Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 455 i Today's Golfer

The 152nd Open Championship wasn’t quite the epic it could have been, purely because Xander Schauffele played so well, he wrestled the Claret Jug from the chasing pack’s grasp. It was, however, a wonderful showcase for links golf; with 400-yard downwind drives, 210-yard drives into the wind, ball-gobbling gorse aplenty, revetted bunkers galore, more wind, sideways rain, 115 yards of the joyous Postage Stamp wreaking havoc, more wind, driver-driver into par 5s, drivers into par 3s, more wind… and a very worthy champion. Maybe I’m a masochist, but I loved watching the world’s best get beaten down by Troon. As much as I felt for guys like Shane Lowry (who was vocal about the set-up) and Rory, it was a pleasure to watch players like Billy Horschel, Justin Rose, Dan…

The enduring memory of the 2024 Open will start and end with Xander Schauffele raising the Claret Jug on the 18th green at Royal Troon. But behind every Open Championship is a set of numbers, so let’s look back on the figures that defined the final Major of the year. 15,000 The population of Troon when the Open’s not in town. 258,174 The record-breaking number of spectators for an Open at Royal Troon. £64m The amount generated for Ayrshire’s local economy in 2016. This year is expected to far exceed that. 199 The number of countries The Open was broadcast to. 6,500 The number of permanent and temporary staff working across the week in various capacities including security, officials, marshals and employees of The Royal & Ancient. 1,900 The number…

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 WHAT'S IN MY BAG… LETTER OF THE MONTH Years ago, I played off a low single-figure handicap using equipment mostly from the club pro’s used bargain bin. Now, I’ve got the latest driver that hits the ball out of (my) sight, fairway woods I hardly use as the rough is too long, rescues that don’t, irons to suit my slow swing, wedges that put me in bunkers, a chipper to prevent me going anti-clockwise around the fringe due to ‘toe shanks’, and ‘drop-and-stop’ balls that spend most of the time landing short of the green, thanks to a wobbly…

WHAT’S IN THE BAG Nelly Korda is having one of the best seasons the LPGA Tour has ever seen. The World No.1 has won six times in 2024, collecting five straight titles from January to April, a recordequalling feat that hadn’t been done in nearly two decades. It is a period of Tiger-like dominance. The world rankings show the points gap between Korda and Lilia Vu, her closest rival, is greater than the margin between the World No.2 and any other golfer who features in the Rolex list. Her dominance is similar to Scottie Scheffler’s in the men’s game, and both share the same club sponsor, though they set up their bags in very different ways. To find out how Korda settled on her 2024 set, we sat down the…

Driver: TaylorMade Qi10 Max (10.5°, Mitsubishi Diamana GT 60 S) 3-wood: TaylorMade Stealth 2 (15°, Fujikura Ventus Red 7 S) 7-wood: TaylorMade Stealth 2 (21°, Fujikura Ventus Black 7 S) Hybrid: Ping G425 (5-26°, Fujikura Ventus Blue HB 7 S) Iron: TaylorMade P770 (5, AeroTech SteelFiber i80 CW) Irons: TaylorMade P7MC (6-PW, AeroTech SteelFiber i80 CW) Wedges: TaylorMade MG4 (50°, 54°), Vokey Design WedgeWorks (58°) Putter: Titleist Scotty Cameron Special Select Squareback 2 Prototype Ball: TaylorMade TP5x (#1)…

HOW TO WATCH Sky Sports will be broadcasting seven hours of coverage every day between 12 noon and 7pm. There will also be a one-hour highlights package every evening. There may also be free coverage on the Sky Sports Golf YouTube channel, but that remains TBC. WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR Double greens The Old Course is famous for them. There are seven in total. It means a lot of greens are hit in regulation but high quality lag putting is essential. Slow play The women’s game has an unfortunate reputation for slow play, as does The Old Course. Seven-hour rounds, anyone? Only two par 3s That’s right: the 8th and the 11th are the only short holes on the whole course. Short par-4s While 8 and 11 are the…

BEEF'S BOOK 'THE DARK TIMES' I never knew that I was struggling with my mental health. I don’t think people always do. It’s the sort of thing that can just creep up on you, even when you’re giving yourself little clues that things might not be quite right. Like power drinking on your own. Or furiously hurling your golf clubs up trees. Or walking off the course and giving serious thought to never coming back. Looking back now, it’s easy enough to diagnose what happened and why. But I never even saw it coming. Everything was happening too quickly. Life was too wild. The entire period from the summer of 2016 to the end of 2017 felt like about a month. A mad, relentless month of golf and celebrity and…

The sight of your ball arcing away from the green through the second part of its journey is as frustrating as it is common. More positively, thanks to launch monitors, we understand what causes this curvature. We create shape in our shots when we swing across the ball. If we can harness swing path -sending the club down the target line at the point of impact – we give ourselves our best chance of a straight shot. Here are three ways you can improve your path – and while they are targeting different skillsets, any golfer will benefit from all three. YOUR COACH NEIL WAIN PGA professional based at Keele GC, Staffs BREAK 100 Target shoulder aim For the golfer looking to shoot in double digits, the only place to…

Great short-game artists play each shot long before they make contact with the ball. Of course this shot takes place in the imagination, as the player conjures a picture of the ball’s entire journey to the holeside. Arguably the most important element of this visualisation is the ball’s first bounce: it can make or break the shot. When we create our own picture of the shot in front of us, we should be placing this first bounce on a part of the course that offers predictability; almost always, this means on the green, and ideally a flat, firm portion of it. With an effective landing spot locked in, ‘all’ we have to do now is hit it – and that’s where this month’s Challenge comes in. YOUR COACH On the…

Motocaddy HydroFlex £199 A multiple TG Award winner, thanks to its unmatched functionality and build quality. The HydroFlex is perfect if you want to carry it in summer but use a push cart in winter, thanks to the Easilock base which attaches it securely to any Motocaddy trolley. OGIO Shadow £369 We couldn’t find any part of this bag we didn’t like. The magnetic and Rapid Access pockets make getting stuff in and out a breeze. And with nine pockets in all, you have an abundance of storage and some decently sized valuables and apparel pockets to fill. Callaway Fairway C £179 A superb bag that will keep you going all year round. At 4lb (1.8kg), the Fairway C is superbly lightweight and makes walking the course a breeze. The…

Allestree Park could have been a name prominent in our ranking. It is a course of rare pedigree, having been created by Harry Colt in 1929. Today, 14 original holes remain just as they left his drawing board. It had the only example of a tee situated on an island in a lake ever created by Colt in his 400-plus worldwide designs and sits within the grounds of a Grade II-listed building – within a UNESCO World Heritage Site – which was previously its clubhouse. It was the Midlands’ version of St George’s Hill or Wentworth; Colt-designed courses flanked by luxury housing. But it is now abandoned and being rewilded, because Derby City Council decided to close a municipal course of immense historic value. Its first professional, Tom Barber, helped…

WWW.PING.COM We don’t use robots for testing regularly -they’re expensive to get access to and unlike golfers, they don’t mishit too often. But to accurately gauge the performance differences between balls, you really need to test them on a robot. So while human testing is crucial for intangibles such as feel and looks, no human golfer has the consistency or stamina to hit shots at the same speed and from the same location over and over and over again… like a robot. Thanks to Loughborough’s indoor test lab, we were able to create a controlled test environment without the interference of weather conditions, which is a huge concern when hitting thousands of shots down a range over five days. It also meant we could easily retrieve any ball that presented…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH PING® PLAY YOUR BEST® This is a list of the 21 balls we tested last year. All the data remains on todays-golfer.com and is as relevant now as it was 12 months ago, though we’d urge you not to compare them directly with this year’s test as we used two different software packages. Also, be aware that not all of these balls will still be on sale, though you might be able to find them on offer. 1 Bridgestone E6 2 Bridgestone Tour B RX 3 Bridgestone Tour B RXS 4 Bridgestone Tour B X 5 Bridgestone Tour B XS 6 Callaway Chrome Soft X LS 7 Callaway Chrome Soft X 8 Callaway Chrome Soft 9 Callaway ERC Soft 10 Callaway Supersoft 11 Kirkland Signature+ 12 Maxfli…

WWW.PING.COM DRIVER DISTANCE AND SHOT AREA (AVERAGED OVER THREE SPEEDS) Whether you’re Rory or Roy, 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 19.7 sq yards at 85mph, to 34.7 sq yards at 100mph, and 62.3 sq yards at 115mph, which really highlights 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 Seed, Titleist and Callaway among…

Lots of us think wedges don’t change that much over time. But Callaway think differently. This is the new Opus Platinum, which fuses metal injection moulding (MIM) with tungsten to precisely dial in performance and feel. Callaway staffers have been involved in its prototyping and design process for around two years. “MIM construction has opened the door for Callaway to deliver precision in wedge construction like never before, to dial in touch and feel where players need it.” So says the brand’s Tour Manager Joe Toulon, who adds: “Tungsten has been incorporated into the topline, bringing the flight lower for more control and spin into greens. By using that tungsten high in the topline, we’re able to give players a shot that will naturally launch lower, providing more control and…

WHAT IS A SUDDEN CARDIAC ARREST? A cardiac arrest usually happens without warning and occurs when there is an electronic malfunction in the heart, resulting in an irregular heartbeat that disrupts the effective pumping action of the heart. The lack of blood flow to the brain and other organs means the person stops breathing normally and will be unresponsive and unconscious. Death can occur within minutes if CPR and defibrillation are not carried out. IS A CARDIAC ARREST THE SAME AS A HEART ATTACK? Although the terms are often used interchangeably, a heart attack and cardiac arrest are two very different things. A heart attack is a plumbing issue and happens when the blood supply to the heart muscle is cut off. This is often caused by a clot in…

5 Wins in a row in 2024 (LPGA Drive On Championship, Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship, Ford Championship, T-Mobile Match Play and Chevron Championship), a feat only previously accomplished by LPGA legends Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sorenstam (2005). 6 Wins out of seven events in 2024, with the addition of the Cognizant Founders Classic. 1 Major, the Chevron Championship, her second Major title in total. $2,943,708 On-course earnings so far in 2024 – her nearest rival is on $1.1 million. She earned more in the first five months of this season than she did in the previous two years ($2.82 million). 2.40 Strokes gained: Total (1st) 0.79 Strokes gained: Off the Tee (2nd) 73.4% Greens in Regulation (2nd) 1.71 Strokes gained: Tee to Green (2nd) 0.48 Strokes gained: Around…

With putting, we tend to think of distance and direction as individual skills that should be worked on separately. In reality, they can and should be worked on together. Why? Because improvement in one area inevitably promotes improvement in the other. In this article, you are going to learn a simple way to gain control of line, and a second exercise to harness length. Both work well by themselves… but if you really want to make progress, blend them – and watch your line and length improve simultaneously. YOUR COACH STEVEN THOMAS PGA Fellow Professional and Head of Coaching at 3 Hammers Golf Academy, Wolverhampton stevethomasgolf.com Two for one It is rare indeed to find a golfer who is excellent at line but poor at length, or vice versa. This…

BARE MY SOUL TYRRELL HATTON Name: Tyrrell Hatton Nationality: English Age: 32 Tour: LIV Golf Pro wins: 11 What is your earliest memory? Wow, that’s a hard one to start with… Probably charge-arsing about in the back garden on one of those little pedal things as a kid – and wiping my sister out on hers in the process. What scares you the most? A lot of things, actually. I’m terrible. Probably the biggest thing is that I’m awful in the sea. I’m fine swimming, it’s just that the sea just freaks me out when I think about it. I was on holiday last week, out on a boat, and I refused to get in the water so someone pushed me in and I came up flapping. I was absolutely in…

WWW.PING.COM With the costs of buying an R&D golf robot running to $100,000-plus, purchasing one is somewhat prohibitive. And the brands that own them inevitably also make golf balls, which obviously presents a conflict of interest should we use one to perform a ball test against competitor models. But when Ping told us about their relationship with Loughborough University, and that they have an R&D lab on campus, we realised it made perfect sense to explore every opportunity to gain access to their world-class research facilities. Why different clubs and different speeds? We have always been about the club golfer here at TG, so it was vitally important to us to test each golf ball at different swing speeds to show how each model will perform for you. So, no…

WWW.PING.COM £55 PER DOZEN CALLAWAY CHROME TOUR X In many instances a first, second and third-placed ranking for carry distance across our three driver speeds would tell you everything you need to know about the new Chrome Tour X. But this ball is so much more than just a firm, fast and long-driving model. The X was either highest or tied highest for shot height across the three driver speeds (and somehow posted a lower-than-average ball flight with the 7-iron). It did so while also producing more iron spin (which means it’s not the longest) and wedge stopping power than any other ball on test. That’s some serious performance across the board, yet it still wasn’t finished there. Callaway golf balls have taken some stick for manufacturing inconsistencies before, which…

The golf swing is one place where two wrongs can make a right. A golfer with a steep backswing can shallow out on the way down to find an effective hitting position. Another with a ‘weak’ grip – promoting an open face at impact – can learn to release and rotate the clubhead a little more aggressively through the strike. However, in my experience, the more of these ‘balancing’ moves your action forces you to make, the less consistent you will be. Nelly Korda’s wide, rhythmic and simple backswing is so on-point that any balancing downswing moves are kept to an absolute minimum. This, I believe, is the foundation of an extraordinary consistency that has allowed her to win six events out of seven on the LPGA Tour in 2024.…

“I rarely had a coach out here with me last year and the years before. I love the fact that I have one out here now, because feel versus real is very, very different. What I think I’m doing is usually kind of the opposite, so having someone out here has really helped me. “I think perfect is just impossible. You’re going to drive yourself mad trying to be perfect, so you just have to let it go. I just learned that you make more mistakes when you’re trying to be perfect, so the way I try to look at it is it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s also okay to bounce back. “I don’t want to train like a golfer, I want to train like an athlete. Thankfully,…

Defending champion Lilia Vu was a four-time, double Major winner in 2023 and has won twice again this year. Finished T41 on her links championship bow in 2023 but eighth at Dundonald Links the same year. Ireland’s Leona Maguire became the first Irish winner on the Ladies European Tour in July. Competitive and undeterred by poor weather, she could well improve on her fourth at Muirfield in 2022. Thailand’s Atthaya Thitikul has finished second in Fife already – in the Scottish Open at Dumbarnie Links – and she was also seventh at Muirfield two years ago. She has too much talent not to be a contender. Sweden’s Linn Grant will be eyeing her first Major at St Andrews. Impressive in winning the Scandinavian Mixed in June, she also has Scottish…

THIS MUCH I KNOW For 13 magical months in the late 2000s, Padraig Harrington – one of the most famous tinkermen in the game – mastered golf. Between July 2007 and August 2008, he won an Open, defended it the following summer and then added a US PGA Championship. He was Europe’s most dominant player, No.3 in the world, winning on both sides of the Atlantic. In June, the 51-year-old was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, after three more victories on the PGA Tour and 11 on the DP World Tour. He has a total of 36 worldwide wins, including last year’s US Senior Open. Famed for his attention to detail, years before Aimpoint, he used a spirit level to note the slopes across all 18 greens…

Watch hundreds of video tips at www.todays-golfer.com PRESENTED BY Shot Scope QUICK TIP MAKE EVERY SHORT PUTT 12 INCHES LONG If I gave you a foot-long putt to hole, I suspect most of you would fancy your chances. If it was four feet, you might not be so confident. But to make every shortie 12 inches long, use the concept of a near or intermediate target, something many of you will already do in the long game. Find a straight four-footer on the practice green. Place a marker 12 inches or so in front of the ball, right on the ball-hole line – flush to the ground so as not to affect the ball’s roll. Strike the putt, placing your attention not on the hole but on rolling the ball…

As summer continues and courses become firmer and faster, we often find ourselves needing to play more high-flying, soft-landing shots from greenside bunkers. If we can master this flight, we can get the ball to settle quicker and give ourselves a better look at an impressive up-and-down… though for the vast majority of amateurs, down in three remains more than acceptable. Also a great option when the green is running away from you or when you have plenty of bunker but not much green in front of you, the high-flying sand shot needs plenty of speed and commitment. Let’s take a look at the technique that will enable you to play this shot with both. With thanks to the Dunas at Terras da Comporta, a challenging and beautiful new David…

YOUR COACH It’s fair to say the common or garden golfer has two natural habitats: the golf course and the driving range. As a performance coach, my primary focus is inevitably the field of battle itself but in truth, my time spent on ranges up and down the country has proved almost equally instructive. The range is supposed to be a ‘safe zone’, a place for exploration and training, but there is no question that what often transpires there is not always so positive and progressive. Indeed, far from preparing you for better performance, poor range habits can in fact be detrimental to it. With this in mind, let me introduce you to three people I meet on a regular basis, earnestly bashing balls away and completely unwittingly inviting trouble…

Q Is the P7CB the first TaylorMade iron to co-forge more than one material? No, the P7TW and P750 both have tungsten co-forged inside, but the CB is the first model to utilise Metal Matrix Composite material as well. We can control the CG and forgiveness using MMC, so where the CG of long irons usually gets higher as the mass reduces and the sole widths get narrower, we’ve got the CG flat across the entire set, which gives a really consistent feel. Q What differences can you expect to see in performance between the P7CB and P770? Expect meaningful differences depending on which iron you’re looking at within each set. The short irons will perform similarly, but the P770 has a slightly wider sole, and a slightly longer blade…

TaylorMade kicked things off, Titleist followed and now Callaway has entered the mini driver battle with its new AI-Smoke Ti 340. It features the most sophisticated face in Callaway history, which has been developed using real player data and advanced machine learning. Expect a shorter shaft and smaller overall footprint, to deliver consistent distance with a tighter dispersion. Callaway says: “The Ti 340 delivers driver-like action with the launch of a fairway wood. The titanium construction and Ai Smart Face provide exceptional ball speeds with tight dispersion. Golfers can expect a higher ball flight and softer landing off the tee, resulting in improved distance consistency on challenging tee box shots that require precision.” Here’s everything else you need to know… FRONT AND BACK WEIGHTING A front/back weight screw design means…

THE MOST AUTHORITATIVE RANKINGS IN THE GAME JOIN OUR PANEL See page 104 for details. WELCOME When we started this new era of Golf World Top 100s in the summer of 2020, I confidently stated to TG’s editor that we would have rankings on every region in England and Scotland within three years. I’m a year late, but we’ve got there… and we have not just crawled over the finishing line. I can confidently state that some of the rankings this month are the most assiduously and comprehensively compiled lists ever produced. I am loath to pick out individuals but I can’t not highlight the incredible efforts made by Ian Macdonald in the North East, Richard Bryson in Suffolk and the Bedfordshire panel. They’ve played every course in their respective…

WWW.PING.COM Callaway Triple Track and Truvis, TaylorMade’s Ink and Pix, Srixon’s Divide… there has never been more choice if you need a little help when it comes to lining your ball up to your target. Or if you just want to play something a little more personal to you. The thing about all these alignment options is that they’re not just in it to look good. Each one has been specifically developed to help a certain part of your game – just ask World No.1 Nelly Korda, who practises these days with a TaylorMade TP5 Pix. So which do you need… £47.99 PER DOZEN TOUR LEVEL SRIXON Z-STAR DIVIDE Half-and-half coloured golf balls are nothing new; Ping made them back in the 1980s. But Srixon’s decision to bring them back…