accra TZ Six ST 60 M5 shaft Fairway wood TaylorMade Stealth 2 (15°) Project X HZRDUS Smoke Black RDX 80 TX shaft Irons Titleist T200 3-iron Mitsubishi Tensei AV Raw White 100HY X shafts Titleist…

GOLF WORLD TOP 100 HOLES CONTINENTAL EUROPE THE MOST AUTHORITATIVE RANKINGS IN THE GAME WELCOME The following pages are a truly wonderful celebration of golf in Continental Europe. The Courses ranking that we will publish in November will be too, but in some ways this list especially highlights the incredible variety on offer on mainland Europe because we were just seeking outstanding individual holes. So while there are certainly plenty of familiar names from our blue riband Courses list, you'll also find plenty of unfamiliar courses with holes in this ranking. I also love that while the traditional powerhouses of France and the Netherlands have plenty of entries here, holes from plenty of modern courses also feature. The type of hole is also enjoyably varied. As well as a pleasing…

BARE MY SOUL Name: Taylor Montgomery Nationality: American Age: 28 Tour: PGA Tour Pro wins: 1 Is it true you once worked as a shuttle driver at Shadow Creek? Oh yeah. Shadow Creek, in Vegas, is my home course and it was during ‘The Match’ in 2018. I just drove around (former NFL star) Reggie Bush. But that was cool, being around Tiger and Phil. They are the two biggest names in golf for guys my age. So did you grow up playing at Shadow Creek? I was more into basketball, baseball, football, but my dad was always a good golfer. He became good buddies with the guys at MGM and started off at Shadow Creek as a caddie before becoming director of golf. He's now the general manager. So,…

Dr Jonathan Roberts Senior Lecturer, Loughborough University, Sports Technology Institute Dr Roberts has worked at Loughborough University for 25 years. He's completed a Callaway-sponsored PHD on the feel of golf shots, as well as completing golf ball consultancy work for Nike and most recently collaborating with Ping. His knowledge isn't just limited to golf, either; he works as part of a research group designing World Cup footballs for adidas, and is currently studying how real grass playing surfaces compare to 3G Astroturf pitches. Rory England PHD Researcher More casual than competitive golfer today, Rory was a Today's Golfer reader in his youth. Gifted at maths and physics at school, he went on to complete a four-year under-graduate program at Loughborough University. He's since spent time working with adidas in Germany…

DRIVER DISTANCE AND SHOT AREA (AVERAGED OVER THREE SPEEDS) We all want to play the longest, most accurate golf ball, but make sure you don't just look at that data exclusively; it's important to factor in iron and wedge performance to properly optimise a ball across all areas of your game. Interestingly, our shot area grew from 41.85sq yds at 85mph, to 56.7 sq yds (35.5% bigger) at 100mph, and 117 sq yds (106.3 % bigger) at 115mph, which highlights brilliantly the impact speed has on accuracy and tolerances. Don't instantly write off balls with a bigger shot area; some are specifically designed to be easier to shape, whereas lower spin balls often claim to improve accuracy by cutting spin. Our data highlights Wilson being top performers for accuracy, with…

Despite everything that has happened, would you still consider playing on the PGA Tour or DP World Tour if the merger allows it? Martin Kaymer: I would love to play on the European Tour. I had great success there. I have good friends there. I enjoy the tournaments that they play. I still believe that tour can be one of the strongest, especially with all the venues that they can provide in Europe. Once we have the possibility and the chance to play in Europe again, I would like to support a few events here and there because I enjoy playing them. Graeme McDowell: I feel exactly the same way. Obviously my priority right now is the LIV Tour, but moving into the future, I would love the opportunity to…

NAME: LUDVIG ABERG AGE: 23 NATIONALITY: SWEDISH WHO IS HE? The biggest talent to emerge from Europe since Jon Rahm. OK. SO WHAT MAKES HIM SO SPECIAL? Check out the smooth-swinging Swede on YouTube and you'll see. He pounds the ball like Rory and is a former amateur World No.1 with a big future. In May, he became only the second man in history to be named the best US college player in back-to-back years. The other was Rahm! WHERE'S HE PLAYING NOW? Predominantly on the PGA Tour, where he earned his card after topping the inaugural PGA Tour University rankings. He turned pro in June and has been a big presence on leaderboards. He finished T4 at the John Deere Classic. With calls for him to make the Ryder…

So, let us guess: you'd like to play golf much better… and you'd like that to start tomorrow if at all possible. OK, we're not exactly entering Nostradamus territory here: the question of how to make quick, enduring strides in the game has obsessed golfers ever since a befuddled Scottish shepherd wondered why the stones he whacked with his crook kept curving off to the right. Since then the game has frustrated us to a degree bordering on the sadistic, with unrewarded effort, false dawns and stubborn handicaps the order of the day. Yes, if we golfers have proved anything over the past 700 years or so, it's that there is no magic wand. But this does not mean progress is impossible, or even that it must be dearly won.…

David Feherty is one of the most complex and charismatic characters in golf. Only John Daly can rival him for enigmatic tales, which is what makes this new book from John Feinstein so genuinely funny and captivating. Feherty is loaded with colourful and absurd anecdotes from his playing and TV career, like the time he celebrated a win at the Scottish Open with members of rock legends Led Zeppelin. He woke up two days later on the 16th green at Gleneagles, 50 miles away. He compares his first marriage to a “hostage situation” and takes great delight in recalling the time he had a Caesar salad hurled at him by Colin Montgomerie for labelling him “Mrs Doubtfire”. Feherty is surprisingly transparent about his past and puts his trademark wit to…

♦ In his first full season on the European Tour, held a two-shot lead at the 1995 Open after 54 holes. A 76 meant he missed the play-off with Costantino Rocca and John Daly by a shot. ♦ Celebrated the first of eight wins on the European Tour at the 1099 Johnnie Walker Classic. ♦ In 2005, won the US Open and the richest prize in golf, the £1 million HSBC World Match Play Championship at Wentworth. ♦ Named European Tour Player of the Year for 2005 and received an Honorary Life Membership.…

“We've always had a defibrillator in our clubhouse, but with such a big piece of land and two courses, we recognised that another one would be really beneficial. One of our members, Jared Evans, kindly donated a second defibrillator from HeartSafe, which now goes out with our course marshal in a buggy. There's been a couple of instances where we've needed to use a defibrillator, which really highlights the importance of having them. I know it's an expense, but you can't put a price on someone's life, can you? Every club should have at least one.” Will Smith, Member Services & Marketing Manager at Saunton Golf Club, Devon “When I saw the Drive for Defibs campaign in Today's Golfer, it made me think that we really needed some kind of…

YOUR COACH DEANA RUSHWORTH Former England international and Advanced PGA Professional, Witney Lakes Resort deanagolfpro.co.uk Many club golfers – especially the sedentary ones – are all too familiar with the sensation of a stiff back… and the restrictive sensations it causes as they try to rotate back and through during the golf swing. All too often, avoidance of pain and injury takes precedence over where the ball goes, and that's no way to play golf. As ever, professional advice and conditioning hold the long-term key here; but in the meantime, there is an option that can give you more mobility instantly: standing a little taller. Let's see how it works. 1. Stiff… and short When we experience stiffness through our spine, the last thing we feel like doing is twisting…

TaylorMade Tour Response Stripe £39.99 If your putter face is a single degree open or closed from eight feet, you miss the putt. The Tour Response Stripe certainly helps; it's incredibly simple, brilliantly effective, and for 2023, it comes in four colours, too. Srixon Z-Star Divide £47.99 Srixon's Divide has yellow and white halves which give an instant alignment line around the ball's equator. It's very simple but impressively effective. Callaway ERC Soft 360 Fade £44 The new design on the ERC Soft is especially good at highlighting the line of putts and the intended path of the putter back to the ball.…

Brautarholt features in the Icelandic Sagas, dating back almost 1,000 years, where the estate was said to have 18 doors on hinges. Here, however, we almost couldn't care less about 18, since a fixed, predetermined number of holes put us at risk of leaving out some of the site's jaw-dropping green sites and golf features. I he driveable par-4 3rd is a prime example. This uses natural terraces for tees, from where a decision must be made. Do you hold back or play boldly? Here, the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean, against the hole's clifftop right flank, play a role similar to that of the old railway on the 16th at the Old at St Andrews and its daughter, the influential 4th hole at Woking, in the heart of…

Experience tells us the only true way to accurately reveal any difference between golf ball performance is via a repeatable swing and a consistently accurate impact location, something no human tester can ever reproduce. The likes of Rory McIlroy might get close, but we wanted to test 28 different balls across different swing speeds and with different clubs; so a robot was our only option. When we did a similar test in 2019, we used the robot at PXG's R&D facility in Arizona; this time, the robot was a bit closer to home at Loughborough University, one of the world's leading sports research facilities. Why different clubs and different speeds? We're all about the club golfer here at TG, so it was really important for us to test each golf…

Just a few years ago, if you wanted to line up your ball on the green (or tee), you had to draw on it with a Sharpie. Happily, today there are plenty of balls on sale with builtin alignment aids. The trend was kick-started by Callaway's Triple Track tech in 2019, but most of the big brands now have an alignment option in their range, and TaylorMade say almost 50 percent of their ball business comes from the segment, led by the TP5 Pix and Tour Response Stripe. These are our favourite alignment options… £55 per dozen URETHANE CLUB GOLFER CALLAWAY CHROME SOFT TRUVIS Not strictly an aid to alignment, Truvis is great at making the ball look larger than it actually is. It also provides tons of marketing opportunities,…