Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 467 i Today's Golfer

Green fees at the UK's Top 100 courses have risen by 10.7% in the last year. The average green fee to play a top-25 UK course today is £352, up from £318 last year. The average cost to play a top 100 course is £237. And this summer, two new courses will join those ranks: the New at Trump Scotland, and Old Petty at Cabot Highlands, near Inverness (see our exclusive first verdict on both on page 54). Now, I'm not here to lambast golf for being expensive. These are some of the best courses on the planet, and there's no shortage of people who want to play them, whatever the price. But we are also realists at TG – which is why we also frequently cover great value golf,…

While Rory, Scottie and the rest of the field at Royal Portrush are trying to stay away from the course's wilder areas, we can sit back and enjoy a G&T created from the buckthorn and hawthorn dotted around the site. Ben Lomond have created the Official Gin of the Open and it captures the essence of Royal Portrush through three locally foraged botanicals – wild carrot seed, sea buckthorn and hawthorn leaf. “Together, these ingredients distil the untamed spirit of the links into a gin that is complex, coastal, and characterful – much like the course itself,” they say. They have taken, they add, “the spirit of Portrush – wild, coastal and steeped in character – and captured it in a bottle.” The Ben Lomond Open Special Edition 2025 Gin…

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 GENTLEMEN, TAKE NOTE LETTER OF THE MONTH Watching the US Women's Open, what a pleasant change it made to watch top-class golf without unwelcome outbursts and tantrums, which are ever increasing in men's professional golf. I've lost count of the number of times the commentators have found it necessary to apologise for male players’ audible swearing after an errant shot. Add to this their club throwing, slamming and even snapping and it really spoils my enjoyment. With no real deterrent for these outbursts, I suggest the powers that be consider adopting the same disciplinary measures as those in professional…

Any time we are looking to move with speed and aggression, we need to build our foundations accordingly. Use these keys to make sure you are primed for power. They will also promote that sweeping attack angle we spoke about in Block #1. Ball position To set ball position, stand to the ball with your feet together, the ball opposite your insteps. From here, leave your lead foot where it is and take a good stride back with your trail foot. This leaves the ball opposite the lead instep and forward in your stance… pretty much where the club levels out and starts to rise on its circular journey around you. Stance width I like to see insteps slightly outside the shoulders; this sets up the wide and stable platform…

Up to this point, everything we've done has been to create the potential for distance. Delivery is where we start converting that potential into raw power and speed. As we move into the business end of the golf swing, it's important to realise that the rotation of the body and release of the golf club come after those initial, transitional moves we made in Block #4. It's this timing that helps us create easy, effortless power. Keep that in mind as you work through this stage. Primed for power You join me where we left off in Block #4… lead leg super-flexed, pressure under the ball of the foot, hips slightly closed to the target. Besides helping sequencing, this drop is a move that naturally shallows the plane of the…

So there we have it: seven building blocks that chart the foundations and execution of a modern, power golf swing. Now of course there's a huge amount of information here, and nobody is expecting you to master it all by a week on Thursday. Your best approach is to go section by section, starting with tee height and ball position and building it up from there. But what I will do now is give you something you can take to the course this weekend: the power swing distilled into four key phrases. 1. ‘Set up to sweep’ Half the ball showing above the driver crown, ball off lead instep, upper body leaning back. 2. ‘Wide coil’ Weight into trail side, handle high and wide at the top, back to target.…

Brandon Robinson-Thompson doesn't quite know what to make of the last 24 hours. The 32-year-old has just spent the last week living a life of luxury in Turkey, contending for what would have been the biggest victory of his career on the DP World Tour. He had his chances, too, and even held a three-shot lead heading into the final round after tying the course record with a nine-under 62. That he was unable to convert from a position of strength would usually take some getting over, but Robinson-Thompson isn't one to dwell. Not now, anyway. Just being in the fight feels like a victory in itself. Two and a half years ago, Robinson-Thompson didn't even have a tour card, let alone a regular source of income. He was living…

The signs really weren't there. No-one was looking at Costantino Rocca's career throughout his 20s, thinking, “This guy looks a future Major contender.” As a result, Rocca's remarkable tale was, and remains, a feel-good story worthy of a film. This son of Bergamo, to the north east of Milan, started out as a caddie, winning the Italian Caddie Championship in 1978 and turning professional three years later at the age of 24. He played once on the European Tour the following year, in his home Open. He missed the cut. Four trips to Q School followed as Rocca strained to get any kind of foothold on the professional game. He was a long, long way from the big time. His earnings in the seven years after 1982 were as follows,…

YOUR COACH ADRIAN FRYER solidgolf.co.uk Fellow of the PGA based at Liverpool Golf Centre liverpoolgolfcentre.co.uk Bunker shots are one part of the game where handicap takes a bit of a back seat; there are advanced players who struggle in sand, and relatively poor players who are more comfortable. So while these tips are still aimed at different skill levels, you need to make an honest assessment of your bunker competence and select the area that is most relevant to you. That said, all three exercises here will help every club golfer in what is, for me, the most needed area: contact. For the vast majority of amateurs, the typical experience is to take too much or too little sand, problems that relate to the angle of attack and the way…

According to the PGA Tour, the average time it takes one of its member pros to hit a golf shot is 38 seconds. To those of us accustomed to making a cup of tea without missing a shot, this figure might come as a surprise. Evidently the three previous minutes spent scrutinising yardage charts and squinting impassively into the sun are not included. So let us presume this typical pro shoots a round of 70, and the round takes four and a half hours. At a steady 38 seconds per shot, this golfer is actually playing golf for 2,660 seconds, which is a little under 45 minutes. That equates to around 16% of their time on the golf course that day… which means that 84% of the time, they are…

Average proximity in feet for a 20-hcp on par 3s over 200 yards You know how we keep being told hybrids are so easy to hit? Well, you wouldn't know it from this stat from performance-tracking specialists Shot Scope. Even with the benefit of a tee peg and a level stance, the 20-handicapper's average effort is no closer to the hole than 175ft… which equates to nearly 60 yards. No wonder their average shots-to-finish score is 4.78 – almost two full shots above par. Of course the possibility always exists that the hybrid is not being used on these holes as often as it ought to be, probably for reasons of ego – no one likes to pull a headcover on a par 3. That's certainly one way to account…

PowaKaddy have improved their range of electric golf trolleys with the launch of 10 new models for 2025. Three familiar ranges have been upgraded: the CT, RX and FX. And five all-new models have been introduced: the remote RX, RX10 GPS, RX12 GPS, ultra-compact CT10 GPS and the CT12 GPS, said to be the most technologically advanced electric trolley PowaKaddy have ever made. Clever tech highlights include Full Hole View, a portrait display which means what you see on the screen is a true representation of what is in front of you on the course. A new processor is nine times faster and ensures seamless GPS performance with subscription-free, instant access to 40,000+ courses. ‘FULL HOLE VIEW MEANS WHAT YOU SEE ON THE SCREEN IS A TRUE REPRESENTATION OF WHAT…

BUSHNELL ION ELITE £199.95 TG verdict: The iON Elite is Bushnell's colour touchscreen watch and it's packed with many of the features you'll find in more premium and costly options. It's loaded with more than 38,000 courses and has an easy-to-read display that shows distances to the front, centre and back of the green. It is also the first watch to feature Bushnell's patented Slope Technology, which we found to be very useful on the course. BEST OVERALL GARMIN APPROACH S70 £549.99 TG verdict: A lightweight, premium golf watch that does it all. As you'd expect at this price it's packed with features, from exercise monitoring to heart, sleep and hydration tracking. But we're obviously most interested in its golf features – and it excels there, too. With more than…

QUALITY GOLF AT SENSIBLE GREEN FEES There are 100 high-calibre courses in this ranking – and the average green fee is under £50 1 SEACROFT SKEGNESS, LINCOLNSHIRE £70. £50 after 2:30pm, midweek, Apr-Oct A third year at No.1 in this list for the elegant Lincolnshire links – which is also on the cover of this Top 100. It only just sneaks in on eligibility grounds with its green fee, but that £50 after 2.30pm rate is a real bargain. An England Top 100 fixture – generally in the middle of a very competitive list – Seacroft's best holes are set down around dune ridges. Work by Clyde Johnson has elevated it higher in recent years. 2 KINGTON LEOMINSTER, HEREFORDSHIRE £32 peak times, £39 WE and BH When people say to me,…

45 HALIFAX HALIFAX, WEST YORKSHIRE £35 midweek, £40 weekends £25 twilight after 4pm ‘Ogden’, as it's known locally, is a moorland of sometimes epic proportions. Rarely a dull moment and sits on gorgeous springy turf. A definite contender for best qualityto-cost ratio in the list. That £35 is a steal. 46 THE NORTHUMBERLAND NEWCASTLE, NORTHUMBERLAND £55 May & Sep, £65 Jun & Aug, £75 July A parkland with bags of pedigree as a result of it being created by the combined minds of Harry Colt and James Braid. It weaves in and out of the racecourse and has hosted Open qualifying. 47 REDDISH VALE MANCHESTER, LANCASHIRE £30 after 11am midweek £48 twilight after 2pm weekdays A friend of mine slates me because ever since we started extolling the many virtues…

Charley Hull Nationality: English Age: 29 Tour: LPGA, Ladies European Pro wins: Seven, plus seven Solheim Cups, winning three You've had four seconds in Majors now. You must be thinking it's going to happen soon? Yeah, 100%. I've always been knocking on the door. Just gotta get it done and dusted, but the only person who can do it is me, so I've just got to pull my head out of my ass and get it done. Is that the No.1 goal for you now? Definitely. I'd rather win a Major than be World No.1 because I don't think golf rankings can be super-fair – it all depends on how many tournaments you play in. But I think in the Majors, you're playing against everyone that week, and when you…

With huge thanks to Formby Ladies Golf Club, a stunning and very welcoming heathland layout on England's Lancashire Golf Coast. Visit www.formbyladiesgolfclub.co.uk Smacking a huge drive is of course one of golf's true pleasures… but strong hitting goes a lot further than the buzz it gives us. Golf stats are festooned with examples of how extra distance leads to lower scores, leaving us all free to pursue power without the nagging concern that we're just fanning our egos. I'm a perfect example. I've always been a long hitter, but once performance tracking showed me the relationship between distance and score, I resolved to get longer. The work I've put in means that today, I can swing the club at 128mph with a ball speed of 185 – figures that would…

A powerful backswing employs a weight shift into the trail side, plenty of width and a committed coil through the body. The three create a full range of movement that allows you to optimise speed on the way down. Shift, width and coil complement each other, and working on one tends to improve the others. But for now, we'll split the focus with some excellent exercises that train the right moves while extending and stretching the key muscle groups. Width: Hand-it-back drill 1. Take the address position we've just learned in Block #2. But take your trail hand off the club and move the trail arm back behind you as shown, the outstretched hand just past the trail foot. 2. Sweep the club back towards your trail hand. This guarantees…

Obviously at this stage the club is moving at great speed, and it's way too late for conscious thoughts or trying to control anything. That said, a powerful release is always a coordinated movement, the body, arms and club swinging through as a unit. Here is a three-step throughswing-based exercise that will help you sync everything up. 1. Back Just swing to a tee peg for this drill. Begin by finding your delivery position, hands around hip height. Find that shift-and-drop position we learned in Block #4, the lead knee out over the toe cap and pressure under the ball of the foot. 2. Down From here, use Block 5's lead-side push down into the ground to rotate and clear your left side and bring the club down to the…

2020 ■ Aged 27. ■ No world ranking. ■ Lives with his mum. ■ Less than £500 to his name. ■ Claiming Universal Credit. ■ Struggling with his mental health. ■ Trying to keep a long distance relationship alive. ■ Considering his future in the game. 2025 ■ Aged 32. ■ Ranked 194th in the world and rising fast. ■ Full DP World Tour card holder. ■ Three top-10 finishes on the DP World Tour so far this season. ■ Posted career low and course record -11 on the DP World Tour. ■ Sits 21st on the Race to Dubai. ■ Featured in two Majors – the 2023 Open and 2024 US Open. ■ Two-time Challenge Tour winner. Married. ■ Fully appreciating he has the best job in the world.…

‘EVERYONE HOPES THE TOURS CAN COME TOGETHER, BUT IT'S THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION – NOBODY KNOWS HOW IT'S GOING TO END’ Sergio Garcia does not need to earn another euro, dollar or riyal for the rest of his life. Being a fixture at the very, very top of the game for more than a quarter of a century means he will be financially set for as long as he lives. He still loves playing, though – and is playing well in 2025. But at the age of 45, he accepts the great weeks come along less frequently than they used to. Garcia, however, is not ready for semi-retirement. He has found another career that excites him, and having talked to him about it for half an hour, there is no…

In this series dedicated to swing patterns that damage us as well as our scorecard, we move on to a move that has become a bit of a buzz phrase in recent times: so-called early extension. In this article I will explain what this means and why it has the potential to cause damage in the low back region. I'll then show you a simple exercise you can do at home that can help you mediate this problematic move. Always consult a qualified physician before starting any new fitness regimen, and stop at once if the exercise is causing you pain. Early extension is essentially a straightening of the body during the downswing, angles lost as the hips and pelvis collapse in towards the ball under the strain of the…

Every club tested and rated at todays-golfer.com HERE TO HELP YOU BUY BETTER THE BEST GOLF TECH OF 2025 Whether you need a yardage or want to track stats, these devices do it all… and so much more. NEW GEAR TaylorMade's take on the zero torque putter. NEW GEAR PowaKaddy's tech-driven 2025 trolley line-up. THE BIG TEST The best lasers, GPS watches and GPS handhelds you can buy. SHOWCASE A dozen of our favourite spikeless shoes for summer.…

BEST OVERALL SKYCADDIE PRO 4X TOUR BOOK £349.95 TG VERDICT: In 2024, SkyCaddie became the most successful GPS in the history of the Legends Tour, with 80% of eligible events won by a player using one of their devices. The top-of-the-range Pro 5X Tour Book favoured by tour players is now joined by the more compact Pro 4X, which differs in two ways only: it's a fraction smaller and slightly cheaper. Features include full HD colour touchscreen graphics with zoom, IntelliPath and IntelliGreen Pro, customisable flag position, and 35,000 pre-loaded, hand-mapped courses. Price includes one-year Birdie membership. GARMIN APPROACH G20 SOLAR £299 TG VERDICT: There's not much tech that really surprises us when it comes to golf, but Garmin's use of solar power in the Approach G20 really caught our…

It would be very easy to lament the cost of green fees in this Top 100, because there is no doubt that in some respects they are out of hand – especially at ‘second tier’ courses. But I'd rather focus on what is in fact available to the golfer who likes to travel but doesn't have a limitless budget. The good news is, despite plenty of courses becoming ineligible for this Top 100 even though I have raised the ceiling to £70, there is still loads of quality in this ranking. Extracting the ineligible courses from the previous (2023) list certainly lost us some high-calibre entries. But those that have come in do not let the side down. The fact I was debating who came in right to the very…

OK, hands up who thought we were going to start this article by talking about tee pegs? I make no apology for it, because how you use your tee peg dictates what you can do with your driver… and therefore, how far you can hit the ball. Recall the longest drive you ever hit. Almost certainly you're picturing a strong, highish launch and a ball that seemed to hang in the air for an age. That's a flight you can only achieve thorough a sweeping, slightly upward strike angle. Adding launch and containing spin, this angle delivers the ideal trajectory for distance. The height you tee the ball can either make or break your ability to find it. Clip art For an excellent way to feel and develop this attack…

Transition is a word people like me use to sound clever… generally without success. Translated, transition refers to the point of the swing where we stop turning away from the ball and start moving back towards it. The change of direction can make or break a powerful strike, so Block #4 can make a decent case for being the most important of them all. Follow closely… How to build a powerful change of direction Your first task is a psychological one; you need to give your shoulders notice and hand over the job of transition to your legs and hips. Done that? Good. We need the lower half to take the leading role because there are two elements that show up time and again in the most powerful hitters as…

Consider your finish position your ultimate feedback; it will tell you everything you need to know about the swing you've just made. These four elements are the hallmark of an effective power swing: 1. Balance. You just can't find speed without balance. Imbalance causes your body to compensate in search of it, and that ruins sequencing and slows everything down. You should be able to hold your finish for as long as you like. 2. Weight on lead foot. I've spoken about the importance of that backthrough weight shift in building the swing's momentum and speed. In a fine finish, your lead foot should be supporting almost all of your weight. 3. Belt buckle facing target. It's a great indication that those large core muscles have made their needed contribution…

Watch hundreds of video tips at todays-golfer.com HERE TO HELP YOU SAVE SHOTS QUICK TIP LEARNING CURVE More often than you might think, golfers are held back by a sketchy concept of what they are trying to achieve. One of the biggest culprits here is swing path. It seems only logical that to hit the ball straight, we need to apply force straight down the target line. In fact that is exactly what we do… but only for the briefest moment as the clubhead touches the ball-target line for a flash on its circular journey around us. If we try to extend its stay on the ball-target line – either side of the ball – we risk pulling the club away from its natural, arcing path and will tend to…

We tend to associate the yips with putting, but most golfers have also experienced an unpleasant twitchiness on chipping and pitching at some stage. If the feeling of this is tough to describe – mental confusion and a loss of clubface awareness are certainly in there – the results are certainly not: expect duffs, thins, even double hits. As and when this affliction shows up in your game, try this fix on the practice area; I've seen it work wonders with golfers at their wits’ end. THE FAULT: Hands drive downward into impact Twitchy chips often crop up when we continue to swing the hands downward into impact. As the gap between the club's handle and the ground narrows, we are forced to delay the release of the club to…

As we approach summer and golf's high season, we can confidently expect the greens we are putting on to be at their fastest. This places increasing demands on our touch… especially if the putt we face is running away from us, down the hill. Of course it's a great feeling to drop one in down the slope, but if you have designs on holing the putt, you can quite quickly find yourself with an awkward seven or eight-footer coming back. So on anything outside of 6ft, consider two putts a perfectly acceptable outcome. A far better goal is to leave yourself a tap-in for the second putt, even if that means coming up a little shy. So let's look at three ideas you can work on to improve your ability…

Zero torque putters are gaining serious traction in the professional and amateur games right now, and TaylorMade have joined the party with the much-anticipated release of the Spider ZT. The latest addition to the Spider family is one many golfers will have been expecting, with it having been spotted on the PGA Tour at the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational in the hands of Jason Day and other stars. It's designed to give golfers of all abilities increased stability and consistency on the greens through a high-MOI design that utilises multi-material construction, onset hosel configuration, extreme perimeter weighting and precise CG placement. Andrew Oldknow, Director of Product Category at TaylorMade, told us, “This design minimises torque and reduces the need for hand manipulation, promoting a more consistent stroke. As a result,…