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Dubai Trophy trailblazer Ahmad Skaik Tame the Big Easy’s toughest Dubai hole Eat clean & lean for better golf Golfers on the front lines
120th U.S. Open Preview
THE ART OF BEING sept • 2020 A MOTIVATE PUBLICATION AED20 KD1.7 OR2.1 SR20 BD2.1
Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone Authority
RORY MCILROY
Tee Sheet
▶ winged foot The faithful restoration of A.W. Tillinghast’s classic layout by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner has added extra spice to the 120th U.S. Open. 38
09/20
how to play. what to play. where to play.
6 Editor’s Letter Where to next for the European Tour? by kent gray
The Starter 8 Galgorm Castle Golf Club This leafy County Antrim layout is set to host the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open for the first time. by kent gray
be at 1 24 Big Easy Tamed Don’t let the toughest, water hugged hole at The Els Club Dubai intimidate you.
38 Back At A Classic Winged Foot has hosted major championships before but has had a facelift for this month’s 120th U.S. Open.
winged foot: dom furore • verl ander: jensen l arson • els club: kevin murray • rory: aaron smith • nutrition: dan saelinger
by jamie mcconnell with kent gray
Cover illustration by Clarkwin Cruz
by david owen
26 Tour Technique Make the bump and run your go-to chip.
48 Roughly Speaking Tall grass, narrow fairways return to the U.S. Open.
by jessica korda
Play 10 Golfers We Like Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander has come a long way since being the worst player on his high school golf team. by keely levins
12 Solid Strokes Concentrate on club face stability and watch the putts start dropping. by mike kinloch
28 Home Grown Emirati lefty Ahmad Skaik has a date with history at the Dubai Trophy. by kent gray
Features cover story 32 The Art Of Being Rory McIlroy The former world No.1 is rethinking his approaches to golf and life. by evin priest
14 Michael Breed What to do when your swing gets quick, how to get a junior psyched to play, and why towel-technique matters. 16 David Leadbetter Hit a draw with your feet.
50 Clean & Lean We can all pick up tips from tour players embracing nutritional science to play better. by matthew rudy
18 Swing Sequence Danielle Kang generates a ton of power for her size. 20 Equipment Lab The surge of mallet sales over blades is with good reason.
58 Golfers On The Front Lines Six essential workers from the New York City area share personal accounts of the pandemic and how golf is helping them cope.
by mike stachura
by alan p. pittman
september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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Editor’s Letter
What will be? KENT GRAY kent.gray@motivate.ae • Twitter: @KentGrayGolf / @GolfDigestME
N THE U.S. THEY ARE unequivocal. Max Homa is the best Twitter follow on the PGA Tour and therefore, by default in that very American way of things, the best golf follow on the platform full stop. At Golf Digest’s global HQ in New York they promote the Homa theory every time the 2019 Wells Fargo champion pops up on a leaderboard. Heck, the Scottsdale-based pro doesn’t even have to be playing well for our colleagues to further bolster his social media stock. A search of the parentGolf Digest website elicits mentions of Homa’s Twitter “roast game”, how he celebrated his dog Scotty’s fourth birthday “on Twitter, of course”, his tweeted “torching” of former NFL players’ swings and even a run-in with a runaway tee box umbrella. Classic Twitter fodder. Delve to page two and there’s more roasting of celebrity swings, how he’d run afoul of fantasy golf participants on (you guessed it) Twitter and a headline that clears things up just in case you were still unconvinced: “Max Homa, the best PGA Tour follow on Twitter, on success, social media and betting on himself”. We’re not disputing Homa is worthy of some of your precious scroll time. It’s just that we quite like how they do golf, and humour, on the other side of the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Just as a classic UK links trumps a leafy U.S. parkland in the author’s humble opinion, give me a droll British comedy over American slapstick any day. That’s why we’ve long trumpeted Eddie Pepperell’s edgy online musings. The 2018 Qatar Masters champion’s continual jabs at Bryson DeChambeau, who is trying his very best to leapfrog Patrick Reed as the most unlikeable man in golf (Twitter’s opinion, not mine), is comedy gold. But if you’ve ever taken the time to read his candid blog, you’ll also know Pepperell as one of the deeper thinkers among those inside the ropes. The 29-yearold Englishman’s most recent observations on the health of the European Tour are thus cause for concern for those worried the PGA Tour is rapidly becoming the only show in town. This pandemic has knocked the European Tour for six. With fewer tournaments, smaller fields, purses reflective of those in the late part of the last century and no assurances from Wentworth on how things will improve quickly, it’s little wonder folk fear for the future. Talking to Golf Digest’s European contributor John Huggan, Pepperell shared his misgivings - right after an unnamed tour insider described the European Tour as looking “fourth-rate
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versus the PGA Tour. I hate to say it, but right now it looks weaker than the Korn Ferry Tour.” “I think there very well may be negative implications for the tour, especially with high-end sponsors like Rolex and BMW,” said Pepperell. “Let’s say I’m the PGA Tour looking at the European Tour and thinking strategically. Even if what the European Tour has done [with COVID precautions] is more ethically ‘correct,’ the PGA Tour might just look at that as an opportunity to be ethically ‘incorrect’ for a period. All to accentuate and exaggerate the obvious gap between the two tours. Maybe they are even looking to ‘kill off ’ the European Tour as [a] single entity. Sponsorship does travel across the Atlantic, so big companies might look at what we have to offer over here and decide that they are not actually interested. Especially if things stay as they are for an extended period of time.” Jon Rahm, the on-again, off-again world No.1, has already signalled he is unlikely to return to Europe this year given the complexities of COVID. We already know where Rory McIlroy’s loyalty lies. The European Tour frankly doesn’t have too many other superstars to lose. Even Pepperell admits he’ll take any opportunity to play in the U.S. during the rest of 2020. “I struggle to see where the European Tour goes from here. I can’t imagine it being nearly as competitive as it was a year ago. I hope that is just my pessimism because I love playing in Europe. But we are in for tough times.” As Huggan noted, European Tour CEO Keith Pelley is noticeably circumspect about what 2021 will look like beyond the promise of another UK Swing. There are rumours of a mini UAE swing in the lead-up to December’s DP World Tour Championship and the traditional Desert Swing in Jan-Feb (with most of the trimmings) is on, at least for now. The UAE has a history of luring the game’s biggest names but that was then and this is now a very different and far less connected world. Ultimately, we suspect the Middle East, in some shape or form, will be even more important to the future of the European Tour than it has been transformational in the past. Maybe the Saudi-backed Premier Golf League isn’t as dead in the water as it seemed. Here’s hoping someone comes to the rescue soon because this region needs a healthy European circuit, as does the global game to launch the careers of players the ilk of McIlroy, Rahm and Pepperell. Golf and the Twittersphere, just won’t be the same without it.
“I struggle to see where the European Tour goes from here”
Editor-in-ChiEf Obaid Humaid Al Tayer Managing PartnEr & grouP Editor Ian Fairservice Editor Kent Gray art dirECtor Clarkwin Cruz Editorial assistant Londresa Flores PhotograPhEr Mustufa Abidi instruCtion Editors Mike Kinloch, Euan Bowden, Tom Ogilvie, Alex Riggs ChiEf CoMMErCial offiCEr Anthony Milne PublishEr David Burke gEnEral ManagEr - ProduCtion S. Sunil Kumar assistant ProduCtion ManagEr Binu Purandaran THE GOLF DIGEST PUBLICATIONS ChairMan & Editor-in-ChiEf Jerry Tarde intErnational liCEnsing dirECtor Edward Klaris intErnational Editor Ju Kuang Tan GOLF DIGEST USA ChairMan & Editor-in-ChiEf Jerry Tarde Editorial dirECtor Max Adler ExECutivE Editor Mike O’Malley, Peter Morrice gEnEral ManagEr Chris Reynolds Managing Editor Alan P. Pittman dEsign dirECtor Ken DeLago Playing Editors Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas
Head Office: Media One Tower, PO Box 2331, Dubai, UAE Tel +971 4 427 3000; Fax +971 4 428 2270 Dubai Media City: Office 508, 5th Floor, Building 8, Dubai, UAE Tel +971 4 390 3550; Fax +971 4 390 4845 Abu Dhabi: PO Box 43072, UAE Tel +971 2 657 3490; Fax +971 2 657 3489 London: Acre House, 11/15 William Road, London NW1 3ER, UK, E-mail: motivateuk@motivate.ae
GOLF DIGEST USA (ISSN 0017-176X) is published monthly by The Golf Digest Publications, a subsidiary of Advance Publications Inc. Editorial and executive offices at 20 Westport Road (PO Box 850), Wilton, CT 06897-0850. Telephone: 091-203-761-5100. Copyright 2001 by The Golf Digest Publications and Touchline Media (Pty) Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. GOLF DIGEST and HOW TO PLAY, WHAT TO PLAY, WHERE TO PLAY are registered trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Printed in USA. Contains material reprinted by permission from GOLF DIGEST® Copyright© 2001, The Golf Digest Publications ® is a registered trademark of The Golf Digest Companies. GOLF DIGEST MIDDLE EAST is the exclusive Licensee of Advance Publications.
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algorm castle golf club in Ballymena, Northern Ireland is a long way from Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, USA, but there is a connection created by the coronavirus pandemic. The fourth week in September was set aside for the now postponed Ryder Cup. We’ll have to wait 12 months for the matches in Wisconsin but the consolation prize is news that the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open, postponed from May, has now slotted into the September 24-27 vacancy in the global calendar. There will be just €1.25 million prizemoney and therefore no Rolex Series status, no fans and a field unlikely to feature any of the field from the U.S. Open scheduled for Winged Foot the previous week. But given the state of the world, we’re simply grateful one of the European Tour’s premier events will be played in 2020 at all. The County Antrim course will be a slick host too; Galgorm Castle GC has hosted the Northern Ireland Open since 2013 and will get a dress rehearsal for the DDF Irish Open with the Challenge Tour event still a go for September 3-6. The European Tour hope to return to Mount Juliet, the original 2020 DDF Irish Open host venue, in 2021. galgormcastle.com
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Galgorm Castle Golf Club This leafy County Antrim course is set to host the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open for the first time BY KENT GRAY
Photograph courtesy by Galgorm Castle G.C.
“When I was on the first tee at Augusta, the shaking ... �
Photograph by Jensen Larson
Play Pitch Perfect Astros ace Justin Verlander on his favourite off-season sport USTIN VERLANDER can handle more pressure than most. The Houston Astros ace has won two Cy Young awards, a World Series, pitched three no-hitters and surpassed the 3,000-strikeout mark. “If I’m in front of 100,000 people, put a baseball in my hand and I’m comfortable,” he says. Yet put him on a golf course and he feels butterflies. “With golf, if there are five people and a ball on the ground, I’m like, Oh, God,” he says with a laugh. The most nervous he has ever been was the first time he played Augusta National. “When I was on the first tee at Augusta, the shaking . . . I don’t know if I’ve experienced that anywhere else,” Verlander recalls. “It’s pretty intense.” Verlander, 37, got into golf back in high school. After a football game, his buddy Daniel took some clubs out of his truck and teed up a ball. “He told me to hit it through the uprights. I smoked it, felt like 300 yards, right through the uprights. He was like, ‘Dude, you’re coming out for the golf team.’ ” Verlander’s high school golf career didn’t amount to much. “I was so bad, they didn’t even count my scores,” he says, laughing. He played with a set of clubs cobbled together from friends and his parents. His dad wasn’t a golfer but would take him to the range now and then.
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There’s one club from that set Verlander remembers best: “My first full round of golf ever, I knocked one in from 230 yards with a women’s Jack Nicklaus 3-wood. I was hooked for life.” He has refined his game quite a bit since then. In peak form, Verlander’s a 4-handicap— though he and his wife, the model Kate Upton, have a oneyear-old at home, so he hasn’t been playing as much as usual. Verlander likes to work on his game alone, at the range, but took a rare lesson before teeing it up at the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions near Orlando in January. He says it’s helpful that Kate understands golf. “She’s been great leading up to [that tournament]. I’m like, ‘Honey, I’m gonna go hit balls and practice.’ She knows when my focus starts to kick in.” Even when Verlander’s not playing a tournament, he and his buddies have a game, usually a nassau or wolf. “I like the competitiveness of it,” Verlander says. “You can play whatever games you want, with whomever you’re playing with.” He also enjoys the way it lets him disconnect. “I like to do my thing, put my phone in my bag, and get away from everything,” he says. “It’s nice to be wherever you’re at, and be present for four hours. It’s very peaceful.” —KEELY LEVINS
september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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Play Putting with Mike Kinloch
WATCH THE VIDEO â–ś Mike brings this lesson to life at golfdigestme.com
Solid Strokes Concentrate on club face stability and watch the putts start dropping
FEW MINUTE S watching PGA or European Tour coverage is all the evidence you need; there is not one single method that guarantees consistent putting success. A multitude of different grips, holds and putting styles are employed by the world’s best. That said, there are some principles that are common to good putters. One of these is club face stability.
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A good way to maintain this stability is with good connection between body and arms. Many problems arise with face and distance control when the arms separate from the body and independently move the putter. The photographs above illustrate this separation. Typically the elbows are pointing out and often the wrist angles change during the stroke.
“Many problems arise when the arms separate from the body...” 1
mustufa abidi
2
For those players who use a conventional stance and a traditional length of putter, there are some drills that can encourage a solid connection to improve face stability and distance control. A good feel is to have the elbows of both arms gently flexed and orientated towards the hips (see the picture with the towel). This will set the shoulders and arms in a stable position. To foster a good connection with the body, grab the material of your shirt high on the lead side of your body and tuck it in to the armpit, gently hold it there with the top of the arm and shoulder
(images 1 and 2). As you make your practice stroke, hold the material in place for the duration of the putt. This will keep the lead side of your body solid through the stroke. Start with short putts and as you get more comfortable with the feeling, extend the length of the stroke. As you are practicing, maintain good balance and remain as steady as possible with the lower body. Michael Kinloch is Head Professional at Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club’s Peter Cowen Academy Dubai. For more information, visit dubaigolf.com
TOWEL TUCK
As an alternative to tucking your shirt, you can position a towel under the armpits as I’m illustrating here. As well as improving body and arm connection, these drills can help stabilise the path and arc of the stroke. The towel will provide great feedback. Remember to maintain a gentle pressure throughout the stroke; any slip of the towel is a sure sign there is separation in your stroke.
Play The Leading Edge by Michael Breed
“The hidden benefit of a big turn: better tempo.”
▶ If you’re like a lot of golfers, you carry a towel to clean your clubs and wipe your hands and face. Great, but to avoid spreading dirt all over your mug, divide your towel in half. Wet one end for cleaning grooves, and use the rest of that half for your grips. Keep the other side clean for your face. And wash your towel often—don’t be superstitious. A dirty towel had nothing to do with your career round back in June.
Get Your Driving Back How one easy tweak can turn things around F YOU’RE STRUGGLING with the driver, focus on making more body turn during the backswing. Why? Because the stress you’re feeling is probably causing you to make a shorter, tighter swing. Adding more turn will put you back to where you normally are, which can reverse the issues you’re having. A good swing thought for more rotation is this: Feel like you’re turning into the heel of your trail foot while lightening the pressure on your lead foot. Make sure you don’t just slide
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your hips back; it has to be a weight shift caused by the rotation of your upper body and pelvis (above). To promote this, another good feel is the lead hip turning farther back. This fuller backswing motion will help you regain your natural tempo and minimise the need to save shots with hand action on the downswing. More turn means more consistency—and finding your mojo again off the tee. michael breed is Golf Digest’s Chief Digital Instructor.
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getting a kid into golf ▶ A few things to keep in mind with kids. First, make it fun. Tee off with tennis balls, have contests—and definitely avoid technical advice. Second, applaud the good stuff. Even simple things like getting it airborne. Last, keep the ride home positive. Save your “Golf is a tough game” speech for the teenage years.
Photograph by J.D. Cuban
illustration: nishant choksi • woods: rob carr/getty images
a towel for every occasion
Play BioGolf by David Leadbetter
53%
68% 32%
top of backswing This draw-swing golfer has 68 percent of his body weight supported by the foot farthest from the target. And of that 68 percent, three-quarters is toward the heel.
75%
starting down
83%
The player shifts 64 percent of his total weight into the foot closest to the target, with most of it moving toward the toes. Meanwhile, there is still some weight in the trail foot’s heel area. The takeaway: The relationship between the back foot’s heel and front foot’s toes is significant to hitting a draw.
36% 64%
82%
Illustrations by Jameson Simpson
“The big mistake? Starting down with your weight in the heel of your front foot.”
Hit a Draw With Your Feet Good weight shift is vital to this shot ne of the most coveted shots in golf is a draw (the shot curves slightly left for right-handers). You can learn to hit this shot if you focus on your feet. As you reach the top of the swing, you want to have roughly two-thirds of your body weight supported by your foot farthest from the target. And of that two-thirds, you should feel most of it in the heel. At the same time, the remaining weight should be felt a little more in the toes of your front foot than the heel. Remember: front-foot toes, back-foot heel. Now here comes the interesting part: In research (left) taken from biomechanist J.J. Rivet, draw players maintain this toes-heel relationship at the start the downswing. Like all good players, two-thirds of their total body weight shifts into the foot closest to the target, but you can see that the brunt of it is toward the toes. And the back-foot heel is still supporting a fair amount of weight, too. This might seem odd if you’ve been told to get off the heel of your back foot in the downswing and pivot around your front foot’s heel. But that should happen later in the throughswing. Starting down, the toes-heel relationship is crucial for an in-to-out swing path. So long as the club is closed to that path at impact, the ball will draw. —with ron kaspriske hogan/harmon: augusta national/getty images
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leadbetter is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional.
the draw drill If you stand on an alignment rod when you practice (left), you’ll get instant feedback on what part of your foot is supporting most of your weight. Rehearse swings on the rod where you feel the toes-heel relationship.
september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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Play Swing Sequence
Danielle Kang Tapped talent T’S HARD to get time with Butch Harmon, especially after he announced his retirement from tour travel in 2017. So it says a lot about Danielle Kang’s potential that she joined his roster at the end of 2018. She won a month later, again in 2019, and twice last month for the fourth and fifth LPGA Tour victories of her career. But it might be her gains off the tee that demonstrate how good she’s getting. She averaged 248.7 yards off the tee in 2017. Last year, it was up to 261.7 yards. “Danielle has a lot of power for her size [5-foot-6}, and we’ve worked to get her in position to really deliver that power,” Harmon says. “She used to be long in the backswing and moving off the ball too much. We tightened her up, got her turning better, so she can keep her arms wide coming down and swing the clubhead into the back of the ball.” Adds world No.2 Kang;“I got rid of the fear of the right shot. I can control the draw and the low and high. I’m in that place where I can just tee it up and hit it right now.” —KEELY LEVINS
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FREEING THE TURN
ANGLING FOR SPEED
▶ “Danielle has a really big rotation to the top,” says her instructor, Butch Harmon. “Her arm swing is shorter, and she’s much better at turning into that right leg. Notice her head swiveling back. That lets her shoulders turn freely. Most amateurs restrict that turn.”
▶ “She used to be long going back and lose her wrist hinge coming down,” Harmon says. “Here, she’s very solid at the top, arms extended, and then she down-cocks the wrists more than 90 degrees halfway down, which is key to producing more swing speed.”
“Danielle has a lot of power for her size.” —Butch Harmon age / residence 27 • Las Vegas driver TaylorMade M4 8.5 degrees average drive 2019 261.7 yards driving accuracy 2019 75 percent
STAYING WIDE
DELIVERING SPEED
▶ “She keeps her arms wide going back, so she can be wide coming down—her hands never get close to her body,” Harmon says. “Also, she turned into the right instep going back then quickly gets into a great hitting position by shifting left coming down.”
▶ “She used to throw her hands into the shot,” Harmon says. “Now, after her weight shift, she just straightens her right arm into the ball. Also, she keeps her left foot down at impact. She’s not popping up. That helps deliver more speed into the back of the ball.” Photographs by J.D. Cuban
Play Equipment Lab
odyss e y triple track seven ▶ The parallel-wing shape includes the three-line alignment aid developed for Callaway’s golf balls. The lines enhance target awareness. Face-balanced and toe-hang versions available.
ping heppler tomcat 14 ▶ This head combines steel with cast aluminum, which is about one third the density of the steel. That allows the heavier steel to stabilise the frame so off-centre hits roll like centre hits.
e vnrol l er10 outback ▶ A wing of heavy steel in back—more than 40 percent of the head’s total weight— anchors the lightweight, scratch-resistant aluminum frame in the front. The goal is more consistency.
Photographs by Dom Furore
Mallets are now designed for straight and arcing putting strokes. tay lo r made truss tm2
Stable Genius Is a mallet the answer for you?
▶ A triangular bridge connects across the clubhead for extra stability. But the view at address is still of a compact traditional mallet. The design keeps the face square at impact.
BY MIKE STACHURA
HEN Phil Mickelson, a user of classic blade putters his whole career, started putting with an oversize mallet late last year, it was an indication that even for the most ardent blade proponent, the mallet’s benefits are too real to ignore. Luke Williams, Odyssey’s senior director of product, says Mickelson’s switch to a modern mallet reflects a wider trend among average golfers—especially now that mallets can be designed to work with both the straight-back, straight-through motion, which favors a “face-balanced” design, and the arcing stroke typically used by blade users with a “toe-hang” design. “Phil has always been particular about feeling the face release, but with the mallet, he believed his start lines
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sik c-series flo ▶ The loft on this extreme mallet increases four times (from 1 degree at the bottom to 4 degrees at the top) to produce consistent roll regardless of how the shaft leans at address.
september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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Play Equipment Lab
Teachers have pushed students away from an arcing stroke. were a lot more consistent,” Williams says. “Some players might find they feel less face rotation than they’re used to, but I think the consistency they see will outweigh the feel they’re used to.” The newest mallets aren’t just more forgiving and better at assisting aim and alignment, they might stabilise the control of the face during the stroke. That means more consistent impact, truer roll and better distance control. Although the choice of putter might lean toward the spiritual, the data through the use of high-tech putter fittings suggests more golfers should be using mallets (see our test). Sales of mallet putters are surging past blades—for some models as much as 9-to-1. Nick Sherburne, who directs fitting for Club Champion’s 74 facilities nationwide, says mallet fittings outpace blade fittings by 2½-to-1. “Teachers and teaching aids have pushed folks away from an arcing stroke to more of a straight-back, straight-through motion, which lends itself better to a mallet,” he says. Mickelson, of course, switched back to one of his old blades this spring. Sometimes the numbers can’t overcome the emotions. Sometimes, though, especially for average golfers, they should. mikes@golfdigest.com
TEST: MALLETS BEAT BLADES IN ALL THE RIGHT WAYS e partnered with club champion, the leading premium clubfittter, to see how the data supports oversize putters. We matched a mallet and blade putter to golfers’ length specs. Putts were analysed by the SAM PuttLab, which measures dozens of performance attributes through ultrasonic-motion capture. Below we detail how mallets outperformed blades in specific areas. (The percentages, in red, reflect how much better mallets rated in three key metrics.) Overall, across 100 scores, mallets rated higher than blades 62 percent of the time.
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FACE ANGLE AT IMPACT
PATH
CONSISTENCY
▶ Getting the face pointed at the target at impact is critical to good putting. In our test, seven of the 10 players were more square at impact with a mallet putter than with a blade. analysis Face angle at impact doesn’t tell the whole story, though. SAM PuttLab uses a statistic called Tendency, which combines face angle with elements like face at address, face rotation and impact location to show how close a putter is to producing elitelevel putting performance. In this stat, mallets rated higher for eight of the 10 players.
▶ Good putts result when the face of the putter stays square to the path of your putting stroke. The less the face moves around during your stroke, the more reliable your putting will be. In the test, mallets produced more positive results in the timing and path of the stroke, especially how square the putter is to the path. analysis The SAM PuttLab rating for Face to Path measures how much the putterface is square to the path back and through. Mallets produced higher ratings for all 10 players.
▶ Making putts is one way to analyse putting, but that metric can be too simplistic: In our test, mallets and blades yielded the same percentage of made putts. Still, even though players were using putters they’d never tried before, their setup, their strokes and their impact locations were more repeatable with mallets than with blades. analysis A high score in SAM PuttLab’s Consistency rating reflects little variability in address position, stroke path and impact. Mallets scored higher for seven of the 10 players.
+9%
+15%
+4%
▶ Former PGA Tour pro Larry Rinker, now a putting coach in Florida and Colorado, says roughly 80 percent of the golfers he has tested control the putting stroke with their trail (dominant) hand. “Those players need a toe-hang putter,” he says. His advice: Find a straight, six-foot putt and see what your tendency ◀ hang time Balance a putter on the edge of a table to see toe hang (right) vs. face-balanced.
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is on misses. If a right-hander misses to the right, a toe-hang putter can help. Missing left? A face-balanced putter can keep you from shutting the face. “A big problem is people putting with their shoulders, because that’s what they’ve been told to do,” he says. “You’ve got to free up your stroke by allowing your hands and wrists to get involved. It’s why Tiger practices putts with his right hand only. He’s repeating a natural, intuitive stroke.” —ron kaspriske
t.m. detwiler
YOUR PUTTER IS MAKING YOU MISS
Don’t succumb to Stroke Index 1 In the second instalment of our series on taming the Middle East’s toughest holes, Claude Harmon 3 Performance Golf Academy Director of Instruction Jamie McConnell tackles the waterhugged 15th at The Els Club Dubai Photograph by Kevin Murray
HERE’S irrefutable statistical proof but it’s not just the numbers that make the 15th the most difficult hole at The Els Club. It is also the most visually intimidating hole on Ernie Els’ Dubai gem and that often throws amateurs off their strategy as soon as they arrive on the tee. Indeed, it’s often the intimidation factor that results in all those scorecard blowouts and broken hearts.
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Course Management
Play
15th
PAR 4
map: 3deagleview.com
Jamie McConnell The key to conquering the 15th is the tee shot. Finding dry land is the first step and for most amateurs the odds of achieving this can be significantly increased by choosing the correct line from the tee. For most, the instinct is to take the “Tiger Line” between the bunkers and the water. Yet by taking this line you significantly narrow your “Safe Miss Zone” and instantly increase the odds of taking a water-infused penalty. To make matters worse your next shot will be from an even worse position, most likely a nasty lie in the sand. Higher skilled, lower handicappers will be able to take a line tight to the right
edge of the traps and allow the ball to simply slide right towards the fairway. This maximises the margin for error and almost completely removes the chances of taking a penalty. For higher handicappers, a more conservative strategy is the key. The prudent line is directly at the centre of the two bunkers on the far corner of the dogleg. There is nothing fancy needed here as this line affords the widest possible landing area while also reducing the risk of hitting the ball in the water and suffering a penalty. The worst-case scenario is a second shot played from one of the bunkers, followed by a wedge
Black
489 yards
Blue
420 yards
Silver
375 yards
Red
333 yards
or a short iron in. This still means you take any potential for big numbers off the card. And remember, you get a shot or two here anyway depending on your handicap. Use them wisely! Once your tee shot finds the fairway – or pretty much anywhere other than the water - the approach to the green becomes much easier to handle. At first glance, the 15th green looks like a difficult surface to hit but it is actually an exceptionally clever design. When you look at it in more detail, the key to figuring out the approach is to look at the shape of the green. Essentially the green plays in a figure
of eight: wide at the front, slender in the middle and wide at the back. This means that the pin has a huge influence on how you need to approach the green. For a front pin, the best miss is certainly short left, while for a back flag ensuring that you have enough club almost completely takes the water out of play. Favouring these areas will mean that you either have a great look at birdie, or an easy up and down to save par. Remember, don’t allow that intimidating tee shot to knock your before you even tee off. Stick to a strategy consummate with your handicap and reap the rewards. Good luck! — WITH KENT GRAY
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“You’ll find the ball goes a long way by making a small, smooth swing.”
Photographs by Donald Miralle
Tour Technique
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Bump It Make this your go-to chip BY JESSICA KORDA SEE A LOT OF AMATEURS get overwhelmed around the greens by thinking each situation requires a different shot. But to get more consistent, it’s better to use the same technique in different ways. Let me explain with the simplest of all chips: the bump-and-run. The goal is to land the ball on the green and get it rolling quickly. Here I’m flying it about a third of the way, but the ball stays down. Some people use a lob wedge, but that’s too much loft. I’ll use a 7-iron, a 5-iron or maybe even a hybrid. The shot is so much easier to control with less loft. As for technique, I think of it as a putt that I don’t hit very hard. I play the ball centreed in a narrow stance, weight forward, and I just make a nice, smooth stroke back and through, and the ball jumps off the face of the club. You can even use your putting grip to hit these shots. In the smaller photo, I’m in thicker grass, but you can still rely on the bumpand-run technique from here with a few adjustments: Use a higher-lofted club like a gap wedge—you need more loft to clear the rough—and set up with the ball a little farther back, weight still favoring your front foot and the shaft nearly upright. This will help keep the club from getting stuck in the taller grass, which is key. Now just make that putting-stroke motion and maintain speed through the ball. It’s that simple. —WITH KEELY LEVINS
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korda is a five-time winner on the LPGA Tour.
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“I get nervous just thinking about it but it’s [going to be] an honour to be the captain of a great group of players.”
▶ making a splash Skaik has doubled down on his short game work since the 2020 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January.
21st Dubai Trophy
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Home Grown
Emirati lefty Ahmad Skaik will proudly create history at next month’s Dubai Trophy but his ambition extends well beyond the Ryder Cupstyle matches by kent gray n these extraordinary times, amateur golfers everywhere have had far too much time to reflect on tough lessons learned and glories past. Thankfully, Ahmad Skaik finally has some decent competition on the horizon to get him excited about the game again. Things were going swimmingly for the ambitious 23-year-old Emirati before the coronavirus pandemic tilted the golfing world on its axis. The +3-handicapper had qualified for his maiden European Tour start at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January and followed up that eye-opening experience with victories at the UAE Presidents Cup (with a record -5 aggregate) and the Montgomerie and Trump Dubai Opens. The latter was particularly sweet as he came back from four shots adrift of Trump member Toby Bishop entering the final round to beat the red-hot Welsh teen in a playoff. But like everyone else, Skaik suddenly found himself in lockdown and all the momentum lost. “COVID changed the whole year. It was very frustrating,” Skaik says. “I had a few
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months of not touching my golf clubs because I had no motivation to practice, like I didn’t have anything to look forward to. I did some online classes with my university and worked hard in the gym and I feel good now with my game. I’m ready for the tournaments to come back.” The Monty and Trump triumphs have Skaik just 20 points behind pal Dan Byrne in the Emirates Golf Federation (EGF) Order of Merit (OOM) race with only the Yas Links (Sept. 11-12) and Al Ain Open’s (Sept. 18-19) to play. Those, and helping the EGF team reach the top division of the UAE Scratch League, are obvious immediate targets for Skaik but it is the Dubai Trophy that him really fizzing. The 21st edition of the Ryder Cup-style matches will see the EGF’s leading amateurs chase an unprecedented fourth victory over the Luke Plumbcaptained UAE PGA Tour pros. It’s already a personal triumph for Skaik who jumped at the opportunity to serve as Steven Kelbrick’s vice-caption for the matches scheduled for October 3-4. It means Skaik is on target to become the first Emirati captain in 2021,
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a reflection of his growing reputation in the local scene. “I chose Ahmad because we have played a number of rounds together over last two years where he has shown his constantly improving game, his hard work and his enjoyment for the game and competition. He plays the game in the right way and can be a great UAE ambassador for the game,” says Kelbrick. Understandably, Skaik is equal parts excited and anxious. At least he has positive experiences to call on for this year and next; his three previous Dubai Trophy appearances have coincided with the amateurs’ historic hat-trick of wins. “I get nervous just thinking about it but it’s [going to be] an honour to be the captain of a great group of players. I can’t wait for this year’s trophy so I can get an idea on how that feels and learn from it for next year,” said Skaik. “I’m very happy to be the first Emirati to do it and I hope this inspires the younger generation, especially my younger brother (13-year-old Mohammad who plays off a 19-handicap.)” Beyond the Dubai Trophy, Skaik is looking forward to getting his International Studies degree at the American University in Dubai done and dusted so he can concentrate in his golf dreams. “For now, I have to finish university so everything [golf wise] will be in the UAE and a few tournaments outside when I am off uni. But after I finish, I will play maybe one more year then turn pro. That is the goal and I don’t see why I can’t make it if I keep working on the right things and keep my focus.” It appears the lefty is
working on the right things after linking with Claude Harmon III Performance Golf Academy coach Joe Marshall, rather randomly as it turns out. “I went two years without a coach and my game was up and down so I decided to work with [a coach]. I didn’t know who to pick so I opened the website and said that the first name that pops up to me is the one and that was Joe Marshall. “Me and Joe have a very good relationship and we understand each other really well. Last season was tough because we made a deal to forget about the results of tournaments and just work on getting my swing together. We changed my grip, tempo of the swing, and length of the swing. My ball striking improved so much since I started working with Joe, my swing is night and day better now than what it was two years
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ago. I also work with Allister Parlane in the gym and that also had a lot of impact on my game especially with balance and distance off the tee.” Distance off the tee is just one of the “must improve” aspects Skaik took away from his European Tour debut at Abu Dhabi Golf Club where rounds of 84-85 left him 25-over-par, 26-shots shy of making the cut and under no illusions about the standards required to compete at the highest level. “I think Abu Dhabi was the best thing that ever happened to me. It took my game to another level because I experienced pressure that I’ve never felt before. Everything else feels like a normal round for me now. I realised that I need to gain a lot of distance off the tee to be able to compete and obviously
needed to work on ball striking and my short game more.” Skaik also realised he needed help with the butterflies churning in his stomach. Cue the arrival of mental coach Steven Thomas to Team Skaik. “The difference between a good player and a great player is to be able to overcome pressure and adversity and be able to win. “I think after working with Steve, I am mentally in a better place and I have so much more confidence in myself now and we can see with my results. We work on pre shot routine, how to prepare for a round, and my attitude on the golf course. I think that it helped me a lot. He is the best at it in the UAE in my opinion.” Best in the UAE. Now there’s a target for Skaik. The refocused left-hander is on his way.
Ross KinnaiRd/Getty imaGes
▶ let it fly Skaik’s European Tour debut in Abu Dhabi revealed he needed more distance off the tee to compete at the highest level.
The Art of Being Rory McIlroy (2020)
Rethinking his approaches to golf and life
story by evin priest oil on canvas by aaron smith
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HE RED CHICAGO BRICKS trigger warm memories for Rory McIlroy. At his South Florida home, the wine cellar is adorned with Midwestern slabs that, until recently, covered the driveway. ▶ The bricks survived a renovation of the entrance to McIlroy’s Jupiter household when his wife, Erica Stoll, saw life left in their reddish-brown hue. “I’m a collector of wine, so we recycled the bricks and put them in the wine cellar,” McIlroy says. “Now, it looks like a really old-school, red-brick Chicago building.” ▶ Chicago is something of a happy place for the Northern Irishman. It was where McIlroy first met and befriended Stoll during the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah. She was one of the PGA of America staffers who helped organise that police escort for McIlroy from his hotel to the course for the singles match he nearly missed. McIlroy and Stoll started dating some years later. Chicago was also where McIlroy— while on vacation with Erica and celebrating his 30th birthday last year—began a journey of self-discovery that would lead him back to the world No. 1 ranking. The nostalgia is obvious and one of the cellar’s biggest lures. Another is the respite this bunker offers from the outside world. From the pressure of being golf’s heir apparent to Tiger Woods. The weekly reminders of the six years since his last major-championship victory. Questions of why he doesn’t win more often. A relief from the chaos of the novel coronavirus and golf’s return from the suspension it forced. “I have an app on my phone called CellarTracker,” McIlroy says. “You can label every bottle. I can go into the cellar for two or three hours at a time and just sort it all out. Organise everything. I get lost in my own little world.” With a diminished and rescheduled majors season, there is one topic no cellar can shield McIlroy from. And it’s about to resurface again. “I think at this point, everyone knows I want to join that Grand Slam winners’ club,” McIlroy says.
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the collection CILROY HAS ALWAYS been candid. His frank opinions—on issues from slow play to drug testing and even President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic—have helped cultivate immense popularity. “The fact that he’s trying to politicise [the coronavirus] and make it a campaign rally . . . it’s not the way a leader should act,” McIlroy said on the McKellar golf podcast. The native of Holywood, Northern Ireland, was criticised for playing golf with Trump in 2017. “And I haven’t done it since . . . out of choice,” McIlroy said. Yet something McIlroy previously hasn’t been open about is how deep he is into wine collecting. Maybe he has never been asked, which seems odd given the appetite for insights into his life. One could only imagine the wines he has collected in 13 years as a pro golfer in Europe and the United States. “I’ve got a few,” McIlroy says of his favourite bottles in the cellar. “It’s hard now, with all these tariffs on French goods, but I love French wines. I love Bordeaux. I love white Burgundy. I still have to get into
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▶ bittersweet The Open Championship returned to Northern Ireland, but McIlroy missed the cut.
red Burgundy; I’m not quite there yet. I’ve also been collecting a lot of Napa wine.” McIlroy once joked that the only downside to the PGA Tour’s Fall series event in the Napa Valley was playing competitive golf with a red-wine hangover. Patriotically, this Australian writer asks if McIlroy has any bottles from Down Under. Australia consistently produces many of the best new-world wines. “Grange, oh my God. Penfolds Grange is unbelievable,” McIlroy says. Penfolds is a South Australian wine-maker in the acclaimed Barossa Valley region, just outside Adelaide. Grange is Penfolds’ flagship wine and retails for $600 a bottle. “We always drink Grange on Thanksgiving and Christmas,” McIlroy says. “That’s our Thanksgiving and Christmas wine. It has this kind of cinnamon hint that is so good with your typical Thanksgiving food. Scotty [Adam Scott] got me onto Grange during the 2014 Australian Open in Sydney.” McIlroy was the defending Australian Open champion that year, 12 months after making a clutch birdie to defeat Scott on the 72nd hole at Royal Sydney. The
left: matthew lewis/r&a/getty images • above: keyur khamar/pga tour/getty images • right: ramsey cardy/getty images
win kick-started an inspirational run for McIlroy that featured major wins at the 2014 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool and the PGA Championship at Valhalla, as well as the European Tour’s prestigious BMW PGA at Wentworth. Oh, and he won the WGCBridgestone in Ohio, too. It was a hot summer for McIlroy. But it was the last time he tasted major-championship success. Fast-forward six years, and McIlroy appeared ready to go on another great run this year before COVID-19 suspended the PGA Tour for 90 days. The victims on golf’s schedule included a cancellation of the Open Championship at Royal St. George’s and a postponement of the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park, the U.S. Open at Winged Foot and the Masters. The Masters’ switch to November seemed particularly cruel for McIlroy, who was on a seven-tournament streak of top-five results, including a WGC win in China, before the lockdown began in March. But when tour play resumed, he was upbeat: “I’m not frustrated,” he said, “and I don’t feel I’ve been hard done by.”
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▶ at last McIlroy at Bay Hill in 2018, ending 18 months without a victory.
one called The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg. I also enjoy Mark Manson, who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck.” Manson’s 2016 book became an international hit for its down-to-earth message: that the pursuit of happiness is a doomed experiment, and that learning to enjoy the struggle in anything is what will ultimately fill the perceived holes in one’s life. Along the way, one must realise there are only so many f---s that can be given, so . . . “give them the right way,” McIlroy says, completing the sentence. “And focus them on the right things. You can’t care about everything. I think, in 2017 and 2018, I was at a point where I was caring too much about things that were out of my control; things that people were saying. Things that people were doing.” McIlroy, of course, is talking about his 18-month, worldwide winless drought that began after the playoffs of the 2015-’16 PGA Tour season. He had won the Deutsche Bank Championship outside Boston and, weeks later, the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup titles on Sept. 25, 2016, which was the day Arnold Palmer died. But McIlroy would not win again until March 2018. The event and the venue? The Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.
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▶ winning! Rory and wife Erica celebrate Europe’s 2018 Ryder Cup win in France.
HERE ARE PLENTY of things pro golfers can do to fill their time. Why not take up astrophotography, like Jimmy Walker? Or perhaps aviation, like Charl Schwartzel, an avid pilot? “Well, it’s a way to approach life, rather than golf,” McIlroy says. “For me, if I approach life the right way, then this [gestures around the golf course] falls into place. “By reading these books, there’s a part that helps Rory the golfer, and there’s also a part that helps Rory the person. It helps with trying to differentiate those two people. If Rory the person is happy off the golf course, then Rory the golfer is going to play better on it. . . . Oh, gosh, now I’m speaking about myself in the third person,” McIlroy says, laughing. As he dived into reading, McIlroy realised his relationships with those close to him needed to change. He says reading helped “as it relates to golf, but also as it
NOTHER HOBBY MCILROY has leaned on heavily is reading. The collection of books in his stylish home library is just as impressive as the wine in his cellar. “I read a few books early on that I just really, really liked,” he says. “I read some of Dr. Bob Rotella’s books, but they were all very sports specific. Then I started to read some philosophy.” McIlroy says Erica enjoys lifestyle books, but he wants to learn how the mind works. And how it can work better. “Ryan Holiday, I love reading his stuff,” he says of the author of The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy.. “Angela Duckworth, she has a book called Grit. Then, there’s Cal Newport.” McIlroy says Newport’s Digital Minimalism had a profound impact on his lifestyle. He is now cognisant of the negative effects digital screens can have on the human eye, particularly just before bed. He tries to avoid technology during tournament weeks. “Og Mandino . . . I read his book, The Greatest Salesman in the World,” ,” McIlroy says. “I just read another september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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“I WAS AT A POINT WHERE I WAS CARING TOO MUCH ABOUT THINGS THAT WERE OUT OF MY CONTROL.”
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▶ turning point Being overtaken by Brooks Koepka last year in Memphis led to a change in McIlroy’s approach.
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return of the mac INCE HIS lackluster 2017 season, McIlroy has restored his status as the most consistent of the elite players on the PGA Tour. He has 18 wins and 87 top-10s from 180 starts, including seven runner-up results and as many third-place finishes. “I’ve had a few wins and I’ve had a lot of chances to win,” he says. “I’ve played in a lot of final groups. I’ve played a lot of consistent golf. So, yeah, I feel like I’m back where I should be.” But McIlroy knows golf careers are ultimately defined by majors. He entered the season with four, which is an inconceivable achievement for many players. But he was also at risk of being remembered as having won only four. So we’ll be waiting to see whether McIlroy, winless in his 20 most recent majors, can end that streak in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Next, can he don Augusta National’s green jacket to complete the career Grand Slam? He has a U.S. Open trophy (2011), two PGA Championship titles (2012, 2014) and a claret jug (2014). But a fourth place is his best result at Augusta, in 2015. Only Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Woods have won all four majors in their careers. It’s a feat the golf world wants to see McIlroy achieve. Certainly, a moment it could use. “I think if I were able to do that, it would obviously be very special,” he says, “but it would almost be a nice reset where I could say, ‘Hey, let’s try and do this all over again.’ That’s the cool thing.”
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relates to everything. As it relates to having a bit more patience with my parents. To being a good husband. Being a good listener. Being a good friend. Reaching out to people. Not shutting myself off. I did turn into a very bad communicator, and I’d almost expect people to know how I was feeling, or what I was thinking. Maybe I felt that everything revolved around me and everyone should know what I need.” The turning point came last year after McIlroy failed to convert a one-shot lead over Brooks Koepka going into the final round of the WGC event in Memphis. Victory would have been cathartic after an emotional missed cut at the Open Championship in McIlroy’s homeland of Northern Ireland the week earlier. But Koepka cares little for the romantic story. He shot 65 to McIlroy’s 71 to win. It was the first time McIlroy and Koepka played together in the final round of a PGA Tour event, so it was somewhat personal. McIlroy tied for fourth. He was shattered. “I flew to Chicago, and I was waiting for Erica to get in, because she was giving me a belated birthday trip,” McIlroy says. “It was a tough day. It was a tough week, really, after the Open at Portrush. About two hours after we’d finished [in Memphis], I was waiting at the airport . . . and I didn’t get one text. “I just felt sort of lonely. I said to my parents and my friends, ‘You know, it’s OK to text me.’ And they were like, ‘Well, we don’t know what to say.’ And I never want people close to me to feel that way. Say whatever. Say something. “So, I think I realised that’s when I need to be a better communicator. I needed to give people the feeling of not feeling afraid to reach out. Portrush and Memphis, those back-to-back weeks, I looked at myself a little bit. It dawned on me that the people who are close to you are the people who you should give the most f---s about. [Laughs.] I needed to engage a little bit more and not see the world as revolving around me.” Since last summer, there is far more open dialogue within team McIlroy. His childhood best friend, Harry Diamond, took over caddieing for McIlroy in the summer of 2017. McIlroy parted with his longtime looper,
J.P. Fitzgerald, after the 2017 Open at Birkdale. Diamond, a handy golfer, has been on the bag ever since. “They’re your friends, but they also work for you,” McIlroy says. “It’s a bit of a strange relationship at times. My friends, my team and my family now realise I want their feedback. If it’s constructive criticism, or if it’s something else, I’d rather it be from them than anyone else.” Most of McIlroy’s self-discovery happened off the course. But some of it involved his game. “I figured out what works for me and not trying to be someone I’m not,” he says. “Not falling into this sort of myth on tour that the harder you work, the better you get. It’s more about working smart. For me, that’s focusing less on technique, having less swing thoughts and focusing more on the mental and course management side. That’s how I’ve gotten back to this point.” It also helped that McIlroy took up a permanent residence in the United States in 2018. “I love it. I have so much stability. I can play these events and get home on a Sunday night, and I can spend a couple of nights in my own bed. I had craved that for so long,” he says. “I tried the idea [of living outside the United States] for seven or eight years, but I just craved the home. I craved somewhere to go. I didn’t have it, and now that we do, it means so much to me. “At home, I just like doing really mundane things. I just like being normal. If Erica needs me to run to the grocery store, I like going to the grocery store. I just like helping her out.”
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BACK AT A CLASSIC WHAT’S NEXT AT WINGED FOOT? BY DAVID OWEN PHOTOS BY DOM FURORE
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architect gil hanse says “in previous opens, the ninth was played as a par 4. we were able to add a new back tee to play it this year as a 565-yard par 5, because with the green’s restored size and sharp roll-offs it was more conducive for a wedge approach than a long club. that cross-bunker short right of the green now serves as a hazard for the second shot.”
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ARCHITECTS GIL HANSE AND JIM WAGNER RECLAIMED OVER 25,000 SQUARE FEET OF PUTTING SURFACE ON THE WEST COURSE.
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gil hanse says “tillinghast wrote how he wanted 18 east and 18 west to be like stair steps up to the clubhouse, so the green at the 469-yard 18th has some fairly aggressive levels. the biggest alteration we made was a restoration of the full false front, which is probably eight feet high. in 2006, that area was approach—it wasn’t part of the green.”
n june 2006, my wife and I flew west with our kids for what we figured would be our last big family vacation. I was bummed that I’d be missing the final round of the U.S. Open, at Winged Foot, but when we boarded the plane I discovered that I could watch it on my seat-back TV. The leaders hadn’t even teed off. ▶ Six hours later, Phil Mickelson arrived at the 18th hole with a one-stroke lead—and just at that moment our plane descended below 10,000 feet and the broadcast cut out. Good for Phil, I thought. He’s finally got his Open. The next morning, in our hotel room, I turned on Golf Channel to see how he’d wrapped things up—but the guy holding the trophy wasn’t him; it was some Australian kid. My first thought was that JetBlue had been showing a replay of an earlier round and that, like an idiot, I hadn’t caught on. But then I saw, on tape, how Mickelson had self-destructed: He sliced his final drive into a corporate tent to the left of the 18th fairway, then hit a tree, a greenside bunker, an elementary school, a fire hydrant, a UPS truck, a cow, I don’t remember what all. ▶ september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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gil hanse says “the front of the green at the fifth hole, a 502-yard par 4 for the open, had been almost completely blocked off by a bunker that george fazio added before the 1974 open. tillinghast’s hole was wide open at the front—we and the club chose to not leave it completely open, but we did restore much of the accessibility, which gives players the opportunity to run a ball up there, especially from the rough.”
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escheduled because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Open returns to Winged Foot Sept. 17-20, for the sixth time since 1929 (Bobby Jones by 23 strokes over Al Espinosa, in a 36-hole playoff ). The club is in Mamaroneck, N.Y., 20 miles north of Manhattan, and it has two courses, East and West. The Open is played on the West. I played it this past November, on the day before it closed for the winter, and I had even more trouble than Mickelson. The greens had been aerified a couple of weeks before, but they were still faster and truer than any greens I’d putted on all year. In fact, Robert Williams, a club member in my group, said they would have to be slowed down for the Open. “They’ve been running at 12 or 13 recently,” he said. “If you had them that fast under Open conditions, when the rough is thick and tough, they’d be almost unplayable. In the 2006 Open, they were certainly fast, but they were slower than they are today.” And speed isn’t the only challenge. Winged Foot’s greens are contoured like those diagrams that physicists use to explain the curvature of space-time. You can hit a putt that looks pretty good for the first 50 or 75 feet, but then the ball rolls over a quantum anomaly, gathers speed, and ends up in a different part of the universe. On some greens, from some positions, a three-putt can seem almost heroic. And the greens are firm. During the 1974 Open (Hale Irwin by two over Forrest Fezler), the club used the eighth fairway on the East as a parking lot. On Thursday night, a driver who’d had too much to drink got disoriented, exited in the wrong direction, and drove over the first green on the West, just hours before the second round was to begin. And the only reason anyone knew it had happened was that tire tracks were visible in the grass on either side. On the putting surface the car had left no trace of damage. Williams’ father joined Winged Foot in 1959, another Open year (Billy Casper by one over Bob Rosburg). He was 27 and single, and he’d played golf in college, and the club was looking for young members. Robert was born three years later, and three years after that his mother, whose name is now Kathleen Reilly, began taking golf lessons. Her teacher was Butch Harmon, then in his early 20s. (Butch’s father, Claude, was the head pro.) “The club in those days was very malecentric,” she told me. “It was a place where women came to eat, and we couldn’t wear shorts or pants, and our skirts could only be just above the knee. But Butch was wonderfully kind, and he would play with me—I couldn’t get over it. He was a dear. And now he’s all grown up.” Robert spent his summers at the club, first in the swimming pool and then on the golf course. He rode his bike to the 1974 Open, at which his mother worked as a volunteer courtesy-car driver. On Wednesday afternoon, her job was to take Sam Snead to the emergency room. He had played well during two practice rounds, but suddenly he felt ill. “When he got into the car he had his arm across his chest, and he said, ‘Kathy, I think I’m having a heart attack,’ ” she told me. She took him to the nearest hospital, in Port Chester. “Be-
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ON SOME GREENS, FROM SOME POSITIONS, A THREE-PUTT CAN SEEM ALMOST HEROIC.
cause I was waiting for him, they assumed I was his wife. They said, ‘Mrs. Snead, come in.’ ” Explaining who she really was seemed too complicated, so she went in. Snead was sitting on the edge of the examination table in his underpants, still wearing his straw hat. The doctor said his heart seemed fine, but that he had cracked a rib. Reilly found a phone and called Winged Foot, then took him to his hotel.
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ajors haven’t always been as major as they are today. On the morning of the first round of the 1984 Open (Fuzzy Zoeller shooting 67 in a playoff to beat Greg Norman by eight), Doyle Queally, whose father had joined Winged Foot 20 years earlier, was stuck with his mother in an unmoving line of cars on Fenimore Road, maybe a hundred yards from the club’s entrance. He recognised the driver of the car just ahead of theirs: Larry Nelson, the defending champion (by one over Tom Watson at Oakmont). “Nelson was clearly agitated,” Queally told me. “I got out and asked him when his tee time was, and I told him he was going to miss it if he stayed in his car. I said I’d drive it up for him and give the keys to Eddie Nolan, the upstairs locker-room attendant.” Nelson thanked him, took his clubs from the trunk, quick-marched up the hill to the clubhouse, changed his shoes, and went to the first tee. (He missed the cut.)
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Majors were even less major in 1974. Winged Foot members put Open bumper stickers on their cars in the hope of boosting ticket sales, and competitors were required to use local caddies, quite a few of whom were members’ sons. The players drew numbers when they signed in, at a big table in the clubhouse dining room, and the caddiemaster later matched the numbers with names. Doyle Queally’s younger brother Frank, who was 15 years old, was assigned to Bruce Summerhays—but he got to caddie for Jack Nicklaus, too, during a miniloop before the tournament began. “Nicklaus pulled up in something like a Buick station wagon,” Frank told me. “It was 4:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, and registration didn’t start till the next morning, and the club was closed. I helped him take his bag out of the car, and he asked whether anyone wanted to caddie. I said, ‘Yes, sir, I do.’ ” Nicklaus played four or five holes, then chipped and putted on 18. “At some point, he said that the only way to play Winged Foot was to miss it short and try to putt uphill,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten that.” Nicklaus forgot it four days later. During the first round of the tournament, he three-putted three of the first four greens, including the first, where he had a birdie chance from 20 feet directly above the hole. “The cup was right there,” he told a reporter 10 years later. “I hit a pretty good putt, and it rolled down there, about 25 feet away.” (In fact, it rolled off the front of the green—and this was at a time when the Stimpmeter reading probably would have been no more than 8 or 9.) “That’s about all I remember of the golf course,” Nicklaus continued. “I didn’t want to remember anything after that.”
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gil hanse says “this photo of the 452-yard 14th captures the essence of winged foot’s propped-up greens, the severity of the slopes that fall off, and how tillinghast built up these green pads to make them work within the landscape. we took down a significant number of trees behind the green, so now from the fairway all you see is the green as the horizon line instead of having a backdrop behind it.”
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u.s. open yardages ▶ Winged Foot has been lengthened by 213 yards since the 2006 U.S. Open. It remains at par 70, though the fifth hole, a par 5 in 2006, becomes a par 4, and the ninth hole will be played as a par 5. hole
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QUALITY DESIGN, FROM LOGO TO COURSE
inged foot’s logo is a winged foot (plus a pair of crossed golf clubs). It’s identical (except for the golf clubs) to the logo of the New York Athletic Club, and for good reason. Winged Foot was founded in 1921 by a group that consisted mostly of NYAC members, though there has never been a formal connection between the two clubs. Donald Trump stopped coming to Winged Foot long before he ran for president, although he continues to pay dues. Like the rest of the nation, the club has mixed feelings about the president. Shortly after the 2016 election, one member remarked: “No notice about one of our members being elected to the highest office in the free world? Jeez, we get an email about who wins the Easter Egg hunt.” Winged Foot’s founding members hired the golf architect A.W. Tillinghast to build them two big golf courses. Tillinghast was born in Philadelphia in 1876. His father owned a rubber company, and when Tillinghast was old enough to work there he earned a reputation as a lazy, unreliable employee. His father sent him to Scotland to play golf when he was 20, and he became friends with Old Tom Morris. Tillinghast finished 25th in the 1910 U.S. Open. He drank too much. He had a temper and an ego. He once treated Leon Trotsky to lunch, in Mexico City, without exactly understanding who he was. He liked to travel in chauffeur-driven limousines, and he twirled the waxed ends of his mustache to such sharp points, the sportswriter Herb Graffis wrote, that they “looked like they could spike incoming and outgoing mail.” He was a poet: He swung with all his might, and then He swung with all his might again; He swung four times, until in glee He swung and almost hit the tee. Tillinghast was also probably the greatest Americanborn golf architect of the first half of the 20th century. In a long, appreciative article in Golf Journal in May 1974, Frank Hannigan pointed out that four of the USGA’s 10 competitions that year were being played on Tillinghast courses: the U.S. Junior Amateur (Brooklawn Country Club, in Fairfield, Conn.); the Curtis Cup (San Francisco Golf Club); the U.S. Amateur (Ridgewood Country Club, in Paramus, N.J.); and the U.S. Open (Winged Foot). Hannigan’s article was titled “Golf’s Forgotten Genius.” No one would call Tillinghast forgotten now. He not only designed the archetypal U.S. Open course, he designed it three times, at Winged Foot, at Baltusrol, and at Bethpage Black (where he collaborated with Joseph H. Burbeck, the park superintendent). My grandfather played his golf on a Tillinghast course: Indian Hills Country Club, in Mission Hills, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City. My father and my brother (along with Tom Watson and Gay Brewer) played much of theirs at another: Kansas City Country Club, a few miles away. And one of my favourite munys anywhere is a third: Swope Memorial Golf Course, in Kansas City’s largest public park. Recently, I scanned a list of the 260-odd courses that Tillinghast designed, redesigned or contributed to, and was amazed at how many I’d
played and loved, sometimes without realising they had a connection to him—among them Sleepy Hollow, Philadelphia Cricket Club, Country Club of Fairfield, Brackenridge Park, Quaker Ridge (next door to Winged Foot) and Saxon Woods (virtually next door to Quaker Ridge), as well as all the other courses I’ve mentioned already. The man got around. Even so, he died broke, in 1942, at the age of 66.
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TREE REMOVAL: ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION
he first time I played Winged Foot West, in 1994, I didn’t like it one bit. There were so many trees overhanging the fairways and greens that when I thought about my round later I remembered the course mainly as a succession of dark, endless, leaf-lined tunnels. To avoid the branches and the groves of immense trunks, I had to hit my tee shots very, very straight—tough to do because I knew I also had to hit them as far as I possibly could to have a chance of reaching anything in anything. Winged Foot’s members at the time viewed the trees not as a problem but as a sacred trust. They had just published an updated edition of their official club history, and more than half the text consisted of loving descriptions of individual silver maples, honey locusts, dawn redwoods, and shagbark hickories, many of them labeled and located on full-page maps of the holes. Growing forests on golf courses began to fall out of favour not long after that. By the late 1990s, oaks and beeches that had been saplings when the country’s most venerable courses were built had grown into monsters. They blocked sunlight, hogged water, impeded breezes, smothered greens, and necessitated the invention of the International Leaf Rule; they also acted like rogue course designers, reshaping play in ways no architect could have intended. Tillinghast loved trees, and he believed they were important design elements. But trees grow, and they close in, and they reproduce—and at Winged Foot and many other clubs the problem was exacerbated in the 1970s by a USGA-supported fad for filling empty spaces with ornamentals. During the past 20 years, Winged Foot has done what Oakmont, Olympic, Medinah, Chicago Golf, National Golf Links and dozens of other great old golf clubs have done: cut down thousands of trees. (You can flip back and forth between aerial photos of Winged Foot today and Winged Foot as I first played it by using the historical imagery function on Google Earth Pro.) Removing trees has revealed features that foliage had gradually obscured. The golf architect Gil Hanse, who recently directed a major, multiyear restoration and renovation of both courses, told me, “The contour changes at Winged Foot are much more subtle than they are at courses with dramatic landforms, like Shinnecock Hills or Augusta National, and when the course was cloaked by trees you never got an appreciation for them. Now you can pick up on the way Tillinghast routed the holes and propped up the greens, and you can observe his fingerprints on the land.” On the 10th hole—one of the most celebrated and feared par 3s in the world—Hanse and Stephen Rabideau, Winged Foot’s superhuman superintendent, september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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gil hanse says “the bunker in the foreground of the 633-yard 12th hole was restored to the size and shape of what tillinghast originally built. the players will not have seen that before. we also worked to expand that back shelf to create a more viable hole location, so if guys are challenging that back pin, they’re going to have to worry about going over and being short-sided in that rear bunker.”
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removed 15 mature hardwoods from undulating ground to the left of the putting surface. Those trees and their shadows had made the entire green complex appear narrower, flatter and significantly less interesting than it did when Tillinghast created it. Neil Regan, who is Winged Foot’s club historian, told me, “Now that the trees are gone, you can see that the topography of the green actually starts 50 yards short left. The ground feeds in from there, and the same thing is true on the right. Tillinghast’s mantra was blending. For him, the approach to any green was part of the green itself, and it began far out in the fairway. He called it ‘the gateway to the green.’ ” Hanse and Rabideau also rebuilt every putting surface, to improve drainage, re-create lost contours, and restore original sizes and shapes. (Some greens had shrunk by more than two thirds.) Their first step was to remove and preserve all the sod. When they put the sod back, Rabideau’s crew applied top-dressing to the seams with pastry bags they’d borrowed from the clubhouse kitchen. The clubhouse received major attention, too, inside and out. Tillinghast worked closely with the building’s architect, Clifford Wendehack, whose book Golf and Country Clubs, published in 1929, is still viewed by many as the bible of clubhouse design. They wanted Winged Foot’s clubhouse to appear to be rising out of the golf courses, and to make sure they got it right they selected its site before Tillinghast had laid out any of the holes. Wendehack used local stone, much of it from the property, and Tillinghast shaped the ninth and 18th greens on the West (and the 10th and 18th on the East) so that from their fairways they appeared to run all the way up to the building’s walls. That effect was lost in later years. Regan said, “What would happen is that committees would say, ‘Wouldn’t a tree be nice here, and wouldn’t bushes be nice there?’ Then they’d add a big hedge, and all of a sudden the first thing you could see was a second-floor window.” Most of the original sightlines have now been restored. Regan is the curator of Winged Foot’s (very non-public) historical archive, which fills two connected rooms on the top floor of the clubhouse. He was reluctant to give me a tour, because, he said, during the renovation those rooms had become a dumping ground for framed pictures and other items that no one knew what else to do with. Even in its temporarily cluttered condition, though, the rooms are a golf hoarder’s dream. How about this photograph of a grumpy-looking Old Tom Morris standing in front of his shop in St. Andrews, taken by Tillinghast in 1897? Or this bobbysoxer-flavoured poster promoting the 1957 U.S. Women’s Open (Betsy Rawls over Patty Berg by six, on the East, after a scorekeeping screwup by Jackie Pung and Betty Jameson)? Or this newspaper cartoon from the 1920s about a day when Babe Ruth was feeling too ill to play baseball but manfully finished 45 holes at Winged Foot and was upset that no one wanted to “make it a day” by playing nine more? As much cool stuff as the archive contains, though, Regan is haunted by cool stuff it doesn’t—including plasticine scale models of all 36 of Winged Foot’s greens, which Tillinghast made while working on the courses. (A club manager found them in a storage room, and, anticipating Marie Kondo by many years, felt no spark of joy and threw them out.) Still, the collection is extraordinary. Among countlessly many other treasures, it includes photographs, drawings and diagrams that ended up playing a major role in Hanse’s restoration. Especially useful was a wood box filled with stereoscopic slides of Bobby Jones chipping onto the 18th green in the late 1920s. The slides provided three-dimensional proof that Tillinghast had intended that putting surface not only to be significantly larger than it had become but also to include a deeply concave swale near its leftmost edge. During a major renovation 35 years ago, George and Tom Fazio flattened the swale because they thought its slope was too severe. It’s back.
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EVERY PUTTING SURFACE WAS REBUILT TO IMPROVE DRAINAGE, RE-CREATE LOST CONTOURS AND RESTORE ORIGINAL SIZES AND SHAPES.
ROUGHLY SPEAKING TALL GRASS, NARROW FAIRWAYS RETURN TO THE U.S. OPEN BY DEREK DUNCAN
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inged foot has a knack for producing memorable championship images: Phil Mickelson’s sickened look on the 72nd tee at the 2006 U.S. Open; Davis Love III’s rainbow at the 1997 PGA Championship; and Fuzzy Zoeller waving a white towel at the 1984 Open. The most memorable scenes from the 1974 U.S. Open are more multiple, a running reel of professionals lashing lameduck shots out of the rough, grass shrapnel exploding around them. (Hale Irwin won by two shots—at seven over par.) This as much as anything is
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the promise that accompanies a U.S. Open at Winged Foot, that punitive rough will be central to the drama. As long as the rough is the rough we expect. “Our goal is that by the end of September there’s no difference from June,” says Steve Rabideau, Winged Foot director of golf courses. “Our job agronomically got harder because we have to keep the rough healthy and thick through the summer, but now we’re hosting an Open at the end of summer, so it’s a lot more work. We’ve got to fight for the rough every day. The summer is long.” Rabideau and the club are aware that thinned out rough would be a disappointing consequence of the schedule shift. “At an old, classic-style golf course like this, rough is one of our defenses,” he says. “That’s what it’s about here.”
For viewers who require tragedy and comedy in their national-championship theater, that outlook is welcome news. Winged Foot symbolises something of a restoration of traditional USGA values of narrow fairways and lush rough. That ideal had largely gone missing during the brief era of “open” Opens beginning in 2014 at Pinehurst No. 2, where the broad fairways were bordered by sandscapes mottled with love grass, often resulting in clean lies. Until Pebble Beach last year (with a brief pause at Oakmont in 2016), each Open venue featured fairways sometimes 40 to 60 yards wide (or in the case of Erin Hills, wider), pushing the rough largely off-stage. Winged Foot
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rectifies that with fairway widths 25 to 30 yards, as will Torrey Pines in 2021 and, presumably, The Country Club at Brookline in 2022. It’s no secret the U.S. Open has historically been a challenge of endurance, straight hitting and nerves. Heavy rough has typically done much of the heavy lifting to enforce that, making contestants pay felony prices for misdemeanor transgressions. Though grass does impact scoring, it’s worth pausing to consider the wider role of rough on course design. Rough has long been a useful tool for creating demanding setups and for tournaments that hope to test a certain skill set, but other appeals of the game are sacrificed when the measure of success is relegated to hitting the ball to predetermined positions.
Spaciousness and short grass, by contrast, allow golfers to navigate holes in their own manner, locate mis-hits and get on to the next shot. Hazards placed within these spaces, working in concert with interesting slopes and green movements, provide obstacles to maneuver against and chances to take on risks to secure advantages. Think of the various go/ no-go decisions that Augusta National proposes, coupled with the opportunity for recovery and the great escape. That doesn’t happen with tight fairways and burly rough, which turn golf into archery rather than pathfinding. Ideally, every golf course would make mowing decisions that best accentuate the inherent design elements. Rough might be a desirable ingredient to
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protect design integrity, though many more courses would do well to expand short grass areas as much as possible. Low cuts foster playability and fun, and depending on the grasses and climate, can require less water usage. Still, the argument persists that tall grass is necessary to keep the modern professional in check. (Ernie Els recently recommended “knee-high” rough.) The U.S. Open has always been the sport’s greatest laboratory for testing that thesis, and if proved correct, the lasting images of this year’s tournament will again be wincing. If any course can render golf a version of “The Hunger Games,” it’s Winged Foot. The only question is, will they have the rough? “If we don’t have it?” Rabideau ponders. “That’s just not an option.”
Photograph of the seventh green at Winged Foot’s West Course in August 2019 by Dom Furore
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pub at frederica golf club on st. simons Island, Ga., is a feast for the senses, from the shellspiked tabby concrete walls to the platters of homemade fried chicken and South Georgia gumbo appearing from the door behind the timber bar where a veteran hand is crushing fresh mint for a tray of Arnold Palmers. But Lucas Glover is here to work on the Sunday after missing the cut at the Honda Classic, and he will not be distracted. He sits at the corner of the bar with a glass of ice water and a plate with two veggieburger patties and some sliced avocado in front of him, and he doesn’t even glance at the mound of sauced-up wings being delivered to the member on his left. It wasn’t always that way. At 24, Glover was already a PGA Tour winner and a millionaire. And at 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, he was blessed with the size and easy athleticism passed down from a major-league-pitcher father and NFL-fullback grandfather—which meant he was already ahead in the genetic sweepstakes. He ate like it, too. “I just hammered everything they put in front of me. Two entrees. Steaks. I just ate whatever I wanted and never gave it a second thought,” Glover says. “I was young and active, and my metabolism was crazy fast.”
Of course, nobody’s 20s last forever, and neither did Glover’s. He won the 2009 U.S. Open, but a pair of minor knee surgeries and the normal passage of time softened Glover’s body composition to the point where the scale still read the same, but he ached every morning when he got up. He made only seven cuts in 2014, and after another fringy season in 2015, he knew he needed to make some changes. “I had been maximising what I did with my teacher and maximising what I did with my trainer, but if I sit around and eat like crap, it’s kind of useless,” Glover says. “I’m old enough to remember when golf was behind other sports, and you’d see guys smoking when they played, and they’d go right to having a bunch of cocktails after a round. At a tour event now, it’d be more surprising to sit down at a table with a guy making a poor diet decision—like some kind of smothered burrito.” Anybody watching a physical specimen like Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka or Henrik Stenson hit a shot— or even just walk to his ball—would scoff at the idea that golfers aren’t athletes. Now, the tour is filled with players who train and eat like athletes. Some of them, like Glover, have retooled their diets mostly on their own, with some advice from a trainer. Another group of high-profile players like Koepka, Stenson, Justin Rose and Gary Woodland have gone a step further, joining athletes in sports like European soccer and professional football to hack the entire eating process with help from experts like Dr. Ara Suppiah. A trained emergency-room physician and assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Central Florida, Suppiah has a thriving functional sportsmedicine practice in Orlando, where he consults with more than a dozen players from the PGA, European and LPGA tours on how to precisely monitor what they eat to maximise performance on the course and in the gym. “Think about what the demands are in this sport compared to even 15 years ago,” Suppiah says. “You have to hit it way farther, and to do that, you have to train so much harder to stay competitive, which means the risk of injury is so much higher. It means players are looking for an edge and a way to get the most out of their bodies.” ▶
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when your body stops aching, and you don’t feel sluggish, as an athlete, that struggle is worth it.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist—or a medical doctor on the payroll as a consultant—to understand that getting leaner, more muscular and better on the Peloton like Rory McIlroy and Billy Horschel will crank up the clubhead speed and help a player look better in his shirt. But what Suppiah offers is more sophisticated than a workout routine, and probably more important. Suppiah’s research established that hydration and blood-sugar levels were massive indicators of his players’ performance, especially as they got later into their rounds. “Any degree of dehydration has a huge impact on performance—especially when it comes to emotional and cognitive control,” Suppiah says. “How you react to a bogey or a bad miss, or something you perceive as a bad break, is totally related to your bloodsugar and hydration level.” Woodland immediately made the connection between what he ate—and when—during a round and his performance, especially on the back nine. “We’re out there playing for five and a half hours, and when you come down to those last four or five holes, you need to have stuff in your body,” Woodland says. “You have to have fuel to do things physically, but more than anything, you have to have fuel in your body so that your mind is in the right place.” Suppiah walks with every new client on morning and afternoon rounds while monitoring blood-sugar and hydration levels every few holes. He combines that with a thorough panel of bloodwork to get baseline information about a player’s inflammation level, nutrient deficiencies and food sensitivities. At the end, he comes up with a map of what a player should and shouldn’t eat—and when the food should be consumed. That means everything from picking the right time during a round to drink an energy-rich protein shake to laying off a seemingly “healthy” food like spinach because it could be provoking an inflammatory response. “When people hear about food sensitivities, they might think it means allergies. They’re different things,” Suppiah says. “I’m highly allergic to shellfish, and if I eat it, I need an EpiPen right away, or I need to go to the hospital. I can eat something like rice or red meat and feel fine when I do it, but the next day I’ll feel sluggish because I have a sensitivity. My body has to work harder to produce the energy to digest it. That information is important for an athlete to know.” A prime example: Rose suffers from intense seasonal pollen allergies—a problem when he goes to a place like Augusta National. In the lead-up to those spring events, Suppiah organises Rose’s diet to build a selection of foods that are low in histamines—the compounds that promote an inflammatory response in the body. High-histamine choices are things like beer, processed meat, cheese, citrus and yes, spinach. A low-histamine meal could include fresh fish, eggs, vegetables and olive oil.
Two-time major winner Anna Nordqvist started working with Suppiah in 2014, when she started having trouble sleeping. After some tests, she discovered she had allergies and sensitivities to a variety of foods, including gluten and dairy. “I grew up in Sweden, where breakfast usually means a lot of bread,” Nordqvist says. “I’d usually bring a sandwich to the course, but I can’t do that anymore. To get fuel, it meant changing to a protein drink—but we had to work our way through 15 different ones before we found one that I didn’t react to.” Nordqvist’s diet during a tournament week might sound boring—protein shakes, plain grilled chicken and salmon she makes herself in the kitchen of her Airbnb, and, when convenience is required, a plain chicken burrito with no cheese, beans, rice or salsa from Chipotle—but she says it has radically improved the way she feels, and has helped her sleep and her ability to practice and train without injury. “I can tell you that nobody out there loves to eat clean all the time, but when your body stops aching, and you don’t feel sluggish, as an athlete, that struggle is worth it.” Suppiah uses bloodwork results and technology— which includes a device that constantly monitors a player’s blood sugar from a cuff on the arm—to map the appropriate nutrition-performance plan. “The tests we give a player an outcome,” Suppiah says. “I can look at your amino-acid and vitamin levels and supplement strategically. Players like Brooks Koepka have a chef who travel with them, so I can communicate with that person to put the menu together.” Koepka, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas work together to make those trips to Chipotle obsolete by using the same chef—Michael Parker, who used to run the kitchen at The Floridian, where Koepka’s swing coach, Claude Harmon III, is based. The players either get together and eat in the same house on the road, or they have Parker roam from house to house making meals as needed, Fowler says. “We’re able to get good, quality food, and we know we’re eating clean,” he says. “You don’t want to put a heavy meal in if you know you’re playing early, and that’s where a chef comes in handy. That’s something I’ve put a focus on the last few years for sure.” Aside from the competitive advantage of having expertly prepared, nutritious food ready whenever you want it, the chef factor gives players something they prize over almost anything else: control. “When you’re on the road, it’s so easy to lose control of your schedule and end up having to eat bad food,” says Woodland, a self-described nonadventurous eater who will automatically refuse fish before it ever gets to his plate. There’s no shortage of incredible landbased cuisine in and around Pebble Beach, but at the 2019 U.S. Open, Woodland got squeezed by the clock
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and his quality play. “We were teeing off at 3 p.m., and by the time I got done practicing and doing media, I wasn’t eating dinner until 10,” he says. “By that time, it’s too late to go out, so you’re relying on room service and trying to get enough in your body. You don’t want to add much, just some protein your body can burn through the night.” The plans Suppiah makes for his clients are detailed and specific to them—which means copying their diets wouldn’t necessarily help you. “General rules that apply to the overall population don’t apply to everyone, and players who are doing this for a living are definitely different than you,” he says. “But there are two things I would call universal truths that are worth it for everyone to know. Keep your blood sugar under control, and understand the things that cause an inflammatory response in your body.” The sophisticated analysis Suppiah provides his clients can run the same cost as a small used car, but applying some of his basic nutrition advice for even two weeks will help the weekend warrior play better for an upcoming event or buddies trip. 1. Understand how food affects your blood-sugar levels. “Look at the label on what you eat and add the total protein, fiber and fat and get that number,” Suppiah says. “Compare that total to the number of carbs. If the carbs are higher, it will probably spike your blood sugar and is something you want to avoid.” 2. Manage the inflammation levels in your body. “Foods can have Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids. In simple terms, Omega-6 is more likely to cause inflammation while Omega-3 is more likely to reduce inflammation,” Suppiah says. “You need both, but in hunter-gatherer times, the ratio was about 1-to-1 in the average diet. Now it’s about 20-to-1 Omega-6 to Omega-3. The best way to reduce that ratio? Avoid processed food.” For Glover, substitutions like the veggie burgers he ate at Frederica have been a revelation. “If you told my 30-year-old self that I’d like them, he would not believe it,” he says. “But they taste good enough that it isn’t a hardship. I’ve found other things like that, too. Sushi is like cheating. You can go to a good sushi restaurant, stay away from the stuff that has rice and pretty much eat whatever you want. Thai food? I’m crazy into the coconut milks and turmeric and lemongrass. It tastes so good, and it’s also anti-inflammatory.” Through all of it, Glover is still within five pounds of his weight when he left Clemson in 2001. But at 40, he’s noticeably sleeker than he was as the 29-year-old U.S. Open champion, and he can wear form-fitting Linksoul clothes popular with tour players 15 years younger. But optics don’t even make the list of reasons he changed what he ate. “Vanity has zero to do with it. There are like three or four people who see me with my shirt off—my wife and my kids,” Glover says. “It’s all performance-based and for longevity. We got a little later start with kids, and I want to be able to do all the things I want to do with them. I’m never going to be considered a bomber anymore, but I still hit it pretty far. If I keep working out and eating right, the rules of nature say I’ll slow down a little bit, but technology could just continue to go. It’s working for Phil.”
TALE OF TWO DIETS ▶ What’s the difference between a 40-year-old trying to maintain weight and a 25-year-old in the middle of trying to pack on 40 pounds of muscle? About 1,000 calories a day. Compare the daily intake of Lucas Glover (roughly 2,500 calories) and Bryson DeChambeau (about 3,500 calories) on Tuesday of the Rocket Mortgage Classic:
Lucas Glover breakfast Egg-white omelette, fruit, oatmeal snack Apple, protein bar lunch / playing Grilled chicken with steamed vegetables snack Trail mix, nuts, raw vegetables dinner Thai Uber Eats: chicken, sautéed spicy vegetables
Bryson DeChambeau breakfast Four eggs, five strips of bacon, toast, two protein shakes lunch / playing Two GoMacro protein bars, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, three protein shakes dinner Steak, potatoes, two protein shakes
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â–¶ SIX ESSENTIAL WORKERS FROM THE NEW YORK CITY AREA SHARE PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF THE 58 golfdigestme.com | september 2020
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PANDEMIC AND HOW GOLF IS HELPING THEM COPE â–¶ STORY & PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALAN P. PITTMAN september 2020 | golfdigestme.com
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hrough the years we’ve written extensively about the healing power of golf, from the ash-covered firefighters of September 11 who found a sense of peace and community in the game to the transformative stories of our Golf Saved My Life series. In moments of personal crisis, golf and fresh air can be profoundly cathartic. This seems to be as true as ever during the coronavirus pandemic. With the U.S. Open coming to New York City, the original epicentre of the virus in the United States, we invited six essential workers from the region who are golfers to share what it was like during “the surge” in March and April when the virus ravaged this city, killing more than 20,000 and overwhelming hospitals. What has it meant for these professionals to risk their lives to help others? How has golf helped them subsist? The virus has been in retreat here, but it continues to devastate large swathes of the country. More than 160,000 have died. These stories are a vivid reminder of the human cost, but also of our resolve and shared humanity.
HALEY CAMPBELL ▶ 25 ▶ REGISTERED NURSE ▶ MORRISTOWN (N.J.) MEDICAL CENTRE ▶ PLAYS AT WEEKAPAUG GOLF CLUB, WESTERLY, R.I.
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y first day working in our COVID unit had the feeling of a science-fiction movie. It was shocking and disorienting. The symptoms of the patients coming in were severe and getting worse. A lot of them had to be intubated and, tragically, many of them didn’t make it. I remember thinking, Is this really
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happening? What is this virus? I can’t believe it can do this. But it was happening, and all of us had to adjust to the reality quickly. For the patients I saw, I was primarily their only human contact. The doctors would come into the room if the patient really needed a full assessment, but otherwise I was it. I mopped the floors, took out the trash. I learned
to draw blood. I did whatever needed to be done. I took a PPE [personal protective equipment] class to learn how to put on my protective wear. Before entering each patient’s room, I had to slip on a fresh pair of Crocs, gown up in surgical scrubs, put on an N95 respiratory mask and face shield and cover my hair as much as possible. It was hard because you’re sweating and rushing to get everything done that you need to. This was my routine for the 12hour shifts I worked. You get to know patients. You talk, you listen. They’re alone, sick and scared. Relatives weren’t allowed in the rooms, so I did my best to offer comfort. The Morristown community donated iPads so families could at least video chat. You had mothers telling their children through a screen not to worry. A husband reassuring his wife that he’d be fine. In many cases, family members would call the room even though the patient wasn’t responsive. They just wanted to say they loved them. It was gut-wrenching. During March and April, when things were bad, we had about 300 COVID patients in the hospital. It’s hard to describe how intense it was. As a nurse for only three years, I grew up fast. There were low moments, like when a member of our hospital family passed away from the virus. And then the father of a close friend of mine was admitted with COVID, and I was assigned to be his nurse. I want to give all my patients the best care possible, but that one was personal. Thankfully, he survived, and just recently, a Facebook post of him at home with his family crossed my feed and made me smile. I was quarantined during this time in my apartment near the hospital. I couldn’t see my parents, who live a few hours north in Rhode Island, for much of the spring. I finally got a week off in July
for my sister’s wedding. One of the first things I did was play a round of golf with my father. He’s a member of this nine-hole course on the water called Weekapaug. I used to work there during the summer and have played it many times. But on this day, with my dad, it was more special than usual. We talked, laughed and happily chased our balls, and, finally, for the first time in almost five months, I managed to take a deep breath and exhale.
SCOTT RUSSELL ▶ 54 ▶ PARAMEDIC ▶ NASSAU COUNTY (N.Y.) POLICE DEPARTMENT ▶ PLAYS AT LIDO GOLF COURSE,
Well, I could get this. I could get this today. What if he sneezes? What if my mask isn’t on right? I don’t know how I didn’t get it, but I didn’t. So I’m thankful. We had six to eight of our paramedics test positive out of about 150. One was really bad. He was on a respirator, but he’s OK now. Things have finally calmed down. I might get one COVID call a week. Because of the nature of the job, you don’t really make connections with patients.
We rush them to the hospital and leave for the next call. During one drop-off, though, I looked up to see a nurse wheeling this elderly lady out. She must have been in her 80s, but she had beaten the virus. Everyone had lined the hallways and were clapping and cheering. It was a neat moment and a good reminder of why I’ve been in this job so long. Reflecting on my career, one of my best days as a paramedic was when I was assigned to work the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. I had access to areas regular fans didn’t. It was incredible. It was awesome. I cannot tell you. We had to be up early. I was there at 5:30, and throughout the whole day, I wasn’t even tired. I was on adrenaline.
What am I going to do now? Play more golf, I hope. I have a place in Myrtle Beach where my friends and I stay and play. We try to get down there once a month. Golf has always been my savior, and for years I’ve had this routine that sustains me. Literally next door to where I drop off my ambulance every evening is Lido Golf Course on the south shore of Long Island. Right on the water. I almost always go over there and hit some chips and putt a little. And when I do, all the stress from that day fades from my body. ▶
LIDO BEACH, N.Y.
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’ve been a paramedic for 26 years, but this is my last. I’m retiring, thank God. The pandemic burned me out. During the surge here in the spring, I worked 800 hours in overtime. That’s like doing two shifts every day. One especially hard week I worked 16 hours each day for seven straight days. That almost killed me. It was all pandemic related. One call after another. Before the pandemic, I might get three emergency calls a day, but during COVID I averaged 14. And the calls were all the same: fever, cough, difficulty breathing. I didn’t need to see the test results. You know immediately that they have it. But what can I do? I have to take care of this person. I put the mask on and glove up. I know how transmittable this virus is. You say to yourself,
“I MIGHT GET THREE EMERGENCY CALLS A DAY, BUT DURING COVID, I AVERAGED 14.”
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O CALVIN GARDNER ▶ 46 ▶ SERVICE LINE DIRECTOR, NEUROSCIENCES ▶ STAMFORD (CONN.) HOSPITAL ▶ PLAYS AT E. GAYNOR BRENNAN MUNICIPAL GOLF COURSE
n april 29, I woke up earlier than usual, about 4 a.m., with an uneasy feeling. We were two months into the pandemic at the hospital where I work, but at that moment my thoughts were with my dad, who was an hour away at a different New York City-area hospital fighting for his life. He had gone to the emergency room on April 12 with allergy-like symptoms that turned out to be COVID. I called the hospital, and the nurse said my father had had a difficult night. I said I’d try to organise a FaceTime with our family, but 30 minutes later she called back to say my dad had passed. She said if I could get there within an hour, she’d let me see him. So I did, and I had just enough time to say a prayer, tell him
I loved him, collect his things and leave. My father was 64, in good health and still active as a drummer in a band that played Motown-style music. As an employee at a hospital near the original epicentre in this country and as someone whose family has been hit particularly hard by the virus—I’ve also lost two uncles, including one on my mother’s side—I’ve had an up-close view of its devastation. I’ve been heartbroken by what it has done to families but
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inspired by the empathy and resourcefulness of our hospital’s employees and surrounding community. It’s been an all-hands-on-deck type of mentality. My role changed entirely when the pandemic hit, as it did for many of my colleagues. I’m an administrative executive on the neurosciences team, but during COVID I’ve been managing 40 of our people who screen all employees coming into the hospital. We do temperature checks, ensure everyone has a mask on, assess anyone with questionable symptoms and do contact tracing of anyone who tests positive. To date we’ve conducted more than 150,000 screenings. In the process we identified more than 100 people that we had to send home, some of which tested positive for COVID, so we believe our efforts have kept our work environment safe. Another important decision we made was to assign a staff member to each COVID patient in the hospital. The main job of that person was to communicate with the family, provide daily updates and facilitate video chats. This was something that was personal to me. During the two and a half weeks my dad was in the hospital, it was difficult to schedule video talks. The hospital didn’t have the staffing. Let me just say that nobody should die alone in a hospital room unable to see their loved ones. I’ve been in health care for almost 25 years. It’s my calling, but the pandemic has tested my limits physically and emotionally. I’m thankful to have two wonderful daughters, family and friends for support, and I’m grateful to have golf. It’s been a weekly part of my life since I took it up 10 years ago. The serenity of being outside with friends is my stress-reliever. I really missed it during the lockdown. But I’m back out there now, finding peace, catching up with old friends and making new ones.
STEVEN TEPPER ▶ 51 ▶ DEPUTY CHIEF, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION ▶ JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ▶ QUEENS, N.Y. ▶ PLAYS AT BETHPAGE BLACK
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love being a U.S. Customs and Border Protections officer. What I do every day means something, and no two days are alike. Last year we processed more than 17.2 million international passengers, conducted thousands of counterterrorism searches and seized millions of dollars in illegal narcotics. The job has it all. The virus, however, has been a challenge unlike any other. I was actually on a golf course in Florida for a buddies trip in early March when my boss called to tell me I would be helping head up the airport’s Coronavirus Command Centre. In many respects we were well prepared. We had all the personal protective equipment we needed and had begun to put in place safety protocols and best practices developed by our health and safety team. Because of a drop in airline traffic we were able to place those with underlying health conditions or other critical factors on administrative
“YOU CAN BE TOUGH, YOUNG AND HEALTHY LIKE MY FRIEND. THE VIRUS DOESN’T CARE.” leave. But when you have 1,200 officers and thousands of people streaming in from around the world every day, it’s unrealistic to think people aren’t going to get sick. My job was to check in daily with anyone who became ill. If they tested positive, my team performed contact tracing going back 14 days and quarantined anyone who interacted with them. Despite our best efforts, officers have died. One of them was a really close friend of mine. We started working at the airport at the same time, in 2003, went through training together, spent our first year on the job together. He was only 40 and such a tough kid—much stronger than I am. But the virus hit him hard and fast. He was on a ventilator for a month before he passed away.
I tell everybody it’s not just a fever and cough. One guy had the sniffles. Another couldn’t breathe. Yet another had nothing. So the symptoms run the gamut. And you can be tough, young and healthy like my friend. The virus doesn’t care. That’s why it’s important to avoid non-essential travel right now. And if you have to travel, make sure to wear a mask and follow CDC guidelines to protect us as well as yourself. Among employees, there’s certainly apprehension about being on the front lines,
but also a sense of duty and pride in our work. We’re New Yorkers. Things have slowly returned to normal at the airport, and we’ve become smarter and more efficient at protecting our people. I’m on a schedule where I work seven straight days before getting time off, and the only way I get through the week is to know on the eighth day I have a tee time with my buddies. The course is where I get to take off the shield and enjoy some fresh air and exercise. I belong to the Nassau [County] Players Club. It’s a golf league that plays out of Bethpage Black made up of a lot of New York City cops, firemen and other first responders. Golf and the camaraderie are our therapy. And right now, we need it more than ever. ▶
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“THE LAST THING I NEED IS TO BRING THIS VIRUS HOME, A SENTIMENT YOU HEAR A LOT.”
NOEL O’CONNELL ▶ 57 ▶ CONDUCTOR, LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD ▶ PLAYS AT EISENHOWER PARK GOLF COURSE, EAST MEADOW, N.Y.
A
s the conductor, I’m in charge of the train. I work with an engineer and a brakeman to get people from Point A to Point B. During the pandemic I’ve been transporting essential workers only—hospital staff, police officers, fire fighters, paramedics and the like—back and forth from Babylon, N.Y., to Penn Station in Manhattan. The trip takes about an hour and a half one way with 17 stops, and I make the round trip twice in a day. I’d like to say it’s only front-line workers
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I see, but I also have to deal with drunks, folks trying to hop a free ride or not wanting to wear a mask. They sit next to these exhausted nurses, and I have to come out of my cab with my mask and gloves on and try to reason with them. Too often they get belligerent, irate, and I have to radio the cops and hope they show up four stops down the line and remove them. It’s unfortunate. It endangers lives, and I have to be careful how much I engage them. My 83-year-old mother lives with me and my girlfriend and her son. The last thing I need is to bring the virus home—a sentiment you hear a lot from essential workers. I’ve had one close call that I know of. I played golf with another conductor, a good friend of mine, and a couple
days later he tested positive. I got tested, and it came back inconclusive, which is unusual, I was told. They had to treat me like I was positive, so I self-quarantined for two and a half weeks. Thank God I never showed any symptoms. Several of our people working the trains have tested positive. I just don’t know how you avoid it. On my route each day I see many of the same faces and have gotten to know some of them. I’m in awe of what they do, honestly. I see them after crazy-long shifts. They’re drained, and they’ve had to deal with a lot of bad stuff. Many of my friends are police officers. When I see some of them at Penn Station, especially the ones working down in the subways, the atmosphere is thick. It’s mostly, “How are you doing?” and “Stay safe, my friend.” For the ones that ride my train, I wanted to do something, so I added a personal note to the regular announcements: I want to take this time to thank all you essential workers out there for all the hard work and all the things you do for us. My crew and I are grateful. It’s a small gesture, but I was surprised by how many people stopped me to say thank you for that. We all need to feel appreciated. Between all the nonsense in this job, I do get to meet some good people. It’s nice. Relationships are important in this life. That’s one of the beautiful things about golf, right? The friendships you make. I spend the majority of my hours at work walking back and forth in a metal tube, dealing with people and situations I can’t always control. I need an escape that’s familiar and comforting, and when I’m on the golf course, I know what I’m getting: I see smiles. I see love. I see hope. ▶
ROD ACOSTA ▶ 62 ▶ CHIEF PHYSICIAN EXECUTIVE, STAMFORD HEALTH ▶ PLAYS AT INNIS ARDEN GOLF CLUB, OLD GREENWICH, CONN.
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’ve been a familymedicine physician for 33 years, and I still see patients, including ones with COVID-19, but in my role as CEO of Stamford Health Medical Group, which consists of 200 physicians, I’ve been helping manage our response to the pandemic. When we first began seeing waves of patients—25, 30 admissions a night with COVID—we weren’t sure if we’d have enough PPE and staffing to care for them. At one point we had 150 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, 44 of them intubated, when our average is just four patients on ventilators. It was scary. We were burning through 3,500 gowns, 357 N95 masks and 1,400 surgical masks a day before implementing a rationing policy. Our cost for PPE (masks, gowns, gloves and face shields) jumped from $125,000 a month to $640,000. When I think about those weeks, what stands out are the stories that reveal the best of ourselves. We had a young woman from Guatemala who was seeking asylum. She came to the hospital pregnant and very sick with COVID. It required our ICU and Labour and Delivery teams to coordinate. If her condition deteriorated, she would need to be intubated, and the baby would have to be delivered before she went on a vent.
Sure enough, within 24 hours, she needed to be intubated, and we did the C-section right away. The baby was healthy, COVID-free. The mother remained in the ICU but eventually left the hospital and is doing very well. The baby’s father and his son also had COVID, so the baby didn’t go home right away. One of the son’s schoolteachers took care of the baby until the mother was well enough. You draw inspiration from good outcomes like these. COVID’s impact on this Latino family wasn’t unique. We noticed early on that Latino and Black communities were experiencing COVID more severely than others. One reason is that their living
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situations tended to be more concentrated, and they were less able to practice social distancing. As a result, we launched a task force that coordinated with government agencies, health-care providers, food pantries, schools and organisations that support immigrants and vulnerable populations. PPE and educational resources were distributed to everyone living in subsidised multifamily housing units. There’s little doubt these measures saved lives. We’re now down to fewer than five COVID-19 patients at any given time, and we made it through this with the resiliency and excellent care of our physicians, nursing
staff, clinical staff and with the support we received from the community. Golf has been my private Idaho. It takes my mind off other things like nothing I’ve ever tried. It’s the perfect sport for COVID. I play twice a week, walking and carrying my bag, and it’s easily when I’m most relaxed. My wife, Barb, and our two sons, Matthew and Lucas, are golfers, too, and a tradition of ours has been to play as a foursome on Sundays. It’s our family time. I tend to be a very positive person—in my approach to patient care and golf. Perhaps that’s why I still play. I always think I have it in me.
“WHAT STANDS OUT ARE THE STORIES THAT REVEAL THE BEST OF OURSELVES.”