Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i Golf Magazine

AUGUSTA NATIONAL IS A SPECIAL PLACE. The Masters is a special tournament. If you haven’t been, you’ll get a taste for what I mean starting on page 69, the beginning of a 43-page celebration of what is, at the very least, the most unique major in golf. Outside of Christmas with the fam, prepping GOLF’s annual Masters Preview package is my favorite time of year. The storylines are endless, from the quirky and heroic wins throughout the decades, the vibe of, say, hanging in Amen Corner on Moving Day, to the sights and sounds you can only find among the pines in this heaven-on-earth parcel in northeast Georgia. In planning the preview, our editorial team debated the significance of Tiger Woods’ come-from-behind victory a single April ago. Two camps emerged:…

DURING LAST YEAR’S Masters Sunday, Tiger Woods was stalking another green jacket and you could feel it in your gut. The golf world came to a standstill… except on the driving range at Chalk Mountain Golf Course, in the sleepy town of Atascadero in central California. For Rudy Duran, Masters Sunday was business as usual, as he gave a string of lessons to golfers of varying age and ability. “I heard a few shouts here and there, and a few people told me Tiger did this, Tiger did that,” says Duran with a chuckle. “It’s not that I don’t care, because I do. But I’ve been watching Tiger do amazing things since he was four and a half. I guess I’m not easily amazed anymore.” Duran is now 70 and…

PATRICK CLEMENTE HAS PHOTOS of his daughter Gianna, then 18 months, holding a putter at their club outside Cleveland. “She’s not putting, but it’s a cute photo,” he says. It also turned out to be prescient. A month after she turned five, Gianna played in her first tournament. At seven she won the U.S. Kids World Championship at Pinehurst. Last August, she was the third youngest player ever to play in the United States Women’s Amateur. She is now the top-ranked 11-year-old in the country. Next year, at 12, her schedule will ramp up when she’ll be old enough to play in AJGA events. To facilitate her budding golf career, the family splits its time between Ohio and Naples, Fla. Her father, who played college golf and works in sales,…

IT’S DIFFICULT TO TRULY get to know pro golfers. Who are they at their core? When it comes to LPGA star Morgan Pressel, look to her friends for salient clues. “Everybody talks about Morgan the golfer, but what she does off the golf course is by far more impressive,” says Paula Creamer. “Morgan’s used tragedy in her life to create something incredible. She’s literally saving the lives of so many women,” adds Brooke Henderson. Seventeen years ago, Pressel lost her mom, Kathy, to breast cancer, and not a day goes by that she doesn’t think about her. But she’s been able to turn family misfortune into help for others. The annual Morgan & Friends Fight Cancer tournament, held in January at St. Andrews CC in Pressel’s hometown of Boca Raton,…

WHEN THE USGA/R&A DISTANCE INSIGHTS project was released in February, it set off what might generously be called a heated debate. In 102 pages and 56 supplemental reports, the governing bodies—to no one’s surprise—found that the ball is going farther and courses have been getting longer. Not so clear is the answer to this question: For the pros, has the advantage of longer driving distance changed over time and by how much? Long hitters like Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Fred Couples and Rory McIlroy (above) have always had an advantage. Shorter hitters like Corey Pavin, Luke Donald, Matt Kuchar and Jim Furyk always found ways to excel. In February, Webb Simpson won the Waste Management Phoenix Open in spite of ranking outside the top 130 in driving distance on Tour…

Cleveland CBX Full-Face $150 Lofts: 56˚, 58˚, 60˚, 64˚ Grinds: C-grind Our take: The Cleveland CBX Full-Face wedges are built to produce high, lofted shots around the green. An extended toe portion adds forgiveness when hitting flops, and the innovative Rotex grooves extend out farther on the face to increase the hitting area. A low C-shape is optimized for open-faced short-game shots. ClubTester’s take (11-hdcp): “About as consistent as they come. Had no clue forgiveness existed like this in a wedge.” Callaway MD5 Jaws $160 Lofts: 46˚, 48˚, 50˚, 52˚, 54˚, 56˚, 58˚, 60˚ Grinds: C, Low-Bounce W, S, X, W Our take: Crafted by the legend Roger Cleveland, Callaway’s newest wedge creation is built for more “bite.” Made from 8620 soft carbon, the wedges use the company’s groove-in-groove technology—and…

Adam Hadwin Nine professional wins, OWGR No. 56 The super-flop is one of the most exciting shots in golf. Pull it off in front of your weekend group and you’re considered a god. Skull it into oblivion and you’re sure to be the butt of jokes at the 19th hole. It’s a high-risk, high-reward shot that takes some guts and countless hours of practice to execute under the gun. Elite players like PGA Tour winner Adam Hadwin can make the flop look as easy as a routine bump-and-run, but when it comes to the average mid-handicapper, the Canadian has some sage advice: Opt for a lower lofted wedge instead of reaching for the lobber. “Don’t always reach for the highest-lofted club,” Hadwin says. “If you can learn to chip with…

Brad Faxon Eight-time PGA Tour winner Everyone wishes they were Brad Faxon on the putting greens. One of the greatest to ever stroke a putt—his 1.704 putts per green in regulation average during the 2000 season is the best ever recorded on Tour—Faxon has offered guidance to a number of high-profile names, including Rory McIlroy. When you’re good at what you do, everyone wants to know your secrets. But Faxon freely admits there isn’t a hack to becoming a good putter. A lot of it has to do with two things: finding a putter you trust and learning how to read slope and speed. Faxon has used the same Scotty Cameron FaxDay putter almost exclusively since 1997 and knows the ins and out when it comes to how it operates.…

THERE WAS A TIME I’d have laughed if you told me I’d one day freely roam the lush greenspace of Augusta National Golf Club. I had spent years entering—and losing—the annual ticket lottery. And if you’d told me I’d walk one of golf’s most hallowed and forbidden-to-be-photographed courses with my camera in hand? Crazy. So last spring, when I got a call from GOLF to pack up the gear and head to Augusta, I was in disbelief. How should I comport myself? Are the slopes as dramatic as they say? How many peach ice cream sandwiches is too many? Your mind races with the what-ifs and hypotheticals that covering a tournament like the Masters brings—until you cross under the large leaderboard off the first fairway and you’re overwhelmed by a…

There are few scenes in golf more delightful than the kid-caddie brigade that invades the Par-3 Contest every Masters Wednesday. Junior loopers playing in bunkers, hopping over microphones and racing to pull pins for Daddy; each one cuter than the next. In 2018, Justin Pillmore was taking in the festivities from his couch in Sellersville, Pa., when he noticed something was amiss. “You look at Augusta National, and from the parking lot to the flowers to the birds chirping, pretty much everything there is perfect,” Pillmore recalls. “The one thing I thought was really weird was all these kids are running around in different uniforms.” He was right. Young Horschel, Hoffman and Finau all had square, green club logos on their chests, lovingly hand-crafted by Zach Johnson’s mother-in-law. Alex Noren’s…

Page 113 DURING HIS LIFETIME, IAN Fleming never came out and said that he was the model for James Bond, but he never exactly denied it either. The British author, who first introduced the dangerously debonair secret agent in his 1953 novel Casino Royale, had worked in naval intelligence during World War II. And while he’d mostly been stationed behind a desk, in his off-hours he played cards, drank and swapped stories with the real-life cloak-and-dagger spies who would provide the globe-trotting exploits of his best-selling 007 novels. Like his fictional, licensed-to-kill creation, Fleming had a hedonist’s sweet tooth for fast cars and even faster women. But they also shared another passion—golf. Both Fleming and his alter ego had dog-eared copies of Tommy Armour’s How to Play Your Best Golf…

THE BEST PLAYERS in the world can hit bombs with big powerful swings, then shift gears to pull off silky smooth short shots. You’ve got to live in both worlds. If your short game is feeling a little clunky, here’s a drill to get your rhythm where it needs to be. Set up to the ball with 70 percent of your weight on your front side and with your trail heel lifted slightly off the ground. Grip the club as normal, but let your right hand hover an inch or so to the side of the handle. Now make your chipping stroke. The goal: Maintain the distance between your trail hand and the grip established at address as you swing back and through. If you do it right, you’ll automatically…

RICKIE FOWLER HAS BEEN consistently thought of as one of the best players and putters on the PGA Tour. In fact, when he’s at the top of the leaderboard and performing his best, it’s the flatstick that helps him pick up strokes on the field, averaging more than two shots better than his fellow competitors on the greens per tournament. In 2019, he ranked 13th on Tour in strokes gained putting. One key to being a great putter is being confident in your read and stroking your putts with 100 percent commitment. Fowler sometimes uses the plumb-bob method to help alleviate any doubt in his mind, and so can you. Here’s how he does it. Dale Abraham is the director of instruction at Bighorn GC in Palm Desert, Calif. 1.…

IT’S TRENDY THESE DAYS to try to eliminate excessive wrist action during the swing, but it’s important to recognize that your wrists play an integral part in helping you generate extra clubhead speed and square the clubface for a pure strike. In fact, in good swings, the wrists actually “flick” through impact. Here’s how it works: As the clubhead approaches the ball, your right wrist is bent backward while your left is flexed, or bowed (photo 1, above). Yet, at some point following impact, the opposite is true: Your left wrist is bent and your right wrist is flexed (4). The only explanation for this is that the wrists do indeed “flick” at the bottom of your swing. A great way to develop a feel for the flick is to…

EVERY GOLFER HAS HEARD—and told—horror stories of good rounds gone awry on the last. They sting—who doesn’t want to finish strong, whether it’s to break 90 for the first time, finish off an archnemesis in match play or just because a post-round beer always sits a little better knowing you walked off No. 18 with a par at worst. The stakes are higher for the women taking on the finisher at Mission Hills Country Club’s Dinah Shore Course, home to the ANA Inspiration (April 2 to 5), the LPGA’s first major of the year. No. 18 is a beefy risk-reward par 5 with an island green—and trouble everywhere. In 2009, Brittany Lincicome won with a walk-off eagle. In 2019, Jin Young Ko made birdie to secure the win and the…

There’s no mistaking your voice. I feel like I’m about to talk golf with God. Thank you so much. But “God”—that’s a bit over the top. When did you first pick up the game? When I was about 65. So maybe 15 years ago or so. I guess it came to me fairly quickly. But, I mean, how quickly does it really come to anybody? I love it, but I don’t keep track of my handicap. I always tell people that my handicap is between my ears. You caddied as a teenager in Mississippi, right? Yes, once or twice. It was just to make money. I didn’t like it. I think I got maybe a dollar or two a round. The one lesson I took from watching other people play…

$56.50 The cost for one of everything on the menu (including sandwiches, breakfast, beverages and snacks) at the ridiculously inexpensive Augusta National concession stands. Classic chicken sandwich $3 $12,000 The nightly rate for the highest-priced Airbnb listing in the Augusta area for Masters Week (as of mid-February). $94,836 The total cost for the week (Monday to Monday) at the property, including a whopping $10,836 service fee. 289 289: Highest number of strokes ever recorded by a Masters champion (an overall score of +1). 3 Number of golfers to win a green jacket with a 289 (Sam Snead, 1954; Jack Burke, 1956; Zach Johnson, 2007). 32.6 Average age of all Masters champions in the tournament’s 83-year history. 700 The length (in feet) of Magnolia Lane, according to Google Earth.…

RAYMOND FLOYD HAS KNOWN all seven Augusta National chairmen. Not many can say that. When Floyd won the Masters in 1976, Cliff Roberts, the club’s first chairman, still held the reins. Fred Ridley, the current chairman, was in the field that year, as the U.S. Amateur champion. The next year, Roberts was found dead by Eisenhower Pond, on the club’s Par-3 course. Roberts built and loved that Par-3 course. Floyd loves it, too. “We used to go straight from 18 to the Par-3 course to settle our bets,” Floyd said the other day, glee in his voice. Roberts and friends got a kick out of a standing wager among Floyd and friends. Each man would put $10 in a pot. Hit all nine greens, take the pot. “Nobody ever did…

With Rory McIlroy Four-time major winner, OWGR No. 1 Three-wedge or four-wedge setup? These are the questions professional golfers grapple with on a regular basis. For Rory McIlroy, he ended up winning with both setups last year. Adding a fourth wedge leading up to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach required McIlroy to remove his 3-iron to tighten the loft gaps from six degrees (48, 54 and 60) to just four degrees (48, 52, 56 and 60). Playing a course that was just 7,075 yards, McIlroy felt there was more of a need for calculated distance control in the scoring clubs than an additional long iron at the top of the set. The average golfer isn’t playing Pebble Beach every week, but instead of continuing on with the same 52-,…

Axis1 Rose/Rose-B $450 Type: Mallet Our take: Employing what Axis1 calls “Perfect Balance/Torque-Free” technology places the CG exactly in the center of the face, which is also aligned with the axis of the shaft to reduce twisting at impact. The “Rose”—named after major winner and Olympic gold medalist Justin Rose—is CNC-milled of 303 stainless steel and individually balanced. Silver and black (Rose-B) finishes available. ClubTester’s take (3-hdcp): “It felt like everything had a chance from 30 feet and in.” “Face pattern cushions the ball at impact, but it doesn’t slow things down.”—10-hdcp on Cleveland Frontline Bettinardi BB Series $300 Type: Blade (BB1, BB1 Flow, BB8 Wide); Mallet (BB45) Our take: Legendary puttermaker Bob Bettinardi looked to the past and made tweaks to some classic, no-frills putter designs. The new line…

DISASTROUS DUNKS 1959 Leading by five strokes on Sunday, Arnold Palmer dumps one into the creek en route to a triple-bogey six. Art Wall ends up besting Arnie by two. 1980 Tom Weiskopf finds Rae’s Creek five times in the first round, carding a 13—the highest score on any hole by a Masters competitor in history. 1992 A Ray Floyd tee shot on Friday catches the bank and rolls back into the creek. On Sunday, Fred Couples’ ball hangs on from nearly the same spot. Couples beats Floyd by two. 2016 Seven holes away from defending his Masters title (and carrying a three-stroke lead), Jordan Spieth dumps two in the drink and never recovers. 2019 Contenders Brooks Koepka, Tony Finau and Francesco Molinari take dips in Rae’s Creek on Sunday,…

THE TELEVISION WHIRS TO LIFE AND THE years melt away. Sitting in his living room in a stately home in Austin, Texas, Ben Crenshaw is one of the game’s grand old men, with distinguished silver hair and a face etched by laughter and a lifetime of toiling under the sun. On the TV in front of him, Crenshaw is a quarter-century younger, with the blond mane and vigor of a silver-screen star. “Sooo handsome,” coos Julie Crenshaw, curled up on her favorite chair next to her hubby of 34 years. The final round of the 1995 Masters plays out before them, in all of its cinematic sweetness. Augusta National has long been the game’s grandest stage, producing images made indelible by the imbued emotion. Tiger’s hugs with his father and…

Nobody beats Tiger in game management, especially at Augusta. Here’s how to think like a Masters winner. 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. Shaky putter Slicer Low handicapper Short-game sufferer Short hitter Swing student High handicapper…

Weekend players get so fixated on where they want their pitches and chips to land, how much spin they need and how high the ball should fly that they lose sight of the importance of simply making solid contact. If you’re not paying attention to where impact is happening on the clubface, you’re going to have a hard time controlling your short-shot distance, spin—even your trajectory—from shot to shot. Here’s how to fix the problem and get more contact-focused. Wrap two rubber bands around any of your wedges: one band around the toe area and the other closer to the heel (see above). Now hit a few short shots. The bands provide instant feedback—you’ll know when you catch rubber immediately. Keep at it until you’re consistently missing the bands, then…

TaylorMade’s SIM ($550; three different models) is the golf club version of Santa Claus. Since its release in January, the driver has gifted every TaylorMade staffer with bountiful ball speed gains—our cover subject, Tiger Woods, included. Ultra-thin titanium faces remain the engine behind these eye-popping distance numbers, but in recent years, designers have found new ways to capture yards. With SIM (Shape In Motion), its asymmetric sole design and Inertia Generator reduce drag to bump up head speed. Throw in a Speed Injected Twist Face that brings the power while also minimizing mishits, and you’ll swear it’s Christmas in April. If TaylorMade’s SIM driver is good enough for Tiger Woods, there’s a good chance you could benefit from the same groundbreaking technology he’s using on the course.…

A COMMON FAULT I SEE among the recreational ranks is a loss of control at the top, the result of players trying to lengthen their backswing. See the gap between my lead thumb and trail palm in the photo above? That’ll lead to a poor transition, wayward shots and a loss of power. Here’s the fix: Add a little pressure to your lead thumb with your trail palm, making sure there are no gaps between your hands, both at address and at the top. You’ll feel more connected to the club and force yourself to make bigger shoulder and hip turns and add width without losing control. Now you’ve lengthened your swing properly for more consistent and powerful shots.…

FOR SOUTHERNERS, pimento cheese has long been a ubiquitous presence at backyard barbecues and cocktail parties. For the rest of us, it’s a somewhat alien form of sustenance. What exactly is a pimento cheese sandwich anyway? Like most things, opinions vary on best practices when it comes to its preparation, but just about every iteration includes the following: a mix of cheddar cheese, mayonnaise and pimentos (mild peppers with a sweet flavor, in case you were wondering) piled generously between two slices of white bread. A quick scan at the ingredient list on the wrapper of Augusta National Golf Club’s celebrated version reveals the additional inclusion of Monterey Jack cheese, cream cheese, onions, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper. Home chefs might opt to mix it up further by adding Worcestershire…

WHILE GREATER BRAWN can produce more swing speed and distance, without the flexibility and the dynamic control to manage that power, you’ll be taking lots of long, crooked walks into the trees. That’s why any fitness program I design—for Tour superstars and regular folk alike—always has a flexibility component to match the strength component. Wonder Twin powers, activate! Now go and save the world, or at least improve your scores. —K.T. (@kwayne-fitness) 1 T SPINE ROTATION From a hands-and-knees position on the floor, place one hand behind your neck and rotate upward until your elbow points to the ceiling, following the movement with your eyes (A). Now rotate downward until that elbow touches the hand on the floor (B). More power results from more turn thanks to added flexibility in…

Clifford Roberts was a traveling salesman, an oil and gas exec and a stockbroker on Wall Street. William Lane was a food industry executive who sold rice and caviar. Classy! Hord Hardin was president of the USGA and a pretty good stick, competing in six U.S. Ams. Jack Stephens was an oilman, investment banker and Navy pal of prexy Jimmy Carter. Hootie Johnson played fullback at the University of S. Carolina. Got his rockin’ moniker at age 5. Billy Payne headed the organizing committee for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.…

Cameron Champ Two-time PGA Tour winner, OWGR No. 79 With multiple grind options available for practically every wedge on the market, it’s possible to find something that’s tailor-made for your angle of attack and short-game preferences. Tour players like Cameron Champ go through a similar process when selecting a grind for each wedge in their bag. Evaluating how a wedge goes through the turf reveals the effectiveness of a grind based on how it fits your swing and the course conditions you typically play. “Everyone comes into it differently,” Champ says. “For me, when I find something I like I’ve just kept it. So the last year and a half, I’ve played a mid-grind, which is good with grainy and bent grass or poa annua. It’s not too grabby, but…

Justin Rose 2013 U.S. Open champion, OWGR No. 12 Justin Rose did the unthinkable last season, improving in nearly every statistical putting category when he was already firmly entrenched in the Tour’s firmament. What made the feat even more impressive was the fact that Rose changed to an Axis1 Rose mallet on the heels of parting ways with TaylorMade. The move was met with raised eyebrows, even though Rose was confident the putter’s technology gave him an edge on the greens. He was right. In just his second start, Rose hit pay dirt at Torrey Pines, validating his decision to go in a different direction. “I’d been wanting to use [Axis1] for a couple of years, but hadn’t been able to,” says Rose. “That was a big part of my…

IMPROVING YOUR COURSE management is by far the easiest way to card lower scores, regardless of handicap. Oddly, it’s also one of the most overlooked skill sets, a fact that inspired me to create DECADE Golf, a course and game management system based on my analysis of millions of PGA Tour swings and volumes of Strokes Gained data. For fun—and for your edification—I recently compared DECADE principles to Tiger Woods’ final round of the 2019 Masters, a carefully calculated 70. As you’d expect, Tiger is a master at game management, especially at a place like Augusta National, as strategic a course as any. Tiger hit some great shots en route to his fifth Masters win, but he made even better decisions. Borrowing just a few will interject some smarts into…

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUR TORSO AND ARMS during the backswing is a critical one that has a direct effect on the rest of your motion (to say nothing of the quality of your shots). Getting out of sync here stems from a variety of errors, from overactive hands to bending your right arm too early in your takeaway. To avoid these mistakes, try what I call the Firewood Curl Drill. To begin, imagine a friend has loaded you up with some wood to carry to a fireplace or firepit, with your arms bent at a 90-degree angle as shown in the photo below. (If you have some firewood handy, go ahead and give it a shot. If not, or you’re the “don’t want my shirt to get dirty” type, stick…

There are lots of practice putting mats on the market these days, and it’s hard to go wrong with most of them. But we were pleasantly surprised with the thought put into the ones produced by WellPutt (wellputt.com). These inventive practice putting mats, ranging from 10 feet ($139) to 26 feet ($460), feature varying designs and green speeds that allow you to set goals as you practice. You can use the mat in both directions, for instance. On the 13-foot model, in one direction there’s a singular hole with a “bad zone” short of the hole and a “good zone” just past it to train you to improve both pace and direction. Putt in the opposite direction and the mat features one-foot zones so that you can dial in your…