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PATRICK CANTLAY WILL PUT ON A CLINIC

The 149th Open Championship The 007 link to Royal St. George’s Playing like a Pro in the EAGL

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Tee Sheet 07/21 44

how to play. what to play. where to play.

From Royal St. George’s, With Love

Writer Ian Fleming invented James Bond from pieces of his own remarkable life. The site of this year’s Open Championship is where he felt most at home.

Features cover 24 Put on a Clinic Copy Patrick Cantlay who shows up in nearly every ballstriking statistical category.

BY JOHN BARTON

30 Wheelin’ & Dealin’ Talking cards, books and overcoming a bad back with Patrick Cantlay. by brittany romano

32 Playing Through Nine influential voices usher the game toward a brighter future. by daniel rapaport

6 Editor’s Letter Absence makes the heart grow fonder for The Open.

The Starter 8 Velaa Golf Academy by Olazábal You’ll never want to leave this dreamy Maldives resort. At least you’ll depart with your short game revitalised.

Play 12 Range Routines A simple drill to protect your body and scorecard. by matthew brookes

14 Like a Pro The Emirates Amateur Golf League’s dress-rehearsal at Jumeirah Golf Estates garnered wide-spread acclaim. by kent gray

16 Well Played & Stayed The inaugural Golf Digest Middle East Play & Stay (see what we did there) at Trump International Golf Club, Dubai and Radisson Hotel Dubai DAMAC Hills was a doozy. 18 Don’t Forget to Breathe Your best defence against a mid-round meltdown. by sean foley

20 Pain Gains - Part II Why amateurs are more susceptible to common golf twinges and how to avoid falling into a perpetual injury cycle.

40 149th Open Preview Will Royal St. George’s serve up another major championship fairytale? by kent gray

Hot List 2021 part 5 54 Fairway Woods Balancing driver-like speed with the ability to land shots as easily as 7-irons.

by russell hill

32 4 golfdigestme.com | july 2021

66 My Happy Place Learning to play with gratitude. by max homa

61 Hybrids Our picks boast multiple versions, adjustability and a vast loft lineup. Cover photograph by Cody Pickens

royal st. george’s: david cannon/getty images • illustrations by kevin mcgivern • cantl ay: cody pickens • hot list: ben walton

with mike stachura

Editor’s Letter

“There’s something different, almost spiritual, about The Open…”

editor-in- chief Obaid Humaid Al Tayer managing partner & group editor Ian Fairservice

KENT GRAY kent.gray@motivate.ae • Twitter: @KentGrayGolf / @GolfDigestME IDEKI MATSUYAMA’S historic Masters moment, Phil Mickelson’s PGA Championship win for the ages, Jon Rahm’s poetic comeback from COVID-19 at the U.S. Open. The 149th Open Championship at Royal St George’s surely can’t top the theatre of Augusta National, Kiawah Island and Torrey Pines, can it? Then again, the oldest and grandest championship of them all has been pretty handy at serving up the extraordinary ever since Willie Park Snr. first donned the Challenge Belt – the precursor to the modern day Claret Jug – in 1860. After the year we’d all rather forget, the championship’s return to Sandwich for the 15th Open can’t come soon enough. The postponement of the Ryder Cup last year was a downer but for golf traditionalists, the cancellation of The Open was just as traumatic. Summer just isn’t summer without our annual fix of British linksland drama. Sir Nick Faldo’s victories at Muirfield (1987 and 1992) and St Andrews (1990), with narration from the inimitable Peter Alliss, remain indelible memories for the author. Mark Calcavecchia’s four-hole playoff victory over Greg Norman and Wayne Grady on the parched fairways of Royal Troon in 1989 also strangely evokes welcomed flashbacks. Just seven years after my boyhood hero Faldo hugged the Claret Jug for the final time, imagine my giddy excitement when I found myself perched atop a giant Royal Troon dune guarding the ‘Postage Stamp’. Superstars I’d previously only seen on TV attempted precarious recovery shots from within touching of my vantage point on the shortest par 3 in major championship golf. I was smitten. Links golf, the way the game was intended to be played, had truly stolen my heart. There’s something different, almost spiritual, about The Open where the rota of famous layouts builds comfortable familiarity while

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the severity of the weather ensures you never quite know what you’re going to get next. Sunburn and hypothermia can be bedfellows on the same day and sometimes from one hole to the next. The Open even sounds different with the galleries offering a unique, orchestral applause for quality strikes and knowing gasps as title shots are blown off course, often literally. And it all carries across the course on the wind. Oh, the wind. If the pandemic hadn’t of gone and upended everything, we’d be preparing for The Open’s Sesquicentennial anniversary at the Home of Golf this month. While that celebration at St Andrews is on ice for another year, don’t discount another remarkable ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’ emerging this month. History hints as much. BC - before COVID - The Open has only ever been interrupted three times: in 1871 when there was no trophy to present after Young Tom Morris had won three successive times and kept the Challenge Belt as per the rules of the time, and by the Great Wars (WWI from 1915-1919 and WWII from 1940-45). After each hiatus, a big name has triumphed. Young Tom made it four successive wins at Prestwick in 1872, fellow Scot George Duncan, known as the “pro’s pro” in his day, won at Royal Cinque Ports in 1920 while Slammin’ Sammy Snead was the victor on the Old Course in 1946. So maybe Hideki, Lefty and Rahmbo will have good company as the sun (or will it be wind and rain) settles on July 18. If that day comes even close to the drama of Stewart Cinks’ playoff victory over Tom Watson in 2009, the quality of Henrik Stenson’s final day duel with Mickelson in 2016, Shane Lowry’s six-stroke runaway at Royal Portrush two summers ago or any number of unforgettable Open Championship before that, the final major of the year might just steal the show again. Here’s hoping

T H E G O L F D I G E S T P U B L I C AT I O N S editor-in- chief Jerry Tarde director, business development & partnerships Greg Chatzinoff international editor Ju Kuang Tan GOLF DIGEST USA editor-in- chief Jerry Tarde gener al manager Chris Reynolds editorial director Max Adler executive editor Peter Morrice art director Chloe Galkin managing editors Alan P. Pittman, Ryan Herrington (News) chief pl aying editor Tiger Woods pl aying editors Phil Mickelson, Francesco Molinari, Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson

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GOLF DIGEST and HOW TO PLAY, WHAT TO PLAY, WHERE TO PLAY are registered trademarks of Discovery Golf, Inc. Copyright © 2021 Discovery Golf, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Volume 72, Issue 2. GOLF DIGEST (ISSN 0017-176X) is published eight times a year by Discovery Golf, Inc. Principal office: Golf Digest, 1180 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y., 10036. Discovery Golf, Inc.: Alex Kaplan, President & GM; Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices.

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Openly biased

editor Kent Gray art director Clarkwin Cruz editorial assistant Londresa Flores instruction editors Luke Tidmarsh, Euan Bowden, Tom Ogilvie, Matthew Brooks, Alex Riggs chief commercial officer Anthony Milne publisher David Burke gener al manager - production S. Sunil Kumar assistant production manager Binu Purandaran

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Photographs courtesy by Velaa Private Island

Dreamy Getaway Play

Velaa Golf Academy by Olazábal You’ll never want to leave this majestic Maldives resort but at least you’ll do so thoroughly refreshed and with your short game equally revitalised BY KENT GRAY HERE IS GOLF and then there is golf in paradise. Welcome to Velaa Private Island, home to a truly breath-taking golf experience sculpted by two-time Masters champion José María Olazábal. For a golf getaway like no other, Velaa has it all in a sumptuous package. There’s all the luxury you’d expect from an archipelagic escape including lavish over-water accommodation, impossibly white sandy beaches, warm Indian Ocean water sports, indulgent dining and all those dreamy views to drink in. ▶ ▶ ▶

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july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

Play Dreamy Getaway

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1. Terrace of Ocean Pool House; 2. Velaa Golf Academy by Olazábal; 3. Exterior view of Tavaru; 4. Academy’s swing studio; 5. Romantic Pool Residence bedroom; 6. Exterior view of Beach Pool Villa; 7. Velaa Golf Academy by Olazábal; 8. Olazábal: “The whole place is just for your soul”.

For the serious golfer though, Olazábal’s wee masterpiece perhaps trumps it all. Wonder at the Spaniard’s clever 7-hole layout complete with nine tee boxes to continually mix things up and cater to both the beginner and to the professional golfer. “The Maldives. A vacation paradise, and space for golf? Of course,” says Olazábal. “But forget 7500 yards, five hour rounds and think entertainment and fun, think game improvement, think family time enjoying excellent facilities tailored to the individual.” Think a stunningly beautiful place to hone your game, especially with the Velaa Golf Academy by Olazábal at the heart of the property. Renowned for his silky wedge work, Olazábal has designed the only shortgame academy in the Maldives with an unequalled backdrop to enjoy and develop your game. “This is truly practising in paradise, it doesn’t get any better than this,” Olazábal continued. “Having a facility like this is actually a plus. When you go to a driving range, you stand there and you hit balls, you hit a driver, you hit long shots and all you do is just hit shots. But here you have to create shots, you have to create different feelings, you have to picture things, you have to see things and in that regard it is a facility that is a great tool to improve your game. “ Olazábal’s academy boasts a studio offering one-on-one tuition with fullyqualified PGA professionals and prides itself in tailoring golf lessons to suit the individual, focusing on the areas required for improvement. An indoor teaching studio allows guests to practice or take a lesson regardless of the weather. With the studio’s retractable doors, players are able to enjoy hitting from an air-conditioned area while still playing to the greens outside. The academy also houses swing analysis software with the latest technology including a Trackman simulator. A putting green and tailormade tuition programmes make the Velaa Golf Academy an experience for the whole family to enjoy. We told you it was spectacular but don’t take out word for it. Trust Olazábal, the World Golf Hall of Famer and Ryder Cup hero. “To be here at Velaa Resort is just extraordinary. It’s fantastic, it’s amazing, you’re surrounded by water in a beautiful island, it’s peaceful, quiet, the whole place is just for your soul.” For more information and special packages, visit velaaprivateisland.com july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

Play Fundamentals with Matthew Brookes

WATCH THE VIDEO

joachim guay

▶ Scan the QR Code to watch Matt bring this lesson to life.

“Copy this routine to easily replicate a stronger and more balanced set-up position.” Set-up simplicity Good swings start with a perfect set-up proper grip is fundamental to good golf. Next cab off the rank is a sound set-up which can greatly enhance your ability to move the club correctly throughout the swing. We regularly see amateurs setting up in the wrong posture with tight hamstrings or a scapula stability issue often to blame. Your pro will be able to quickly identify any physical limitations that are causing you to set-up incorrectly or if you have any trouble with the following routine which will ensure you’re balanced and positioned correctly every time. Start in a tall standing position, legs locked straight, and then move your feet shoulder width apart (or wider to suit the club you’re hitting such as a driver). Now place the club on your chest and stomach, pulling the club towards the body with your hand. Ensure there is always contact with the body. This connection will help activate the upper back muscles which are very important further down the line in the set-up. Now relax your knees a fraction, allowing just the slightest bit of bend, before hinging forward from the hip until the club is sticking out between your legs behind you, creating a tail. The key thing to look for on video or in the mirror when reviewing this movement is for a flat lower back. You must avoid “anterior tilt” of the pelvis, often called a “S posture”. A flat or neutral back helps keep the core engaged in the golf swing, vital for power and consistency. The pulling of the golf club towards the body noted earlier is very important to help with a better turn in the backswing. It also helps prevent rounding of the upper back, otherwise known as a “C posture”. Another check point is to draw a line vertically down from the back of the right shoulder joint or allow your club to hang vertically from this position. Check that the line of club passes just in front of the knee cap and into the ball of your foot. This will help make sure your pressure is evenly distributed between the toes and heels. Follow this simple routine and you’ll be on your way to replicating a stronger and more balanced set-up position again and again.

Matthew Brookes is a PGA teaching professional and golf specific fitness trainer at Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club’s Peter Cowen Academy Dubai.

emirates amateur golf league

Like a Pro

THE EMIRATES AMATEUR GOLF LEAGUE’S DRESS-REHEARSAL

HAS GARNERED WIDE-SPREAD ACCLAIM

hat will it be like teeing it up in the pioneering Emirates Amateur Golf League (EAGL) once the game’s answer to IPL cricket takes flight proper? ▶ Utterly compelling if the evidence from the EAGL’s ‘Mini-Series’ coming-out party is any indication. From inside the ropes and behind the TV cameras at Jumeirah Golf Estates last month to the global social media reaction afterwards, the feedback to the ambitious concept was unanimously positive. Emirates Golf Club seven-handicapper and Golf Digest Middle East Top-10 courses judge Jayshree Gupta produced one of the most telling quotes after the 9-hole dress rehearsal on the Fire course. “It does feel a bit like a Pro-Am except the pros are missing!” said Gupta who represented the Dubai Tigers.

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That will be music to EAGL founder and CEO Sudesh Aggarwal’s ears. He set out to spice up the traditional corporate golf day by giving amateurs a pro-tour level experience with the added flavour – and associated pressure – of playing in a team environment aka the Ryder Cup. “There are definitely people who [will] like this format, who like to feel the pressure of the cameras and having people follow them around. It does make you want to be a better golfer so I think from that perspective it’s very good for amateur golf,” said Gupta. “It’s incredible organisation by Sudesh and his team… it’s been fun to have the cameras and caddies around.” Deepak Jain, who helped the MENA Golfers to victory, was glowing in his assessment of the day and specifically the live online stream with commentary from Graham Clews. “It was a fantastic experience. I had friends sitting in the Maldives, India and the USA watching it on social media, so it was a great day. We got the

It does make you want to be a better golfer... from that perspective it’s very good for amateur golf [in the region]. – jayshree gupta (dubai tigers)

feel of playing in a European Tour event with all the cameras and everything around.” “The live telecast was always going to be a very crucial part for us and so, in the end, it was so good to hear the feedback from the players about it,” said EAGL Administrator Priyaa Kumria. “Most of them talked about the pressure that comes with the cameras around them, and how it affected their games. The sheer joy on their faces as they showed us messages from their relatives and friends who were watching the action in such far-flung places as the United States, South Africa, Australia and Mauritius was something that we will cherish.” Jain’s MENA Golfers’ team-mate Craig Vance, playing off a -4.5 handicap, can also only see long-term benefits. “The experience was really great. We had music on the first tee which livened it up a bit and plenty of spectators. I think the event will bring on golf in the region and hopefully give the juniors a little bit more exposure to what it’s like in these bigger events as you move out of Dubai.”

Aggarwal was “absolutely delighted” with the day and understandably so given the planning and execution, including a State of the Nation-style forum headlined by industry heavyweights after play, was delivered in less than 45 days. “As for our future plans, we are pleased to announce two more Mini-Series as part of Amateur Golf Tour by Just Golf before the end of 2021. Dates, venue and other details will be revealed soon.” Everyone at JGE and onlookers from around the world can’t wait. – kent gray

Clockwise from above: Dubai Tigers’ Jayshree Gupta; the MENA Golfers team; EAGL CEO Sudesh Aggarwal; the post-play forum Opposite page: Ambassador Shiv Kapur hits the EAGL’s historic first shot

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

VERY WELL PLAYED & STAYED Golf Digest Middle East’s inaugural Play & Stay was a hit

olf is a game built on tradition so what happened when Golf Digest Middle East turned the traditional Stay & Play on its head by putting the playing before the staying? Epic golf and a significant upping of the ante when it comes to the hotel side of the equation as it turns out. But don’t take our word for it. Here’s participant Joel Alimon’s assessment of our recent weekend hosted by Radisson Hotel Dubai DAMAC Hills. “Congratulations on this successful event. We enjoyed playing golf on the manicured Trump Int’l. Golf Club [and] the stay…with all the personal touches and entertaining events such as massages, haircuts, golf accessories etc. And, oh yes, we liked the buffet meals, breakfast, welcome drinks, plus the awards night. “Will there be more like this? Because my wife simply loved it and is beginning to like golf also...yes!!” Yes indeed. The good news, Joel, is that we are working on our next weekend escape. We’re betting Ryan Westby and Leigh Molineux, in particular, are staying tuned for details as well after being crowned champions of their respective divisions. Westby captured division A for 0-12 handicappers with 32 stableford points while Molineux not only won division B but also waltzed away with the nearest the pin prize on Trump Dubai’s signature 17th hole. For the record, Molineux signed for 42 points to pip James Walsh by a point in the 13-24 handicappers division.

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Joel Alimon

Checking-in

Neck and shoulder massages

Pre-game grooming Challenge yourself

Evening brunch

Div A Winner: Ryan Westby

Nearest Pin (hole 3): Devin Hipkin PRIZE SPONSOR

Div B Winner and Nearest Pin (hole 17): Leigh Molineux with GDME’s David Burke

Nearest Pin in 2 (hole 8): Louis-Florent Daspre

Longest Drive (hole 13): Robert Mullen

Mind The Other 90 Percent

Don’t Forget to Breathe It’s the golfer’s best defense against tension by sean foley

rofessional golfers are meticulous about how they treat their bodies. That’s a good thing—being physically fit, eating right and staying hydrated are crucial if athletes are to perform at their peak. However, far too many golfers at every level essentially ignore the life force of humanity. We’re talking, of course, about breathing. Breathing is our best defence against the roller coaster of emotions this game wants to take you on. You don’t have to take my word for it. It is backed up by science. When you focus on your breathing— say, breathe in on a three-count, hold it for one, then breathe out for five— you saturate your red blood cells with oxygen. When this happens, the primal

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part of your hardware is tricked into believing that everything is calm and under control. When your breathing hastens, and you don’t have enough oxygen in your red blood cells, your brain begins to detect a threat. This activates your sympathetic nervous system, which regulates your “fight or flight” response. Let’s apply this to an example on the golf course. Say a player is struggling with his driver. Perhaps he has some internal trauma of having once had the lead down the stretch only to hit driver into the water and lose the tournament. (Every player, and every person, has internal trauma). That memory is stored in the brain, whether the player realises it or not. Now he steps onto the first tee, a long par 4 that calls for driver, but he sees trouble on both sides of the fairway. He might tell himself that he’s thinking about the basketball game the night before, but his subconscious is revisiting that traumatic memory. Here we go again. If he ignores his breathing, it will begin to speed up, and the sympathetic nervous system will take over. When the brain detects a threat, there is fear. Though the player might not realise it, his body is now in an agitated state. He will tense up. His

hands might begin to sweat. This makes it much harder to make a free swing through the ball. How can a player hit a driver 50 yards right and then, on the next shot, hit it right at his target? That isn’t physical—it’s not even conscious! If playing great golf was as easy as tapping into the right mind-set or attitude, we would all be able to do it. There has been so much written about the “mental side” of the game, and we can all read and comprehend this information. You might come to the golf course with great thoughts in your head about staying in the moment, worrying about the process and focusing on the things you are grateful for. But when you step up to the ball and things start to move quickly, all that stuff goes out the window, and your head goes blank. You just want to get the shot over with, to see where it went. Not long ago, one of my students on the PGA Tour was upset because all the things we had worked on seemed to disappear the moment he got on the course. I asked him if he could remember breathing at all—even once!—during the round, and his face went blank. This isn’t about psychology; it’s about physiology. If you were to measure a PGA Tour player strolling down the fairway, he would probably register around 16 breaths per minute. But to achieve focused, diaphragmatic breathing— the kind that convinces your brain that everything is OK—you would probably be around six or seven breaths per minute. I tell each one of my students to focus on his or her breathing, and virtually all of them tell me what a tremendous help it is. One more thing: Slowing down your breathing will not make you lethargic or swing slower. If you watch videos of Usain Bolt, he can be running 25 miles an hour, and yet his jaw is bouncing up and down, completely devoid of tension. He is in control of his breath, and he’s still running faster than any human likely ever has. The time between shots is the most important period in golf. This is when you have time to focus on your breathing and get control of your physiological response. If you wait until you’re over the ball, it’s too late. —with daniel rapaport Illustration by Santino Calvo

PAIN GAINS

II PART

After identifying the most common golf injuries last month, Optimal Fitness osteopath Russell Hill is now focused on ensuring you don’t fall into a perpetual injury cycle.

njuries are sadly common in amateur golf. Data highlights that 28 percent of all players have back pain after every round, 35 percent will have sustained an injury in the last 12 months and 70 percent of these will result in the amateur missing play or practising due to the niggle. It all equates to frustration and unnecessary cost. Your leisure time is precious enough without injury robbing you of a chance to play and those expensive membership fees are exempt from lost-time deductions. It is even more annoying to keep re-injuring the same area of our body which leaves you pulling your hair out as it takes longer and longer each time to return to the game we all love. So, how did you get into an injury cycle and how do we get out of it? The primary goal should be prevention which I will outline later. First off, we need to understand how and why common injuries occur. An underappreciated scenario is when amateurs are trying to implement swing changes. The Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) has identified 12 suboptimal swing characteristics that are commonly occurring among golfers. These can be as a result of being self-taught and/or poor programming of our body. Each one of them can also be linked to poor movement patterns.

THE ONE KNOWN FACT ABOUT INJURY IS THAT THE MOST COMMON RISK FACTOR TO SUSTAINING AN INJURY IS PAST INJURY.

It is these poor movement patterns that makes us susceptible to injury which makes seeking the advice of a qualified golf coach vital before implementing swing changes. The TPI have developed a physical screen which can be easily conducted on a driving range to detect poor movement patterns and identify if you have the movement capacity to adopt these swing changes successfully. If you cannot adapt appropriately there are two options: 1. A good coach will be able to advise safe swing adaptions that counter these dysfunctions. This is a short term fix and not a long term solution for improving your golf or long term health. 2. Seek the appropriate physical advice from a qualified golf trainer (if there is no pain involved) or see an appropriate specialised osteopath or physiotherapist.

If the shoulder or shoulder blade is sitting in a poor position as found in desk bound workers , increased stress on the elbow or wrist is possible

m of force Continuu n absorptio

he shoulder represents up to 19 percent, the hand and wrist 32 percent and the elbow 33 percent of all golfing injuries. The arm up into the thoracic spine is a continuum of an interdependent joint that is designed to allow the hand to be utilised in any space it needs to and inversely absorb any stress coming up from the hand into the shoulder and upper back. Any disruption in range of motion or strength will overload above and below causing a breakdown into pain. The most common injury is tendonitis in the elbow, either golfer’s elbow on the inside or tennis elbow, which is bizarrely more common in golfers, on the outside of the elbow. The other common injuries in these areas are shoulder slap tear, rotator cuff dysfunction, shoulder impingement and the hand and wrist are commonly affected by tendonitis.

Sagittal plane (bending forwards and backwards) Oblique Plane (allowing rotation) Increase strain on lower back Rotational mobility lost

LOWER BACK PAIN

(3) getty images

Repetative motion of the wrist without effective absorption above can cause overstrain of the wrist

ELBOW, WRIST AND SHOULDER

Relational mobility lost

ower back pain accounts for 36 percent of all injuries in amateur golfers. As I discussed in last month’s article, the golf swing is a chain reaction that requires a sequential integration of each body part and if there is dysfunction in one area, this might cause an overload in an adjacent area that has no ability to absorb this load. The lower back absorbs a large amount of rotational stresses in the swing and the lack of mobility or stability in the shoulders, hips, thoracic spine and ankles can overload the lower back and cause these breakdowns. Most golf injuries happen at the lambro-sacral joint as it absorbs a far greater rotational force than the rest of the lumbar spine. Injuries can occur in the disc, the facet joints, ligaments, or local musculature.

If you have lost rotation in the elbow, increased strain on the shoulder or wrist can result

KNEE

K sagittal plane

oblique plane

nee injuries represent nine percent of all golf injuries and, according to leading U.S. orthopaedic MD Dr Timothy. Bollom, the lead leg absorbs 4½ to 5 times the body weight in the golf swing. Therefore, “it would be less stress overall on the knee to jog 18 holes than to play golf for 18 holes,” says Dr Bollom. This stress would be significantly more if the ankles and hips were functioning sub optimally.

HIPS

ip issues are less common in golfers but can be devastating to a fluid and powerful swing. Hip dysfunction can be a predisposing factor to lower back, knee and ankle pain. july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

Conventional Approach

onventionally, if we feel pain, we tend to reach for the medicine cabinet and take pain killers, antiinflammatories, muscle relaxants or use ice or heat depending on past advice and past success. Is this really what is needed? This response is necessary at times and is not to be overlooked but the mindset is changing and being questioned. Inflammation is a natural body response to tissue damage and is vital in the repair and recovery of tissue and therefore reducing inflammation does not always help a speedy recovery. The same can be said for pain killers as pain is a response which warns your body of impending danger and prompts one to take the appropriate action or avoid a certain movement. By taking pain killers to cover up pain so you feel you can play golf might be prolonging your recovery and, at worst, increasing the tissue damage.

Injury occurs

Get injury assessed by osteopath or appropriate qualified medical practitioner

Reduce injury occurence

Stick with a year round strength and conditioning program

over-swing, or they use a highly compensated swing 2. Initially they use pain killers and either ice or heat to take the pain away 3. It reduces slightly and they think it’s ok so they go out and play golf again 4. The pain increases 5. A visit to their doctor where they are given stronger pain killers and they are told to rest. Occasionally they will be treated manually by an osteopath or physiotherapist but will fall into the 80 percentile who do not follow the appropriate exercise advice given 6. The pain reduces again to pain-free, but they then go back to their golf thinking they are fixed. 7. The pain reoccurs

he one known fact about injury is that the most common risk factor to sustaining an injury is past injury. I see people coming into the clinic time and again presenting with the same issues and the time between each visit can vary from several days/ weeks to a few years. Often in these cases, the time between representing gradually shortens and unfortunately reoccurring issues can become more difficult to treat each time. What I see so often is a golfer who comes in with mid-back pain. Here’s how it happens: 1. Onset of pain whilst trying to

Breaking The Pain Cycle

he most important first step to understanding that something needs to change is that pain is associated with dysfunction and without changing

INJURY CYCLE Pain killer and ice

Eventually pain free, golfer starts to play at previous level

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Respect the recovery process and understand it’s not instant

A BETTER APPROACH TO THE INJURY CYCLE

The Injury Cycle

Golf swing creates pain

Create treatment and gradual rehabilitation program

Try to play on

Pain increases

Forced to rest, no treatment or rehabilitation

Even when feeling fixed, stick with your exercises

Move to practice and play, gradually increasing the load

this dysfunction appropriately, you are unlikely to break the pain cycle. The next action is to seek a certified osteopath, sports doctor, or appropriate physical therapist with experience in golf injuries and appropriate rehabilitation. It is important not only to get an accurate diagnosis but an accurate functional assessment to identify all predisposing factors. The first objective of treatment is to reduce the pain levels followed by a structured and progressive rehabilitation plan devised to help and improve the loading capacity of your body. It is important that the patient understands and respects that injuries take time to heal. As your body recovers, effective ‘back to play’ strategies should be implemented: 1. Chipping and half swings as opposed to long game work 2. Reducing the number of balls hit on the range 3. Shorter range sessions 4. More time putting. We all know we drive for show and putt for dough and most of us can still improve in that area of the game! To conclude, the best way to avoid pain is to have a specific golf movement screening from one of the few qualified golf specialists in the Middle East who will devise a program to address any dysfunctions that might be either stopping you from improving or keeping you in a pain cycle that is only likely to get worse. As I jest with patients, you have two choices. 1, you can do your exercise or 2, make your therapist rich”.

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PUT ON Y IMPROVE YOUR BALL-STRIKING WITH THESE FOUR MOVES

OU MIGHT not believe this because I don’t smile very much on the golf course, but the truth is, I love this game. I really enjoy myself out there. Specifically, I love the process of improving and becoming a better ball-striker. Understanding the work you need to do to get better, understanding your body to give you more control and power, understanding the swing in a way that makes it simpler—all of that is interesting to me. Because I enjoy the intensity of this game and the process of getting better every day, I can’t

24 golfdigestme.com | july 2021

imagine doing anything else. I’ve been like that from the beginning—even when I was 7 years old and sitting on the range at Virginia Country Club, bugging tour pros like John Cook, Paul Goydos and John Mallinger about how they played. I consumed every bit of what they said. Same goes for their teacher and mine, Jamie Mulligan. He says my game is a hybrid of all the players he has worked with and been connected to, tracing back to Ken Venturi, Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan. I don’t know about that, but I do think all great players are energised by the search to simplify their swings so impact is more powerful and consistent. I don’t get bogged down in the technical parts of my swing all the time—that’s what a teacher like Jamie is for—and I think that’s the right thing for you, too. Good ball-striking is a result of making your

swing simpler. To help with that, Jamie has broken down mine into four key parts, and I’m going to show you the language we use to make my move more efficient, more intuitive and more repeatable. I had to make my swing better and smarter to compete again after a fracture in my back kept me on the sideline for three years. But that process led me to crack the top 10 in the World Golf Ranking and the top 20 in 50 ballstriking categories on the PGA Tour in 2019. I hope what I work on brings about a simple, cohesive and consistent swing that you can rely on, too, so you can enjoy your game as much as I’m enjoying mine. —WITH MIKE STACHURA

Photographs by Cody Pickens

A CLINIC

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BY PATRICK CANT CANTLAY

Photograph by First Lastname

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“CONTROL YOUR BACKSWING WITH BODY ROTATION, NOT YOUR HANDS AND ARMS.”

00 golf digest | issue x . 2020

Photograph by First Lastname

HANG THE LAUNDRY AT THE TOP

TAKEAWAY? NO, “MOVEAWAY”

hen I take my address position, you’ll see my feet moving, my head turning, my arms and shoulders adjusting. That’s not nerves. It’s about getting ready to make an athletic move free of tension. Instead of thinking about the first move in the swing being the takeaway, which sounds like you’re grabbing the club and pulling it away from the ball, I prefer what Jamie calls it—the “moveaway.” My body turn is what moves the club back (above), so there’s no excess activity in my hands or wrists to get the club in the proper position. I want a big swing arc. I have naturally long arms that could give me width and extension to start the backswing, but I want the proper position of my hands and arms to be the result of the way I’ve rotated my upper body. My left arm’s relationship to my body doesn’t change, and you’ll later see how that position is nearly mirrored as the club moves past impact into the follow-through.

o make my swing more efficient since the back injury, we focus on continuing to make a big turn. The width created during the moveaway phase is still there at the top. The way we see it, getting to the top isn’t merely a position, there’s a purpose to it. It’s about getting the club loaded for the downswing. If I continue to pivot and rotate my upper body, then the club naturally gets to the right position without any extra work from my arms. The more I get my shoulders turned, the less violent the transition into the downswing will be—which is key to remaining in control of the club. A big turn also gathers power and loads it up to be used late in the downswing, right where you want it. There’s no tension in my arms, the club isn’t loose or disconnected, and there’s no overswing. The position you see here (below) is what Jamie calls “hanging laundry.” When I get to the top of the backswing, the club is steady enough to hang laundry off the hosel.

RELEASE AND CATCH THE CLUB

GET OUT OF THE WAY

hen Jamie and I are working on my swing, we don’t talk a lot about positions and techniques. He might talk about surfing, and I might talk about the Lakers, but we’re not going back and forth about the kinematic sequence, rotational velocity or the X-Factor. We both know the part of the swing that tells us everything is this moment you see here (above). In fact, this specific viewpoint is where Jamie often will watch me hit balls. And this is when he’ll occasionally say this sentence that might not make sense until you really think about it: Get out of the way while you’re in it. It’s his way of explaining how my hips and lower body should clear out of the way of the club’s path on the downswing while the upper body, particularly the left shoulder, stays in the shot—meaning still facing the ball. This relationship between the lower body and upper body is crucial to ball-striking. If everything rotated open together, and you’ve thrown open your left shoulder, you’re no longer in a good position to flush it. What Jamie wants to see is that my left arm has naturally extended like it’s inside a tube with the shaft of the golf club, and that my lower body created room to accelerate that tube into the ball.

28 golfdigestme.com | july 2021

s strange as this might sound, I don’t want to hit the ball. Sure, I like compressing it off a tight lie, but I don’t want the sense of getting the club to the ball with an intentional hitting motion. The club should be accelerating into impact and through to the finish in an almost freewheeling way, so it feels like I’m just releasing the handle and then catching it on the follow-through (right). You can see how the position of my arms in relation to my body just after impact is similar to before impact (left and below)—and a lot like where I was in the moveaway. I’ve simply allowed everything—lower body, hips, upper body and arms—to naturally unwind. Jamie likes to say impact is not a destination, it’s a journey. When I get to the finish, I want to feel tension-free, supported and relaxed. Like with all these positions, I’m not trying to put the club in a particular place. The club arrives at the finish as a result of the natural turning and unwinding of my body. That’s just like what’s been happening with my game overall. Whether it’s shooting low scores or winning a tournament or just hitting the ball solidly, the results are the byproduct of the process. If you want to put on a clinic this golf season, give this concept a shot.

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00 golf digest | issue x . 2020

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WHEELIN’& DEALIN’ PATRICK CANTLAY BRINGS HIS COMPETITIVE FIRE TO THE CARD TABLE

by brittany romano

hen patrick cantlay isn’t swinging a golf club, you can usually find him turning the pages of a book or dealing out a game of gin rummy. Reading and card games are two activities he credits with sharpening his mind when he’s away from the course. But if you’re looking for a book suggestion from Cantlay, 28, don’t expect a breezy read. The books on Cantlay’s shelf resemble textbooks in length and topic. And if you’re hoping for a leisurely game of cards, keep walking. Cantlay is a fierce competitor. Hoping to join his book club, we caught up with Cantlay to hear what he’s reading and who he’s playing cards with these days. what are you reading? ▶ Principles by Ray Dalio. I haven’t gotten into the meat of the book yet, but so far, it’s about how he devised his plan on investing from a systematic approach—which I can kind of relate to. It’s thinking about how he can build the best system for making decisions for investing with a priority on brutal honesty between people on his team. did someone suggest this book? ▶ I can’t remember. I’m sure someone did. I try to get suggestions for books from people who I think are particularly smart or smarter than I am so I can learn something. Growing up, I used to read more fiction, and lately I’ve been trending to more nonfiction stuff, something that I can apply for the rest of my life. what are your three favourite books? ▶ Growing up, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien was my favourite. There is so much in there, it feels like it’s easy to get lost in that world. It was the first time I started getting excited about reading. Apparel by Hugo Boss

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman was a book that I really enjoyed. It’s easy to take little nuggets of knowledge and apply them to your life. I got a lot out of that book. I also really liked A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel. It was the first investing book I read. As I’ve gotten a little older and been fortunate enough to make a little money, investing has become a tiny part of my life, so being educated about it has been important. do you always have a book with you at the golf course or when you travel? ▶ No, I don’t usually bring one to the course. Once I get to the course, I don’t waste much time. I’ll read a little bit during the week [at a tournament], depending on what I have going on. I wouldn’t say I read a crazy amount of the time. I’m just always reading something. I don’t get through a large number of books, but I always have one or two going at a time.

how often do you play cards now that you’re not living in california? ▶ I don’t play as much as when I was hurt. When I was hurt, I probably played twice a week. You know, just trying to keep sane. Just having things to do while I wasn’t doing anything. I’m still looking for a game in Florida, but sometimes I’ll play on the road. I’ll play with Xander Schauffele. Jordan Spieth is a good player, too. do you usually win?

we heard you’re a big card player. how did that start? ▶ I play gin rummy a fair amount, and that kind of started when I was hurt, and I played with the guys at Virginia Country Club [in Long Beach, Calif.], where I grew up. I really enjoy finding things that aren’t golf that you can be competitive at with people. That’s fun for me just because I’m so competitive. you played with a lot of older members at virginia country club. what was that like? ▶ One of the cool things about starting to play cards was that I met a lot of people who had a lot more life experience and were a lot smarter than I was. Just by spending time around intellectual people like that, asking questions and hearing what they have to say, that has helped me a lot in my life and provided some friendships for me that have been really enjoyable and beneficial. I don’t think I would have made those connections without being able to play cards and spend time with some of the guys.

▶ No, we have some good battles. They’re both really smart guys, and we enjoy playing. what kind of qualities are you looking for in players at a regular game? ▶ It’s always fun to play with people who are competitive, right? Because you know they want to win and are trying as hard as they can. That investment makes winning or losing more fun because you know they’re giving you everything they have. do you hope to someday help someone like yourself get through hard times by playing cards? ▶ Someday, I’ll be at a point where I’ve lived the majority of my life and made my successes and failures, and it’ll be time to kind of help or advise somebody younger that still has mistakes to be made and successes to be had.

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE OF GOLF LOOK LIKE? THESE NINE INFLUENTIAL VOICES ARE HELPING BRING IT INTO FOCUS

BY DANIEL RAPAPORT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KEVIN MCGIVERN

You might not realise it watching the PGA Tour’s weekend broadcast, but golf’s discourse is no longer monopolised by Establishment voices. The democratisation of content along with evolving consumer behaviors—read: no one’s got time for fivehour rounds!—has produced a chorus of new voices shaping the conversation about golf’s future. They’re posting videos on TikTok and podcasts to Spotify. They’re ditching the polo-and-slacks look for the hoodie-andjoggers vibe. And they’re refusing to accept golf as an outof-touch pastime for wealthy white men. With an eye toward the decades to come, we spoke with nine of the most influential and important new voices in our sport. What they share, in addition to a deep love for the game: a steadfast belief that golf, like all things, must adapt to survive—and, ideally, to thrive.

THE CREATIVE

Roger Steele Roger Steele knew his engineering job in Chicago was stifling his creative instincts, and he knew he wanted to do what creatives do: pack up his life and move to Los Angeles. But he had no friends there, no real plan. “All I had was my golf clubs,” Steele, 33, says. “Within a month I’m playing at the nicest clubs in the city. What other activity besides golf could have brought me that opportunity, that network, so quickly?” Now he rubs shoulders with professional athletes and SoCal CEOs at L.A.’s swankiest courses; back when he was a kid, it was munys near his home in Austin, a no-frills neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Steele’s father was a police officer, and he nudged his son toward golf because he didn’t trust the alleys and parks where kids played basketball. Steele went on to the University of Illinois, then worked a few engineering jobs before the move to L.A. There, he joined with former Korn Ferry Tour player Danny Wax to found Hipe Media,

a creative-content agency whose projects include Hipe Golf, a grow-the-game initiative designed to increase minority participation. The Gretzky family, Adidas, Trap Golf and the APGA Tour are among Hipe’s golf-related clients, and future collaborations with the PGA Tour have been discussed. Steele’s relationship with the game, however, is not uncomplicated. Though grateful for the doors golf has opened, Steele remains keenly aware of how he—and those who look like him—are perceived. “As a Black man, you feel like your presence is already one strike against you, and you have to be quiet on certain topics. If I’m super-outspoken, I might never get the invite again. That’s not a comfortable feeling.” As far as the PGA Tour’s stated commitment to diversifying the game? “The people who are in control don’t relate to the people they’re trying to reach. There’s this disconnect in the messaging. If you want us to drive change, let us in the driver’s seat.”

THE DESIGNERS

STEPHEN & ERICA MALBON Stephen Malbon would often ask his celebrity friends if they would want to join him for one of his favourite pastimes: golf. “It wouldn’t just be a no,” he says. “It’d be a f--- no! Like, why would I even consider doing that?” Malbon has been wrestling with the is-golf-cool-enough conundrum since he quit the game as a 16-year-old because, you guessed it, it was not cool enough. Sometime along his professional journey—which took him from the ad agency world in New York City to creating the Malbon Group, a parent company that housed a creative content agency and a lifestyle brand/ magazine called Frank151— he rekindled his golf flame and vowed to bring some coolness

along with him. So he and his wife, Erica, who co-founded a boutique-spa concept called The Now, began posting images they thought were interesting and stylish to an Instagram page that gained traction. The page evolved into the clothing company Malbon Golf, although the “Golf” part is optional. They do not make golf clothes; they make rad clothes that people can choose to play golf in: flatbrimmed hats, bucket hats, tie-dyed polos, button-down shirts, joggers, hoodies. The eye-popping designs are sure to draw disapproving glances from stuffy country clubbers, and that’s kind of the idea. By putting their one brick-and-mortar location on L.A.’s ultra-hip Fairfax

THE CONNOISSEUR

ANDY JOHNSON ne measure of architecture junkies is their familiarity with Golf Club Atlas, the online forum for purists to read about Golden Age designs and ruminate on differences in green surrounds. Andy Johnson read the site as he toiled

Avenue—where, according to Erica, “golfers don’t go”—the Malbons made a statement: Golf can indeed be rad. They are expecting revenue of about $10 million this year.

in post-college jobs—first in freight logistics, then for two startups. It was just a hobby until TheFriedEgg.com was born in late 2015. Originally a bi-weekly email newsletter, Johnson’s website has evolved into an authoritative voice on course architecture. It highlights renovations, sends a thrice-weekly newsletter, produces high quality drone videos of courses, analyses PGA Tour venues and more. People trust him to, in the simplest terms, tell them whether a course is good or not. When golfers start to appreciate golf-course architecture, “they get something other than a score to base their experience off. It gives them a whole other lens to view the game through,” he says. Johnson, 35, believes there will always be a place for the type of classic layouts he reads about on Golf Club Atlas and reviews for The Fried Egg. But his site spotlights non-traditional courses and ideas too. In a piece about the 2019 U.S. Open, Johnson

“We wanted to introduce the sport to a different person,” Erica says. “And we have. The community that likes golf but also likes Jordans and music and high fashion.”

wrote that “the use of the concept of par is perhaps the biggest farce in golf,” and the site’s Bang for Your Buck series highlights architecturally interesting courses that don’t require a membership or a $250 green fee. “Everyone knows Bandon Dunes and Pebble are great,” he says. “I made an effort to find courses people hadn’t heard of that wouldn’t cost a million dollars that they’d enjoy.” There’s an audience for that message. Johnson’s site has 70,000+ unique visitors each month, and its The Fried Egg and Shotgun Start podcasts combined to draw more than 4 million downloads in 2020. “The Internet is a place for people to nerd out on whatever they want,” he says. “It’s becoming even more niched. You see it with ESPN; it’s hard to cover every sport, every team, in a broad sense. The diehard fans who want more information will find a sport- or team-specific site. That’s what makes golf so great— there are all these subcultures.” july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

THE ARCHITECTS

ROB KING & TAD COLLINS They come from two different corners of the golf-course design world—Rob King from the architectural side, Tad Collins from the contracting side. As such, they had both witnessed the inefficiencies of having those two services offered by different companies, often with competing interests. King/Collins Golf Course Design, then, would do things differently. Formed in 2010, it would function as one group to take your project from the first sketch to Opening Day. Still, a design firm is only as good as its golf courses, and King/Collins had zero until they secured a unique debut project: reviving a decrepit, featureless nine-hole track on a flat floodplain in rural Tennessee. “As a sport, we are way too attached to the 18-hole model,” says King, 53. “The country club way of 5½-hour rounds is going away. We’re embracing the fact that we like to think differently—whether that’s nine or 12 holes, the focus is a great experience.”

That mantra comes through vividly in their work on that dog track outside Chattanooga—“the worst golf course I’d ever seen,” according to King—which began in June 2011 and finished almost exactly a year later. The final product stands proudly as Sweetens Cove, a strikingly dramatic nine-hole facility that has developed a cult-like following for its meticulous architecture—particularly among a younger subculture that’s willing to travel for golf experiences. Also in development for King/Collins is the renovation of Overton Park in Memphis, which will result in a nine-hole course and a three-hole

loop, Landmand Golf Club in Nebraska, and a project in upstate New York. The only rule they keep in mind when building a course is that there are no rules. “We don’t adhere to any preconceived notions,” says Collins, 45. “Things like a course needs to be 18 holes and have four par 5s, you have to see every hazard, or the greens have to be sloped back to front and be receptive. We find that when you move away from that stuff, you’re freed up to be a lot more creative.”

‘THIS WILL ALLOW PLAYERS AND COACHES TO FIND OUT EXACTLY WHAT’S GOING WRONG. IT WON’T BE A MYSTERY.’

THE CEO

Jeehae Lee A former LPGA Tour player, Jeehae Lee has seen her share of swing coaches. However, she’s in the minority—just 13 percent of golfers take lessons even once a year. “The rest are just hacking it together on their own,” Lee, 37, says. “The biggest barrier to entry is price— people don’t want to spend $100 every week or even every month. We want to solve that problem for the other 87 percent. For those with access to instruction, this will unlock so much in your lessons.” This is SportsBox AI, an in-development software that seeks to democratise 3-D motion-capture technology

and incorporate it into golf instruction. Lee is the CEO of the company, her latest venture in a long-term and somewhat turbulent relationship with golf. In addition to playing on tour, she has an undergraduate degree from Yale—where she played on the team as a freshman, then quit, then re-joined as a senior before turning pro—and an MBA from Wharton. She managed Michelle Wie and spent five years in business development roles at Topgolf. SportsBox AI’s app, now in betatesting, allows users to capture a 2-D smartphone video and, through computer vision and deep-learning neural networks, convert the video into a 3-D avatar that can be analysed from

six points of view. It can also provide biomechanic measurements corresponding to 39 points on the body— providing a full breakdown of the player’s movements: how much the player is tilting, how many degrees the player is rotating, that sort of thing. And it can do all this on the range or during a practice round, as opposed to current technologies that require a player to be indoors. Sportsbox AI intends to charge users $10 a month, which ought to make it popular among instructors who don’t have access to more expensive machinery such as ForcePlate. “I know firsthand what it’s like to lose your swing in the middle of a tournament,” Lee says. “This will allow players and coaches to, in full 3-D information detail, find out exactly what’s going wrong. It won’t be a mystery.” july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

‘THERE’S A HUGE CONTINGENT THAT WANTS THE GAME TO GROW ONLY IN THE WAY THEY BELIEVE IT SHOULD.’

THE PODCASTER

Sam (Riggs) Bozoian The idea was simple enough: Talk about golf like normal people and turn it into a podcast. The underlying belief was a bit more profound. “Whether you’re at a private course or if you’re at a local muny, I think those conversations around the bar are pretty similar,” says Sam (Riggs) Bozoian, 34, the face of branding behemoth Barstool Golf. “They have the same opinions on players; they think the same things are funny.” Riggs expertly toes the line between country club and public golf, and his followers adore him for it. That, and his ability to make them belly laugh. A former Harvard hockey player

and tech salesman, Riggs elbowed his way into writing about golf for the popular Barstool Sports site in 2016. A year later, he co-launched Fore Play, which draws top-level PGA Tour talent as guests and frequently charts as the top golf podcast in America. He is also the commissioner of the Barstool Classic, a two-man tournament now in its third year. The 2021 edition will feature 27 local qualifying spots, nearly 3,000 entrants and a four-day bonanza finale at Pinehurst. As is the case with many Barstool employees, he has been at the centre of controversy. Long-simmering tensions with more traditional golf writers blew up at the 2019 Presidents Cup, where some media members labeled him a “fanboy with a press

pass” and bemoaned his rooting interests and close relationships with players. Riggs and crew pushed back at “old-man golf media,” whom they view as archaic, close-minded and perhaps a little envious. “There’s a huge contingent that wants the game to grow only in the way they believe it should,” Riggs says. “If it grows in a way that’s different than that, they’re actively against it. It’s such an intimidating entry to our sport, and people like that are why.” His mission is to make golf more approachable. His method is to focus on how much fun golf is to play and talk about, rather than adhering to the old notions about what the game should be—or how those covering it should behave.

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◼ 149TH OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP PREVIEW

THE MEN’S MAJORS HAVE THROWN UP A HAT-TRICK OF STORYBOOK VICTORS IN 2021. CAN THERE BE A BRITISH FAIRYTALE TO TOP THEM ALL AT CELEBRATED ROYAL ST GEORGE’S? BY KENT GR AY

OUT OF WESTFIELD? HE NAMES ON THE Open Championship honours board in the stately clubrooms at Royal St George’s are as legendary and, certainly more recently, as unpredictable as the storied 19th-century links itself. ▶ By claiming the 34th Open at ‘Sandwich’ in 1894, notably the first held outside of Scotland, J.H. (John Henry) Taylor sits atop the list of 12 men whose feats span 14 championships and 127 colourful years. The Devon professional’s 326 aggregate, comprising rounds of 84-80-81-81, remains the highest winning score in Open history - there were just two scores in the 70s that blustery year – and hints at a level of difficultly that endures today. 40 golfdigestme.com | july 2021

▶ royal majesty The par-4 1st hole at St. George’s.

It was nonetheless the first of Taylor’s five triumphs in golf’s oldest championship and spearheaded the fabled run of the ‘Great Triumvirate’ – the trio of Taylor, Harry Vardon and James Braid combined to win 16 of the 21 Opens between 1894 and 1914. Vardon – you may well play with the over-lapping grip made famous by the Channel Islander – won at RSG himself in 1899 and 1911. In between the third and fifth of Vardon’s record six Open

victories, the Scotsman Jack White captured the 1904 edition with a sublime closing 69 at Sandwich, a winning final round score that wouldn’t be bettered at RSG until Greg Norman 89 years hence. In 1922, Walter Hagen became the first American to win the “British” Open and returned to the Kent coast layout six years later to repeat the feat. Hagen also won the Claret Jug at Royal Liverpool (1924) and Muirfield (1929) in a career tally of 11 professional majors, third only

to Jack Nicklaus’ 18 and Tiger Woods’ 15. T.H (Henry) Cotton had the European Tour’s Rookie of the Year honour named after him for feats including his victory at RSG in 1934 where he become just the fourth (of seven) players to win wire-towire (with no ties in any round). In 1949, it was the turn of the revered South African Bobby Locke who secured the first of his four Open championships in a 36-hole playoff - by 12 strokes - from Irishman Harry Bradshaw.

Photograph by David Cannon/Getty Images

Greg Norman

42 golfdigestme.com | july 2021

Vijay Singh in 2003. Incredibly, it was the American’s first appearance in a major championship, making him the first player since Francis Ouimet at the 1913 U.S. Open to win on major championship debut (Keegan Bradley later achieved the feat at the 2011 PGA Championship). Not bad on a trip he had treated as a working holiday with his girlfriend. The most recent victory in an Open at RSG belongs to Darren Clarke. The Northern Irishman, then 42, didn’t arrive with a great record in the Open – notwithstanding a share of second in 1997 at Royal Troon – but used all his linksland experience to eke out a three stroke victory over Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson.

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD hich brings us to 2021 and the vexed question of who might win the 149th (15th at RSG) Open? There are no guarantees in golf, of course, but if The Open follows the pattern of 2021, don’t dismiss a fairytale finish to the year’s majors. Fifty-year-old Mickelson proved at Kiawah Island that middle age is no longer a barrier to major championship glory and links golf, by its very nature, brings more players into contention. While it has been stretched to 7,189 yards, RSG further negates some of the advantage of today’s long bombers – the exacting par-70 layout features but two par 5s. European Tour winner Eddie Pepperell describes it as quirky, understandable given the number of blind shots on a layout where no two tees lead in the same direction. When the wind whips up from where the violent North Sea and Channel meet, good luck. It goes without saying then that proven pedigree typically triumphs at RSG. All of which will give the likes of Lee Westwood, despite missing the cut in his two Open appearances at RSG, hope of snaring a thus-far elusive major title. The 48-year-old Englishman has gone close in the Open before – he was second to Louis Oosthuizen at St Andrews in 2010 and ranks eight top-5s and 19 cuts made amongst his 25 successive appearances – and will

Darren Clarke won the last Open at Royal St George’s in 2011

no doubt be inspired by Clarke circa 2011 and Mickelson as recently as May. And Hideki Matsuyama’s Masters moment. And Jon Rahm’s comeback from COVID-19 at The PGA last month. Remember, Westwood was T-4 last time out at Royal Portrush too. So do you genuinely think you can still win The Open? “Yeah, yeah I do,” Westwood told The Open Podcasts. “Every time I tee it up I feel like I can win. I’ve always said I’ll pack it in when I don’t feel competitive anymore. Right now, I’m still competitive and I can still win tournaments so keep working hard and keep playing in them.” Having the English crowds riding his bag can’t hurt either. “Oh, absolutely yeah. You know, for me bring British, it being the Open Championship, growing up playing links courses, it’s the greatest championship in the world and they always give their home players a little bit extra applause.” Trying to predict the winners of golf tournaments, much less majors, is an exercise in folly. But if Westy does win, remember you heard the hot tip here first. If not, well, it will be epic anyway. What is undeniable is that the 149th Open’s 12-month, COVID-19 enforced delay makes the return to RSG much anticipated. Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder for the grandest championship of them all. Let battle – between the world’s best but mostly between golfer, Kent linksland and England’s notoriously fickle summer weather, commence.

(2)getty images

NORMAN CONQUEST he 1981 Open at RSG was notable for an opening round of 83 by Nicklaus who was caught out by the quirk of the draw and a mid-afternoon gale for what was, at the time, the American’s worst round as a professional. Texan Bill Rogers opened with a far less traumatic 72 and went to claim the title by four strokes from Bernhard Langer - one of Roger’s astonishing seven victories that year to establish himself as the world No.1. Sandy Lyle ventured across the border from Scotland in 1985 to finally underline his quality with a one-stroke victory over Payne Stewart before Norman’s final round heroics in 1993 allowed the Australian to claim the Claret Jug for a second time, seven years after his equally emotional triumph at Turnberry. The Great White Shark returned four rounds in the 60s, including the then lowest final round to clinch the Open, for a 267 total. That 13-under score remains the lowest at RSG and could have been lower. Legend has it that Norman missed a 35cm putt on the penultimate hole in his closing 64 as tears welled at the thought of impending victory. Nick Faldo, who finished runner-up by two strokes, showed his class in defeat by ordering a celebratory supper of fish and chips for Norman and some of the gathered media corp. No victory at RSG was more of a surprise than Ben Curtis’ one-stroke triumph over Thomas Bjørn and

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FROM ROYAL ST. GEORGE’S WITH LOVE BY JOHN BARTON

LIKE HIS JAMES BOND CHARACTER, WRITER IAN FLEMING HAD AN AFFINITY FOR GOLF, AND THE SITE OF THIS YEAR’S OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP IS WHERE HE FELT MOST AT HOME

fast fairways is a work of fiction. The 1959 novel Goldfinger is the seventh in the series of 14 Bond books by English author Ian Fleming. Fifty pages are devoted to the epic battle between the two men, and the golf segment in the movie adaptation still stands out as one of the best cinematic celebrations of the game. Royal St. George’s, named for England’s patron saint but rechristened Royal St. Marks for the purposes of fiction, is where Bond as a teenager would often play 36 a day. The match with Goldfinger is his first return in 20 years. The old pro remembers him: “A bit of practice, Mr. James, and you’d be scratch,” he says. We first meet Goldfinger in Florida. During a flight delay at the Miami air▶ two of a kind Ian Fleming in 1958 (previous pages); original Bond Sean Connery (right) on the set of Goldfinger.

port, Bond is approached by a wealthy American, Junius Du Pont, part owner of a swanky beach resort nearby. The two had met years earlier at a casino in France. Du Pont asks Bond to help him with a problem: He’d been losing badly at two-handed canasta for four days straight to one of the guests at his hotel, Goldfinger. Bond rumbles the ruse—in Goldfinger’s suite the next day he discovers a semi-clad young woman who sees Du Pont’s cards through powerful binoculars and relays them to her boss via a transmitter in Goldfinger’s ear. Bond gets Goldfinger to pay up, makes love all night with Goldfinger’s now unclad binocular woman on a sleeper train to New York, then flies home. Back in London, by an amazing coincidence, Bond learns that Goldfinger

has attracted the attention of the intelligence services and the Bank of England; Bond is asked to investigate. Goldfinger is a Russian émigré to the United Kingdom who has set up a chain of pawnbrokers and jewelry stores as a cover for a gold-smuggling operation that made him the richest man in England and a suspected chief underwriter of Russian counterintelligence operations. Goldfinger lives in Reculver, on the “melancholy, forsaken reaches of the Thames,” just along the coast from “St. Marks,” where he plays most afternoons. After his humiliating unmasking as a cheat in Miami, Goldfinger sends a message to Bond, challenging him to a game. The golf match thus takes on a great significance as a Cold War duel of good versus evil, and readers of the novel are left in no doubt as to which is which. Goldfinger is short, barely five feet tall, and “it was the short men who caused all the trouble in the world.” On top of his “thick body and blunt, peasant legs, was set, almost directly into the shoulders, a huge and it seemed exactly round head. It was as if Goldfinger had been put together with bits of other people’s bodies.” Bond plays in a battered old pair of spikes and a faded black windcheater; his opponent, by contrast, is unforgivably ostentatious. He arrives at the club in a chauffeur-driven armor-plated yellow Rolls-Royce. “Everything about the man had grated on Bond’s teeth from the first moment he had seen him.” Goldfinger, of course, has a new set of clubs in a big leather bag. He “made an attempt to look smart at golf, and that is the only way of dressing that is incongruous on a links. Everything matched in a blaze of rust-colored tweed from the buttoned ‘golfer’s cap’ centreed on the

fleming: express newspapers/getty images • goldfinger: daily mirror/mirrorpix via getty images

JAMES BOND STROLLS DOWN THE FIRST FAIRWAY AT ROYAL ST. GEORGE’S, RELISHING THE PROSPECT OF A HIGH-STAKES MATCH WITH HIS NEMESIS, AURIC GOLDFINGER “ON A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN MAY WITH THE LARKS The club was founded in 1887 and has SINGING OVER THE GREATEST hosted 13 Open Championships—the 14th is scheduled for July 15-18. Yet the SEASIDE COURSE IN THE WORLD.” most famous encounter on these hard,

royal st. george’s: david cannon/getty images

huge, flaming red hair, to the brilliantly polished almost orange shoes.” They are quite different players, too. Nine-handicappers both, Goldfinger plays a mechanical, efficient, uninspiring game; Bond is more powerful, attacking, daring. Goldfinger plays the percentages; Bond beats the odds. The pro had warned Bond of Goldfinger’s reputation as a cheat, and sure enough he frequently improves his lie by stepping behind the ball or “accidentally” drops his club or jangles change in his pocket when Bond is in full swing. The 15th is perhaps St. George’s toughest par 4, only reachable in two for the longest of hitters. Bond goes for it with that most exacting of shots, a driver off the fairway. He takes the club back, but Goldfinger is on the move again, using the low-evening sun to cast a passing shadow over Bond’s ball. Bond is able to stop, step away, regroup and try again. Here Bond shows his mettle: The shot is perfect. Says his caddie, Hawker, who was modeled on one of Fleming’s real-life caddies: “That’s one of the finest shots I’ve seen in 30 years.” Goldfinger’s most blatant cheat comes at the 17th. With the match all square, he pushes his drive into deep rough. Just before the five-minute search limit has elapsed, Goldfinger’s caddie shouts that

he has found his master’s ball. It’s in a perfect lie and farther along than where the rest of the group had been looking. “It wasn’t his ball, sir,” Hawker tells Bond. “Do you swear to that? How can you be sure?” Then with a “half ashamed, lopsided grin,” Hawker says: “Because his ball was lying under my bag of clubs, sir.” Bond, amazed by Hawker’s ingenuity and Goldfinger’s temerity, comes up with a plan. He gives Hawker a Dunlop 65 number seven that he found in the rough and instructs him to switch it with Goldfinger’s ball after the two combatants have putted out on the 17th green. Goldfinger plays a Dunlop 65 number one. Bond plays a Penfold Hearts. The two men are all square with one hole left to play. Goldfinger wins, but Bond plays his trump card. He confronts Goldfinger about playing the wrong ball, and thus claims the hole and the match. St. George has slayed a dragon.

Special Agent 007 lives a cartoonish, schoolboy fantasy life of adventure, taking on the evil in the world for Queen and country, with smarts, derring-do

▶ ancient links Royal St. George’s was the site of England’s first Open Championship, in 1894. Above, the par-4 eighth.

and a license to kill. His work brings him notoriety, exotic locales and a steady stream of beautiful alpha females who inevitably fall for Bond’s animal charms—even Goldfinger’s pilot, the lesbian cat-burglar Pussy Galore, succumbs. The women are used, then discarded. Bond travels light. He’s never at home and always at home, whether wearing a tuxedo or just a towel. Set against a backdrop of post-war drear and a rapidly disappearing empire, the Bond novels were thrilling, colorful, heroic. The villains and their megalomaniacal plots to take over the world were no match for Bond. He restored pride to Englishmen of a certain disposition, giving the impression that behind the scenes, Britannia still ruled the waves. It’s Bond who saves Fort Knox from Goldfinger’s devilish plan. It’s Bond who is apparently single-handedly winning the Cold War. Bond’s opposite number in Washington, D.C., Felix Leiter, is a lightweight. English novelist Kingsley Amis writes, “The point of Felix Leiter, such a nonentity as a piece of characterisation, is that he, the American, takes orders from Bond, the Britisher.”

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

Fleming created in Bond a kind of extrapolation of himself. Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, in 1908. His grandfather made a fortune investing in American railways; he founded the Robert Fleming merchant bank (Chase Manhattan bought the company in 2000 for $7 billion). Robert’s son Valentine—Ian’s father—was a British Member of Parliament. It was a familiar story of privilege and brutality. Fleming, one of four boys—the “difficult” one—was bullied at school. His father left in 1914 to fight in World War I. Eight days before Ian’s ninth birthday, Valentine was killed on the Western front. Winston Churchill wrote an obituary in The Times. Fleming was sent to boarding school, the hottest of hothouses for overprivileged boys, Eton College, where he excelled at sports, edited the student newspaper and, later, got into trouble for his keen, extra-curricular interest in cars and women. After stints abroad learning languages and skiing in fashionable European resorts, he enrolled at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He left after less than a year with no commission and a bad case of gonorrhea. He dabbled in the city and in journalism, which can be a passport to adventure and travel at someone else’s expense. Covering a trial in Moscow in 1933, he requested an interview with Joseph Stalin

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FLEMING CREATED IN BOND A KIND OF EXTRAPOLATION OF HIMSELF. . . . AN ENGLISHMAN, PRIVILEGED, REFINED.

and was astonished to receive an apologetic handwritten note back from the Soviet premier, declining the request. Fleming cultivated an epicurean social network in London of scions and scoundrels and drinking and golf partners. In 1934, such friends and “wives and concubines” traveled by chartered train to the new resort at Gleneagles in Scotland—there was a carriage for dancing, another for gambling. Across the English Channel, the golf courses and gambling dens of Le Touquet and Deauville were popular weekend retreats. Fleming took up golf in school, and as an adult, wherever he found himself in the world, he was up for a game. One golf pal described his short, flat, fast swing as “like a housemaid sweeping the

floor,” but he was a useful player. In the 1957 Bowmaker pro-am at the Berkshire outside London, Fleming partnered with Peter Thomson, who had won the previous three Open Championships and would go on to win two more. To prepare, Fleming re-read his favourite golf book, Tommy Armour’s How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time, which makes an appearance in Diamonds Are Forever. Playing off 9—like Bond and Goldfinger—with a champion golfer and in front of large crowds, Fleming performed creditably. He wrote up the experience in a humorous newspaper story entitled “Nightmare Among the Mighty.” In World War II, Fleming became assistant to the director of naval intelligence and devised and executed a number of special operations at home and abroad that brought him face to face with the political and military top brass, agents and counteragents, the establishment and the enemy. Fleming had a lively imagination. His wartime plotting inspired the outlandish fictional plotlines that would become such an integral part of the James Bond formula. After the war, Fleming returned to journalism, bought an expensive goldplated Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter and started writing. Bond was introduced to the world in 1953 with Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale. Fleming moved to Kent, the “Garden of England”—with a house in Jamaica for the winter—and joined Royal St. George’s, where he remained a regular for the rest of his life. At the time of his death, he was the club’s captain-elect. Fleming was a lifelong bon viveur, carouser, seducer. He had always had a complicated love life, but after he impregnated Ann Charteris, the wife of press baron Viscount Rothermere, who as a result divorced her, Fleming married her. He didn’t exactly settle down. But he slowed down enough to write. The books were hugely successful, as were the movie adaptations. Filming for “Goldfinger” started in January 1964 at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. Sean Connery was again cast in the lead role, having stolen the show in the first two Bond films, “Dr. No” and “From Russia With Love.” But Fleming was initially not a fan of Connery. He had suggested

ExprEss/GEtty ImaGEs

▶ jetsetter Fleming at an airfield in January 1964, seven months before his death and less than a year before “Goldfinger” was released.

EvEning Standard/Hulton arcHivE/gEtty imagES

David Niven—he saw Bond as a version of himself: an Englishman, privileged, refined. Connery was rough, raw, working class and very Scottish. German actor Gert Fröbe took the role of Goldfinger—a controversial choice given he had been a member of the Nazi Party during World War II. Goldfinger’s Korean manservant, the mute, bowlerhat-wielding, golf-ball-crushing Oddjob, was played by American Olympic silver medalist weightlifter Harold Sakata. The golf scenes were filmed not on the links of St. George’s but at Stoke Poges (now Stoke Park), one of the many fine courses just beyond the western fringes of London. This was likely more a matter of expedience than aesthetics: Stoke is just 10 minutes from Pinewood Studios, where the bulk of the filming took place. In the movie, it’s Bond, not his caddie, who pulls off the sleight of hand—and foot—that tricks Goldfinger out of the game. Connery’s Bond takes great delight in beating the cheater at his own game, the end justifying the means. Fleming visited the set at Pinewood but was in poor health. A heavy smoker and drinker, Fleming had lunch at St. George’s on Aug. 11, 1964, dined nearby with friends at the now-defunct Guilford Hotel where he was staying and then suffered a heart attack. He died in Kent and Canterbury Hospital in the small hours of the morning. He was

THE GOLF SCENE IN GOLDFINGER STANDS OUT AS ONE OF THE BEST CINEMATIC CELEBRATIONS OF THE GAME.

56. His friend and onetime neighbor, playwright Noel Coward, said he died “because life failed to come up to the dream he had of it.” His last words supposedly were to the ambulance drivers: “I’m sorry to trouble you chaps. I don’t know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days.” After filming for “Goldfinger ” wrapped, Connery flew to Rome to be with his wife, Diane Cilento, who was making a movie there with Rex Harrison. Connery and Harrison were playing golf when news reached them of Fleming’s death. They played an extra 18 holes in his honor, with Connery using a Penfold Hearts ball. Fleming died on the 12th birthday of his son. The bedtime stories he used

to tell little Caspar—who he called “003½”—about a flying car became a posthumous best-selling children’s book and cinema hit, Chitty-Chitty-BangBang. Caspar, like his fatherless father, would be sent to Eton, where he developed an unhealthy interest in drugs and guns, later dropped out of Oxford University and, at 23, took his life. “Goldfinger” premiered on Sept. 17, 1964, in London’s Leicester Square. Connery attended the French premiere in Paris the next February, driving the length of the Champs-Élysées in an Aston Martin DB5. The movie earned $46 million—it was the then-fastestgrossing film of all time. The franchise barrels on apace: The 27th Bond film, “No Time To Die,” will be released at the end of the year. The Bond books today have sold in excess of 100 million copies. Bond seen from the vantage point of today looks like a dinosaur, especially in his early screen iterations: pathologically egotistical, sexist, racist, homophobic. No wonder he’s a loner. He’s basically a psychopath, a character for whom the phrase “toxic masculinity” might have been invented, someone who cannot love, only win. Perhaps that goes for Bond’s creator, too. The English critic Christopher Hitchens described Fleming as “quite a heavy sadist and narcissist and all-around repressed pervert.” In his biography, Andrew Lycett concludes that Fleming “encapsulates both the tragedy and the triumph of his time. Despite his personal advantages, he ended his short life in misery.” The fifth hole at Royal St. George’s, on the southern end of the course, is a roller-coaster ride through tall sand dunes and out toward the sea. The second shot is Bond’s favourite on the course. In the match with Goldfinger, Bond “stood on the tee, perched high up in the sand-hills, and paused before the shot while he gazed at the glittering distant sea and at the faraway crescent of white cliffs beyond Pegwell Bay.” Fleming was an Englishman of the world, but a restless soul, torn between lovers, lives, locations, never quite at ease, never satisfied. Perhaps it is here, on this windswept edge, that he felt closest to home. ▶ island getaway Fleming and his wife, Ann, at GoldenEye, their villa in Jamaica where Fleming worked on his Bond novels.

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

(1) DUKES HOTEL BAR, St James’ Place, London In a quiet Mayfair courtyard behind the Ritz sits the effortlessly stylish Dukes Hotel, where the bar was one of Fleming’s regular hangouts. The most famous tipple here is the martini—it was in this watering hole, according to legend, that Fleming decided the martini would be Bond’s beverage of choice, a cocktail that had to be, of course, “Shaken, not stirred.” Today you can sample one of the Fleming-themed cocktails or learn how it’s made by attending one of the hotel’s martini masterclasses. dukeshotel.com

miles from Heathrow Airport, the legendary Pinewood Studios opened in 1935 with the intention of becoming a kind of British Hollywood. Since then, many movies have been created here, including “Goldfinger” and the other James Bond films, as well as other franchises like “Superman” and “Star Wars,” and the studios played a major role in the careers of such film legends as Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Simmons, Sophia Loren, Michael Caine, Elizabeth Taylor, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick. Pinewood is generally not

(2) JAMES BOND BUS TOUR OF LONDON This four-hour tour around the capital by mini-coach is designed to give an inside view of how the Bond films have been made and how real-life spying works today. The tour covers classic scenes from the James Bond films. Walking tours and tours customised to your needs are also available. britmovietours.com (3) PINEWOOD STUDIOS, Iver Heath, Bucks Just outside London, eight

50 golfdigestme.com | july 2021

(4) STOKE PARK GOLF COURSE, Stoke Poges, Bucks Five miles down the road from Pinewood is the course where the epic “Goldfinger” duel took place, Stoke Park, a classic 1908 Harry Colt parkland course, one of the finest in the land. With partners Hugh Alison and Alister MacKenzie, Colt created an astonishing number of quality courses, including Rye, Sunningdale, Royal Portrush and Pine Valley. MacKenzie copied Colt’s seventh hole at Stoke Park in creating the 12th at Augusta National, perhaps the most famous par 3 in the world. Here you can play the original. The course is the hub of a luxurious resort that includes a hotel, three restaurants, spa, swimming pool and lots of elegant corners in which to quaff a dry martini or two. stokepark.com (5) THE BERKSHIRE GOLF CLUB, Ascot, Berks Half an hour away is a cluster of some of the best inland courses in the world, including Sunningdale, Wentworth and the

two magnificent Herbert Fowler courses at the Berkshire. It was here that 9-handicapper Fleming put his golf on display by playing in the Bowmaker Tournament, a pro-am by invitation event, in June 1957, partnering with one of the most famous golfers of the day, Peter Thomson, who had won the previous three year’s Open Championships and would go on to win two more. Fleming recounted his experience in a newspaper article, “Nightmare Among the Mighty,” that ran the following weekend. “Every sport has its own nightmare,” he wrote. “The dropped baton, the goal scored against your own side, running out your captain when he has scored 99; and, in your dreams they all have the same ghastly background— the packed stands, the serried ranks of spectators, the incredulous hush and then the deep condemnatory groan. “In golf the two-foot putt missed on the 18th green is quickly over, and you are at once awake, sweating and whimpering. This terror must be common to even the greatest in the game, but for the weekend golfer there is a far longer, more horrible nightmare—partnership with a world champion over a course black with crowds. “Last weekend I endured this nightmare, 36 holes of it and I live, but only just, to tell the tale.” theberkshire.co.uk

Fleming and wife Ann hosted legendary parties in a cottage at the White Cliffs of Dover.

Dukas/universal images group via getty images

A QUICK NINE ON THE TRAIL OF IAN FLEMING

open to the public, but preauthorised visitors and tours are sometimes permitted. A cinema on-site is open to the public, and Pinewood records TV shows with a live studio audience. pinewoodgroup.com

david cannon/getty images

The Berkshire Golf Club, where Fleming once partnered with Peter Thomson.

(6) CHARTWELL, Westerham, Kent Winston Churchill was one of Fleming’s heroes. Churchill and Fleming’s father, Valentine, were brothers in arms in World War I. When Valentine was killed on the Western Front, Churchill wrote a eulogy for his fallen friend in The Times. Ian Fleming framed it and hung it on the wall in his home. Fleming would have had many dealings with Churchill as a key figure in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II. Fleming admired Churchill for his fortitude and courage in defeating Hitler and for his years of service to their country. Churchill makes an appearance in some of the Bond novels. Churchill’s family home from 1922 until his death in 1965 was the beautiful retreat of Chartwell, 40 miles around the London ring

road, the M25. It is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public. nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell

elect at the time of his death. He lunched at the club on his last day on Earth. royalstgeorges.com

nuclear rocket hidden inside the cliffs but trained on London, and the seaside town of Deal. whitecliffscountry.org.uk

(7) ROYAL ST. GEORGE’S GOLF CLUB, Sandwich, Kent The venue for this year’s Open was perhaps where Fleming felt most at home. Thinly disguised in the book as Royal St. Marks, Britain’s jewel of the South was a fitting venue for Bond’s match with Goldfinger—a battle of wits as much as of golf. This will be the 14th Open at the legendary links. The club allows some visitor play, as do nearby Prince’s, which hosted the 1932 Open, won by Gene Sarazen, and Royal Cinque Ports, just down the road at Deal, which was the Open venue in 1909 and 1920. But St. George’s is the main attraction. Fleming was captain-

(8) WHITE CLIFFS, St. Margaret’s Bay, Kent In October 1945, the flamboyant English writer, actor and singer Noel Coward moved into one of the five whitewashed cottages that stand at the foot of the famous White Cliffs of Dover in the seaside town of St. Margaret’s Bay. Fleming took over the lease of one of the cottages in 1951, and he and his wife would host lavish parties. This is part of a glorious stretch of coastline. It is possible to walk along the cliffs from Dover to Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club, a bracing perambulation of about 15 miles that takes in St. Margaret’s Bay, Walmer and Kingsdown, where in “Moonraker” the evil Hugo Drax has his

(9) THE DUCK, Pett Bottom, Kent This is a beautiful, rustic pub in the wilds of the Kentish countryside, dating back to 1623 but with a thoroughly modern menu. The Duck was (and is) a far cry from the swanky Dukes Hotel bar in Mayfair, but it was one of Fleming’s most-beloved watering holes, perhaps because it is so remote and almost impossible to find. He had a preferred seat in the garden, where he would write—supposedly he penned much of his 13th book, You Only Live Twice, here. This would have been a good place to find Fleming in the day, and it’s a good place to end our tour. theduckpettbottom.com

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

hot list 2021

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▶ The challenge with designing fairway woods and hybrids is balancing the need for driver-like speed and forgiveness with the ability to cut through turf and land shots on the green as easily as 7-irons. An impossible set of engineering goals, right? Consider that the latest metalwoods are plenty hot up front. With their use of heat-treated steels (even titanium) and elements that replace heavier materials with lighter ones (and vice versa), these clubs produce shots that launch faster and with less spin for more efficient trajectories. Down in the undercarriage, soles use angled shapes, rails and smoother recessed curves to reduce contact points with the ground. A cleaner ride gets the club to the ball faster so that the hotter face can do its work. Even better, fairway woods and hybrids continue to take cues from advancements in driver technology. Just as drivers are moving away from the idea of one-size-fits-all, many of our top picks here include multiple versions, adjustable hosels or a vast lineup of lofts. Whether you are looking for a backup driver or ditching a long iron, these new fairway woods and hybrids have the answers. ▶

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

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▶ One of Callaway’s most successful advancements in recent years has been its “Jailbreak” technology that connects the crown and sole with vertical bars to stiffen the frame so that the face flexes more. Although the design has been tweaked since its introduction four years ago, this year’s Jailbreak has undergone an overhaul with help from Callaway’s artificial-intelligence design platform. For starters, the bars are more like beams now and have been positioned farther apart to work better with the wraparound cupface. The bars also vary in size and width for each loft and head. The result is increased ball speed over a larger area of the face (with an emphasis on shots below the center). The forged, high-strength steel cupface also received the full A.I. treatment to help it deflect at impact like it does on Callaway’s drivers. Furthermore, a carbon-fiber crown helps lower the center of gravity so that shots launch higher with less spin. Making the approach even more effective are the two distinct models. The compact Speed is built for lower spin. The larger Max has more forgiveness than last year’s Mavrik Max and features adjustable weights in the front and back for tweaking trajectory and spin.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

Photographs by Dom Furore and Ben Walton

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RRP AED 1,750

G425 MAX • LST • SFT

▶ Cobra’s commitment to individualized performance begins with four models with different head sizes. Also, a design process that saves 23 grams allows each head to be weighted differently. The two key savings come from a carbon-fiber crown and a milling process that precisely tunes the curves, thicknesses and weight of the face. This lets the larger, standard model (Radspeed) balance front and rear weighting for the optimal mix of low spin and forgiveness on off-center hits that average golfers need. The similarly sized Draw version positions twothirds of the saved weight toward the heel and in a rear weight chip for maximum slice protection. Finally, the low-spin Tour and Big Tour models have all 23 grams positioned forward to maximize energy transfer on center-face strikes. The Big Tour is large, like the standard model, providing the forgiveness and low-spin that make it ideal as a backup driver on shorter, tighter holes. All but the Big Tour benefit from twin rails on the sole that help minimize turf interaction. Unseen but no less effective, the front of the rails is hollow, enabling the face to flex more effectively, especially on low-face impacts.

▶ Manufacturers have been engineering curves in the face of woods (bulge and roll) since the days of persimmon. “Bulge” (the horizontal curvature) helps mis-hits on the toe and heel curve back toward the target, and “roll” (the vertical curvature) helps impacts high and low on the face launch better. Ping has taken another look at the roll curvature on its fairway woods to prevent shots hit low on the face from launching with too much spin. (These shots generally shoot up in the sky and fall short of their target.) The lower part of the clubface naturally has less loft, but this line of woods from Ping has cut that loft in half so that shots launch with even less spin and with more consistency up and down the face. (With less loft, low-center strikes also launch with more velocity.) In addition, a high-strength steel alloy face wraps around the body to provide more flexing at impact. The result, Ping says, are shots that launch higher with more speed. Finally, a rear tungsten weight increases stability in the Max model and minimizes spin on the more compact LST 3-wood. On the larger, higher-launching SFT heads, the tungsten chip moves toward the heel to provide forgiveness with a draw bias.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

woods

performance

★★★★½

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★½ demand

★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“I like the clean finish and shape. I can turn the ball over when I need to. Great feel at impact; the ball really jumps off the face.

pxg 0211

RRP AED 1,375

performance

★★★★½

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★ demand

★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“A pulverizing midtrajectory. Toe shots? No worries. Mine went straight and far. Instead of a metal clink at impact, there’s a bellowing exaltation.”

pxg

RRP AED 2,695

0341 X PROTO

▶ Making a fairway wood easier to hit for average golfers isn’t like trying to understand the gravitational effects of dark matter. Unlike the uncertainties of astrophysics, the road map for fairway woods is clear: Build a shape that inspires confidence, design the sole to plow through uneven terrain and find a face material that flexes like a driver. That’s what’s going on here. The larger club profile and deep face give average golfers the confidence that they can make good contact even on less-than-stellar swings. Making the larger size more playable is the way the leading edge curves upward with heel and toe relief. Regardless of whether the ball is above or below your feet, less of the heel and toe will get in the way of returning the center of the club squarely back to the ball. The railed structure on the sole also cuts through the turf and keeps weight low for better launch. On top of the club, a carbon-fiber panel in the center of the crown saves weight to help lower the center of gravity. The face is made of a highstrength steel alloy to provide a little more heat at impact. The design also helps control spin with a 10-gram sole weight positioned far forward to further lower the center of gravity.

▶ There is no one consistent miss with a driver for all players. Similarly, plenty of golfers fight the lefts and the rights with their fairway woods. That’s why this model uses a trio of sole weights from 2½ to 20 grams to counteract the weak fade or the hard hook. Position the heavy weight in the heel for a draw or in the toe to rein in your snapperdoodle or in the front position to flight the ball lower with less spin. Of course, these heads aren’t just about mitigating weaknesses in launch, direction or spin. They get the basics right, too, including plenty of firepower in the face and plenty of assistance in the sole. The fast-flexing, high-strength steel-alloy face features a variable-thickness pattern for increased ball speeds. On the bottom, a center ridge running from front to back helps lower the center of gravity for easier launch with less spin. It also neatly smooths the club’s ride through the turf across rough, hardpan and sand, as well as fairway downslopes and sidehills. On top, a carbon-fiber central panel reduces weight where it’s not needed. The surrounding steel reinforces the crown to make the face flex better while adding stability on heel and toe mis-hits.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

56 golfdigestme.com | hot list 2021

Listed alphabetically

in association with

performance

★★★★½

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★ demand

★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“Perfect size with a sleek, subtle design. The way the club lies on the ground is natural and pleasing to the eye. The sound at impact is a solid thump.”

s r i xo n ZX

RRP AED 1,295

performance

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★★ demand

★★★★★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“It’s so easy to launch high that there should be a NASA countdown before you swing. Beautiful, functional looks. The thin white topline helps my aim.”

tay l o r m a d e

RRP AED 1,395

SIM2 MAX • MAX•D

▶ When trying to make the face flex more, especially within the compact shape of a fairway wood, it would seem natural to focus on the face. Srixon’s team found that approach limiting. By focusing on the crown and sole instead, they made the face more effective. Specifically, they started with a thin, wraparound cupface and then lined up stiff, flexible and stiff regions in succession around it so that the face rebounds more efficiently. These layers create a second flexible region in the crown and sole that deflects in conjunction with the face to produce consistently high ball speeds for mis-hits and center strikes alike. A lower center of gravity helps shots launch on a more piercing trajectory, and the lower lofts feature a carbon-composite crown to reduce weight up top. Every loft incorporates a stepdown shape in the crown that lowers what typically is the highest part of the crown, naturally lowering the center point. This year’s model has a shallower face to help average golfers launch the ball more easily. Even the angled, offset shape of the low, forward weight pad inside contributes to the way the face flexes, particularly the lowest part of the face where most fairway-wood impacts occur.

▶ TaylorMade’s most forgiving fairway woods are designed to be larger so that average golfers have more clubface to power their mis-hits. By increasing the clubhead’s profile size, weight can be positioned farther back from the face to increase stability on off-center strikes. However, there are two reasons you can’t just indiscriminately make a fairway wood larger: The clubhead needs to easily glide through the turf, and golfers need to feel sufficiently confident they can launch the ball off the ground. That’s where TaylorMade’s V-shape sole comes in. It uses a lower central section to create a low center of gravity to help golfers launch the ball more easily. In addition, recessed areas in the toe and heel allow the head to move unencumbered through a variety of lies. The lightweight carbon-composite crown also contributes to the lower CG to help launch the ball with less spin. Finally, the high-strength C300 steel alloy face and the trademark slot in the sole give your strikes a little extra zip. To better meet the needs of all golfers, TaylorMade offers a loft range that extends to a 9-wood, plus a heel-weighted (and even larger) Max•D option to fight the slice.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

woods

performance

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★½ demand

★★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The slim topline makes it look like it’s ready to pounce. I can feel the weight perfectly during the backswing, with a sharp bing at impact. Very workable.”

tay l o r m a d e SIM2 TITANIUM

RRP AED 1,795

performance

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★★ demand

★★★★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The classic, glossy black clubhead looks so sophisticated. The sole is simple, always gliding through the turf. Penetrating flight, fast and lean.”

titleist

RRP AED 1,450

TSI2 • TSI3

▶ Better players typically prefer a compact fairway wood for easier workability, but they also want one with a hot face, and it would be nice if the wood could be forgiving for its size. Well, the only way to get all those things in a smaller package (both in volume and face area) is to use lightweight titanium. The Sim2 features a rare titanium alloy developed specifically for TaylorMade’s use in this tourshape model, which is 11 percent smaller than the SIM2 Max. The alloy is 20 percent stronger than typical titanium, which allows the club to have an extra springy face. When combined with a carbonfiber crown, the club’s lighter weight makes room for an 80-gram steel weight pad on the sole. That’s almost 40 percent of the head’s total weight positioned directly on the bottom of the club. Doing this lowers the center of gravity to just 12 millimeters from the ground, which puts it in line with the center of the face for the most direct energy transfer at impact. The V-shape steel weight pad stretches front to back along the sole and connects to an additional weight screw so that the compact frame actually has a higher moment of inertia (stability on off-center hits) than last year’s larger head.

▶ There are two hard truths that get in the way of making fairway woods easier to hit. First, because fairway woods are played off the ground most of the time, the majority of impacts occur below the center of the face. That’s not where the highest loft is. Second, metal-wood faces don’t tend to flex as well low on the face. Titleist’s solution is to cut a slot in the front part of the sole to get the lower part of its high-strength steel alloy face to deflect more at impact. Of course, achieving this design feat is more complex than it sounds. Wall thicknesses, widths and depths determine whether the slot works like it should. The channel is also relatively heavy, so the weight isn’t in the best place for forgiveness. This year, Titleist’s slot (“Active Recoil Channel 4.0”) is five grams lighter. That saved weight is redistributed in different ways in the two clubheads. The TSi2, which has a shallower face but appears larger at address, distributes the weight on the perimeter for optimal forgiveness and a higher launch. The TSi3, which has a taller face but looks more compact at address, features a 12-gram movable weight across three settings. The unit hides neatly within the sole for unobstructed turf interaction.

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58 golfdigestme.com | hot list 2021

Listed alphabetically

in association with

performance

★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The shallow face is effective: The ball really pops at impact and gets up quickly. The club is easy to control.”

★★

LAUNCHER HB TURBO

★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★½ demand

demand

clevel and

performance

★½

RRP AED 999

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The sole might say non-traditional, but at address, it’s as classic as anything you’ll see. Felt like I had control of the head. Ball jumped off the face.”

honma

RRP AED 1,795

T//WORLD GS

▶ Cleveland wanted to find out if by simplifying the elements in this design, it could make a more effective club, especially for what the company believes is the vast majority of paying golfers (not the best who get their gear for free). That’s why features like movable weights, adjustable hosels and interplanetary alloys aren’t part of the program. From Cleveland’s perspective, each either adds unwanted mass in the wrong place or excessive cost for an undetermined value. Freed from those constraints, the focus can be on creating the two things golfers really want or need: ball speed and a higher launch. The first starts with a variable-thickness, wraparound cupface that extends the thinnest areas farther toward the perimeter for more overall face flexing. Better launch is achieved by fashioning the crown with a step down to lower the overall weight of the crown and drop the center of gravity. Additional weight is pulled out of the hosel and distributed low and deep in the clubhead for higher launch and more stability on off-center hits. One final piece to help us regular Joes reach our full potential: The shaft is designed with more weight in the hands for better control.

▶ This fairway-wood line is designed for golfers with average and slower swing speeds (what the company calls “improving golfers”). The GS stands for “gain speed,” and one way to increase ball speed is to have the face flex more. Cutting an opening in the front of the sole is one way to achieve that. The slot allows the sole to give at impact in concert with the face. That’s especially helpful for shots hit low on the face (precisely where most fairway-wood strikes occur). Honma does a good job of that here, but with a twist (or more specifically, with a “crank”). The slot is shaped somewhat like a crank rod in that it bends and gets wider at the heel and toe. In addition to helping those low-face shots launch with more speed, the idea is to contribute more flex at those weaker, off-center spots that need an extra boost the most. The design also enhances the way the face’s curvature brings mis-hits back toward your target line. One more thing these fairway woods do to help average golfers: Internal weighting is positioned more toward the rear for overall stability and toward the heel to help reduce the likelihood of a slice, which might be what average golfers need the most.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

woods

pro tip: play more loft The tour’s best prefer high-lofted fairway woods, hybrids

★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★½ demand

★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The pear-shaped head sits nicely and is easy to set up. Crisp feel at impact with muted sound, like a forged blade version of a wood. Tight dispersion.”

mizuno ST-Z

RRP AED 1,495

▶ Ideally, you want a fairway wood to perform as well off the turf as the tee. To help achieve that, Mizuno makes the face hot in two places: the center and below the center. Mizuno starts by using a high-strength maraging steel in the face coupled with a center-of-gravity-lowering carbon-composite crown. That special steel has been part of Mizuno fairway woods in recent years, but this third iteration features an intricate variable-thickness design to achieve the thinnest fairway-wood face in company history, pushing the USGA limit for springlike effect. Getting the lower part of the face to deflect more aggressively requires additional imagination, however. That’s where the wave structure in the front of the sole comes into play. It’s thinner in the front part of the first wave this year, making it flex more easily. As the wave flexes, so, too, does the lower part of the face. With a large panel of carbon composite in the crown, the head size is large enough to provide off-center-hit forgiveness, but the CG remains low to help you launch the ball high. Finally, though the ST-Z has just two lofts, each is adjustable so that the loft range is 13 to 20 degrees, or a strong 3-wood to a 7-wood.

rob carr/getty images

performance

▶ hybrids and high-lofted fairway woods are handy clubs to have in the bag. At the inaugural Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village Golf Club in July, Collin Morikawa was locked in a Sunday duel with Justin Thomas. Standing 230 yards out on the 506-yard, dogleg-right fifth hole, Morikawa pulled a club he had little experience with, a 19-degree TaylorMade SIM Max Rescue he had in the bag for only a few tournaments during the year. Morikawa hit the shot to three feet, setting up a key eagle. “It’s a good club for coming into par 5s when you need some height and it’s not very windy,” Morikawa says. “The SIM Max Rescue has been an amazing club, especially when you compare the height to a 2-iron.” Webb Simpson (below) also knows the value of hybrids. He has routinely carried a pair of older Titleist models. He also understands those clubs are helpful for approach shots and need to be dialed in to hit the correct yardage gap. “I actually have a steel shaft in my 23.5-degree hybrid,” Simpson says. “It was going too far with the graphite shaft, so at the 2016 PGA at Baltusrol, I went to a steel shaft that was cut down a little bit to decrease the distance and get more control, like a 4-iron. A lot of amateurs need a 3- and a 4-hybrid because they’re so easy to hit.” Easy to hit might help explain why a fair number of PGA Tour players are turning to 7-woods. A dozen or more players have one in the bag on any given week. Once thought of as a club solely for those less skilled, the 7-wood has proved to be a valuable piece of equipment for five players that combined for six wins on the PGA Tour in 2020. Dustin Johnson used TaylorMade’s SIM Max (twice, including the Masters). Andrew Landry (The American Express), Tyrrell Hatton (Arnold Palmer Invitational) and Stewart Cink (Safeway Open) all used Ping G410 7-woods in their respective wins, and Robert Streb carried a Titleist TS3 7-wood at the RSM Classic. Then there is Cameron Smith, who didn’t win the Masters but became the first player in tournament history to shoot four rounds in the 60s. Smith used a 21-degree Titleist TS2 7-wood. “I carry a utility iron and the 7-wood to each event, and what the course demands is what I put in,” Smith says. “The 7-wood gives me some extra height on long shots into the par 5s. They both go the same distance, but the 7-wood lands softer. That is what I really needed at the Masters, which is why I had it in there.” Pretty handy, indeed. —EMJ

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

60 golfdigestme.com | hot list 2021

Listed alphabetically

in association with

hybrids

performance

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The weighting on this head is perfect. I can feel the clubhead throughout the swing, which helps me keep it on plane longer.”

★★★★

APEX • APEX PRO

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“Light and speedy, the club is through impact before you know it. The attractive green accents pop just like the crisp sound.”

demand

c a l l away

performance

★★★★

RRP AED 1,349

cobra RADSPEED • RADSPEED ONE LENGTH

RRP AED 995

▶ It’s not as if Callaway’s Apex hybrid was one of those secretmenu options at In-N-Out burger reserved for burger-a-holics. But the club did have a limited, enthusiastic audience of mostly elite players who liked the ultra-compact size and iron-like setup. However, this year’s Apex hybrid is more like In-N-Out’s DoubleDouble, fully loaded with forgiveness and ball-speed ingredients in two sizes based on how hungry your game is. The standard Apex (pictured) is for those who want all they can get. It’s larger and features a huge slab of tungsten in the rear and toe to balance the center of gravity for extra forgiveness and a lower-spinning launch. The Apex Pro stays truer to the original compact footprint and doesn’t need the extra tungsten, producing instead a lower launch with a little more spin. Still, both designs get their extra sizzle from new cupfaces designed by Callaway’s artificialintelligence platform, unique to each model and loft. Also newly designed with A.I. input are the internal “Jailbreak” bars that join the crown and sole. Both face and bars (now angled and placed farther apart) work in concert to produce better all-around flexing, including extra juice on impacts high and low on the face.

▶ Hybrids have been assigned an almost impossible task. Not only are they asked to produce distance and a high launch in an area of the game in which many golfers struggle, they must do so despite difficult lies and unruly swings that often make contact with the big ball (Earth) before the little one. Cobra’s solution for years has been the use of rails on the sole that lower the clubhead’s center of gravity for a higher launch and reduce turf interference from all sorts of lies to help direct clubhead speed into the golf ball. The problem with sole rails, however, is they can stiffen the lower part of the face so that you don’t get the benefit of a flexible-face design. Cobra’s solution is to hollow out the front part of the rails. This provides the full benefits of turf relief while allowing the face to flex as freely as if the rails were not there. In addition, thanks to the use of thinner, stronger and lighter steels in the body and face, this year’s design works even better by repositioning internal weighting in extreme areas in the front (heel and toe weight pads) and rear (a central sole weight). That arrangement generates better ball speed with forgiveness and a higher launch with low spin.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

hybrids

performance

★★★★½

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★½ demand

★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“Perfect compact shape and sweet matte finish. Explodes at impact but never out of control. High flight like a wood with the feel of an iron. Great turf interaction.”

mizuno CLK

RRP AED 950

performance

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★★ demand

★★★★★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The matte black and three alignment dots help me find the correct setup. Really frames the ball nicely. Straight and consistent. Ball popped with a high flight.”

ping

RRP AED 1,575

G425

▶ Golfers are looking for the kind of hybrid that isn’t confused about its mission, namely to be a better version of the iron it’s replacing. That’s what Mizuno has accomplished here: The CLK isn’t pretending to be some kind of downsized fairway-wood blunderbuss but instead the kind of sharpshooter club that solves the gapping issues in the long end of your bag with the right mix of distance and control. Still, though the shaping might be seen as reasonably compact and perhaps resonating exclusively with better players, this design features a rare maragingsteel alloy that creates the extra ball speed every kind of player is looking for at these lower lofts. The specialty steel improves the flexing of the face, and the reconfigured wave structure in the front part of the sole provides an extra kick. The face now compresses more freely so that the lower part of the face flexes better. That’s helpful because so many hybrid-shot impacts are below the center of the face. The adjustable hosel, which has eight settings to tweak loft and lie, allows the club to more easily fit a particular players’ iron specs for proper loft gapping and lie angle. It also stretches the loft range from a 6-iron to a 1-iron.

▶ Ping has developed effective and user-friendly hybrids for a generation by focusing on off-center-hit stability. The G425 follows in this tradition. The design philosophy starts with the positioning of internal weight deep in the back of the club. This creates a low and deep center of gravity that produces extra stability and helps elevate the trajectory of all shots. Even better, each model’s CG is slightly different: Lower lofts have a slight fade bias, and the remaining lofts are more neutral. Ping takes this extra step to better serve the needs and skill levels of the golfers who tend to buy those lofts. All of these design features in the back of the club continue in Ping’s newest hybrids, but now there’s also an emphasis on what’s happening up-front. The new face design wraps around the crown and sole. This allows the areas at the top and bottom of the face to be thinner and more flexible to improve distance everywhere. Even the clubface curvature changes low on the face so that shots launch with less distance-killing spin for a more consistent flight across the face. Oh, and they’re still friendly: An adjustable hosel and a newly added 7-hybrid stretch the loft range across 20 degrees.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

62 golfdigestme.com | hot list 2021

Listed alphabetically

in association with

performance

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★★ demand

★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“Instills confidence—from the look at address to the grip to the alignment lines. I wanted to swing it all day. Love that it’s customizable.”

pxg 0317 X PROTO

RRP AED 2,295

performance

★★★★½

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★½

look • sound • feel

★★★★½ demand

★★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“Appealing, slim design. Ridge on the crown is friendly to see at address. Vibrant, crisp sound. The ball gets up in a hurry. Fairly workable with good carry.”

s r i xo n

RRP AED 1,145

▶ With hybrids, as with all metalwoods these days, the wealth of technological riches can distract us from what really makes these clubs most effective. That’s the case here where there’s a checklist of flashy innovations: (1) a high-strength maragingsteel alloy in the face for faster flexing at impact; (2) a lightweight carbon-fiber central panel in the crown to lower the center of gravity for a penetrating launch with less spin; (3) an eight-way adjustable hosel and three movable sole weights to accommodate an array of performance needs—enhancing one player’s preferred ball flight and addressing another’s weaker miss. But quieter elements in this hybrid matter at least as much, maybe more. This hybrid has a utilitarian sole design in which a lower center section helps smooth the club’s path through the turf and pushes down the CG. The squared-off toe expands the hitting area and gives the face the more comfortable look of an iron. PXG has also increased the length heel to toe for better performance on off-center hits. Finally, that pad of elastomer inside the sole helps soften vibration, resulting in something that perhaps resonates with golfers the most: better sound and feel.

▶ Srixon has a memo for those of you who assumed making the center of the face hotter—particularly on compact hybrids—was no longer possible: Try a little harder; there’s more there than you know. In this case, added speed isn’t just the flexing of the face but how the area immediately around the face can take the face to another level. A high-strength steel alloy makes the face 5 percent thinner than previous models for more rebound at impact, but by encircling the areas outside the face with stiff and flexible zones, Srixon created a second springy support region that amplifies the way the face deflects at impact. That means better energy transfer to the ball for off-center and on-center strikes. That’s especially helpful in a hybrid of this compact size in which less face area makes it more challenging to create higher ball speeds. The faster action of the clubface is a key to distance, but a lower center of gravity reduces spin for an efficient trajectory. That’s where the step down in the first part of the crown comes in. It lowers the midpoint within the head to yield a higher launch with less spin. As a bonus, that structure helps the face deflect more for, that’s right, more ball speed.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

hybrids

performance

★★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“Crisp, controlled sound. Shots took off and refused to slow down. I could play the Max and not need a fairway wood.”

★★★★★

SIM2 RESCUE • MAX RESCUE

★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★½ demand

demand

tay l o r m a d e

performance

★★★½

RRP AED 1,245

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“It has a slightly larger shape that delivers a punch. The ball goes high and straight. No trouble getting through the turf—none.”

c a l l away

RRP AED 1,295

BIG BERTHA B21

▶ There are the golf shirts Adidas makes to fit the uber-athletic Dustin Johnson. Then there are the ones Adidas makes for the mere mortals. Similarly, hybrids need to be designed differently for the two classes of golfers who use them. The standard SIM2 (above) is all about enhancing the skills of better players. It has a smaller head for more versatility and a penetrating iron-like ball flight. The shaft is shorter to allow for a heavier head so that extra mass can be repositioned for the right amount of forgiveness. Furthermore, its adjustable hosel can adapt to different ballflight needs. Conversely, the Max is larger front to back and heel to toe for optimal forgiveness and a higher launch. Still, every level of golfer wants more ball speed. That’s why both options in this line have sleek soles with a lower center section to promote clean turf interaction. This design feature also increases perimeter weighting for even more forgiveness. Best of all, each of these thin, high-strength steel faces is jet-fueled by an ingenious slot that cuts through the sole so that it flexes more freely. The slot extends well into the toe for extra speed over much of the face, especially effective with SIM2’s adjustable hosel.

▶ Although the origin story of hybrids started with helping average golfers with their ineptitude, many hybrids today don’t always commit to the concept. Rather than flirting with the idea, however, this head exudes super game improvement. It’s not that the B21 swings itself, but it does nearly everything else for those whose only airborne long iron was the one they javelined into the lake on 16. For starters, there’s a carbon-composite crown to save weight in the oversize head, pushing the center of gravity lower. Molded tungsten weights deep in the heel and toe also move mass low, and even the hosel’s smaller size adds to this effect. The saved weight is redistributed along the perimeter for extra forgiveness, and the offset hosel helps to square the face and elevate launch. The wraparound cupface gets Callaway’s artificial-intelligence treatment, which forms a variable-thickness design unique to each loft. Then there’s the boost from the pair of internal vertical bars that join the crown and sole. Known as Callaway’s “Jailbreak” technology, it concentrates flexing in the face for better energy transfer. If that’s not enough game-saving help for you, there’s even an 8-hybrid in the line.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

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Listed alphabetically

in association with

performance

★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★ demand

★

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“The top of the clubhead is simple, black and compact. Feels light in my hands yet solid with a crisp sound at impact. Consistently high ball flight.”

honma TR21

RRP AED 1,595

performance

★★★★

i n n o vat i o n

★★★★

look • sound • feel

★★★★½ demand

★★½

p l ay e r c o m m e n t

“Clean, two-tone modern style with the matte finish. Larger head gives me confidence. Flushed shots take off with a lot of heat, but mis-hits are forgiven, too.”

pxg

RRP AED 1,195

0211

▶ The fear among really good players is that too many hybrids tend to be loaded with things they don’t need, particularly a larger, rounded size, higher-launch features and a general draw bias. It’s why hybrid use on the PGA Tour is down a third from just five years ago. But the TR21’s compact shape and an emphasis on a neutral, green-friendly trajectory is what better players want. The TR21 achieves this with a more squared-off, iron-like look at address, a narrower sole that zips through the turf and internal weighting that makes it easier to work the ball. It’s a design approach the team at Honma calls “distance with control,” and it is fostered by a thin crown that lowers the center of gravity within the head for better spin control so that shots spend more energy flying forward than ballooning. The TR21 adds other seemingly minor elements that will appeal to skilled players. The sole weight can be switched out to better fit a certain swingweight or shaft combination. Also, the adjustable hosel can change loft and lie by a degree, but those changes don’t affect the shaft’s characteristics, particularly important for those whose games are precisely dialed in.

▶ Why talk about forgiveness in a hybrid if you can’t get the clubface to the ball with the full force of your swing? Yes, a welldesigned, flexible face increases ball speed, and a structure that saves weight for more forgiveness is a grand thing. But all of that isn’t fully realized if the ground gets in the way first. That’s why the rail structure on the sole might be the 0211’s best form of forgiveness. Sure, this clubhead uses plenty of aggressive technologies to maximize offense. For example, a high-strength steel alloy in the face enhances deflection for more distance, and a carbon-composite panel in the crown saves weight, too, helping its larger profile fully embrace forgiveness. But the twin rails on the sole stretching from front to back provide forgiveness where average golfers need it the most. With the club gliding across the ground, more of your swing’s energy is efficiently delivered to the ball at impact. The low-riding rails also drop the center of gravity to help shots launch higher with more spin. PXG’s engineers say there is yet another valuable benefit: The rails stiffen the bottom of the clubhead so that there is less unwanted vibration for better sound and feel.

Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

july 2021 | golfdigestme.com

Mind The Other 90 Percent

Why was my preparation ignoring such a big part of golf? My Happy Place Writing down what I’m grateful for helps me play my best BY MAX HOMA

’VE ALWAYS BEEN a happy person, but only in the past few months have I become a happy golfer. There is absolutely a difference. The past few years have been awesome for me—I’ve gotten back to the PGA Tour and won twice, and I fulfilled a lifelong dream of winning the Genesis Invitational at Riviera, a tournament I attended as a kid. But before that, I went through some pretty brutal times. During the 2016-’17 season, I made two of 17 cuts, won just $18,008 and lost my card. It was almost impossible not to let those consistent failures affect my mood on and off the golf course. Though I’ve gotten my game back, there are still moments that can make me feel pretty crappy. Maybe it’s missing a putt to get a top 10, rather than missing a putt to make the cut, but this game continues to test your emotions, no matter who you are or how good you are. I played in my first Masters in November and shot 75 on Friday to miss the cut by one. As you might imagine, I was not happy. Shortly after that performance, my caddie and longtime close friend Joe Greiner made a wise observation. He said I spend all this time working on my physical golf game but hardly any time working on my mental game. Why was my preparation ignoring such a huge part of golf? Since then, I have made a conscious effort to turn my thinking around and bring the “happy guy” outlook to the PGA Tour. I’ve been reading books on it. I’ve been talking with my wife, who’s

66 golfdigestme.com | july 2021

a huge help, and a music artist named Mike Stud about how I can focus on the right things when I’m playing. It boils down to this: For me, there is not a single positive that comes from getting mad after a golf shot. Of course, it’s good to remember the shot and analyse what went wrong. Then you can address it in your practice after the round. But sitting there and being angry isn’t going to do anything positive. It’s only going to bring you out of your focus and rhythm. Think of when you were playing your best; I highly doubt you were angry. It’s easier said than done, of course. I’ve found it helpful to focus on all the things I have in my life to be grateful for: a wife who loves me, amazing friends, a dog who loves me (at least when I feed her) and the opportunity to play the game I love for a living and make a whole bunch of money doing it. I can’t lose sight of all that just because of a bad shot or a bad round or even a bad month on the golf course. When I hit a bad shot, I try to think of all that’s right in my life. It puts everything into perspective and makes

whatever thing happened on the course feel smaller, if that makes sense. I’ve found that writing these things down can be super useful. Before the final round at Riviera, I remember sitting in my car and making a list of all the things I was excited for that day. This helps my mind focus on the positives. I played an almost perfect round until the 18th green, when I missed a three-footer for the win. That could have made me really angry, but I called my wife afterward, and she reminded me to “forgive quickly.” I wasn’t going to let one bad shot overshadow a fantastic day on the golf course. I was able to let that putt go before the playoff against Tony Finau. I made two solid pars to win, and it wouldn’t have been possible if I let that missed putt dominate my thoughts. Next time you’re on the golf course, and you hit a bad shot, take a moment to be grateful for the good things in your life. You’re on a golf course, so it can’t be that bad. Unlike me, this isn’t your job, so give yourself a break. This game is supposed to be fun, after all. — WITH DANIEL RAPAPORT Illustration by Santino Calvo

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