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THE #1 GOLF PUBLICATION

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FROM COURSE DESIGN TO YOUR SWING - AI HAS ARRIVED. IS GOLF READY?

THE ROOKIE’S PLAYBOOK JACKSON KOIVUN ON HIS GAME, FROM TEE TO GREEN RORY’S UNFINISHED BUSINESS FOUR SECONDS, NO WINS: MCILROY RETURNS TO YAS ROLE REVERSAL DWYANE WADE AND DORELL WRIGHT’S GOLF RIVALRY

OCT 2026 AED20 KD1.7 OR2.1 SR20 BD2.1

AI vs. THE GAME

O C T O B E R

2 0 2 6

PREVIEW: Abu Dhabi Championship

A new tee, reworked bunkers and firmer greens: how Yas Links Abu Dhabi will test the field. Page 52

16 Paying Dues What really happens with my initiation fee?

20 Hazard-Proof Your Par 3s

30 Hot List Extra ‘Easy-To-Hit’ Clubs Might Not Be the Fix for Your Iron Game.

BY THOMAS WOODGATE

BY PAUL SULLIVAN

BY CJ NAFUS

BY E. MICHAEL JOHNSON

18 O Captain! My Caddie! Clubs in the British Isles boast members at work.

22 Swinging With Authority Gary Woodland’s long-ball mentality has returned.

32 Let’s Talk About Why You Aren’t Going For A Fitting

BY JERRY TARDE

BY RON KASPRISKE

the starter 6 Cambodia’s Double Header Vattanac Golf Resort hosts back-to-back Staysure Legends Tour events this winter. BY THOMAS WOODGATE

voices 8 The Undercover Pro The physio room is our ‘safe space.’

features 42 How AI Will Transform Your Game A golf trip in Silicon Valley reveals some answers good and scary about the future.

10 Journeys Cassie Porter’s medical gauntlet to the LPGA Tour. WITH KEELY LEVINS

52 Links To The Finish What’s at stake as the 21st Abu Dhabi Championship opens the Play-Offs at Yas Links Abu Dhabi. BY THOMAS WOODGATE

12 The Fringe Ballers and former NBA teammates Dwyane Wade and Dorell Wright launch a golf business.

56 Game On I can’t wait for my first full season of pro golf. Here’s how I play.

BY ALEX MYERS

BY JACKSON KOIVUN

COVER ILLUSTRATED BY CLARKWIN CRUZ

BY THE EDITORS

34 A Ball With No Name 24 Understanding Backstopping BY RON KASPRISKE

25 Create More Energy For The Strike BY MARK BLACKBURN

BY CURTIS GILLESPIE

WITH JOEL BEALL

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY BY YAS LINKS ABU DHABI

how to play

4 The Human Element What AI can and can’t do for golf, plus Abu Dhabi’s Play-Offs.

BY MIKE STACHURA

where to play 36 Reclamation Projects The seven most significant course overhauls of our time. BY DEREK DUNCAN

26 Chipping Clinic From The Merry Mex, Lee Trevino BY RON KASPRISKE

27 Draw It On Command All it takes are two easy adjustments. BY TODD ANDERSON

what to play 28 Time For New Grips? BY PETER MORRICE

44 Blank Canvas The Death of the Championship Course. BY DEREK DUNCAN

the me club 64 Club News A gallery of just a handful of the local tournament winners in the amateur circuit within the region of the Middle East. OCTOBER 2026

GOLFDIGESTME.COM 3

E D I T O R’S

LETTER

The human element From an AI that can fit your clubs in 10 swings to a Yas Links finale where the wind still has the final say. BY THOMAS WOODGATE

art director Clarkwin N. Cruz

h i s mo n t h ’s c ov e r story starts with a billboard. On the drive into San Francisco from the airport, our writer passed an advert for AI Country, and it set up the question behind the whole piece: what will artificial intelligence actually do to golf, and how much of it is already here? More than you might think. Club Champion’s AI-driven Co-Pilot system can now produce a fitting recommendation in as little as 10 swings, working through more combinations of heads and shafts than any human fitter could hold in their head. Architect David Kahn sketches a hole in 30 minutes and lets AI turn it into a finished rendering in 10 seconds. And Google’s Don Harrison sees a near future where one app, acting as caddie, swing coach and mental coach, talks you through your game via a wearable device. What we liked most is that the piece is honest about the limits. AI can’t yet route a golf course. Kahn says it “falls flat on its face”. It still has no real grasp of feel, the thing Bobby Jones judged a shaft by in his fingers. Tom Doak, asked about anyone trying to build a program that out-designs him, wishes them “nothing but the worst of luck”. And no amount of data will turn you into a 2-handicap. Closer to home, the Abu Dhabi Championship returns to Yas Links from 5-8 November for its 21st edition, and it carries more weight than it used to. It now opens the DP World Tour Play-Offs. The top 70 available players on the Race to Dubai tee it up, and the top 50 move on to Jumeirah Golf Estates. Patrick Reed leads the standings, Rory McIlroy is chasing an eighth title that would draw him level with Colin Mont-

GOLFDIGESTME.COM

editor-in- chief Obaid Humaid Al Tayer managing partner & group editor Ian Fairservice chief commercial officer Anthony Milne group content director Thomas Woodgate thomas.woodgate@motivate.ae

OCTOBER 2026

gomerie, and Eugenio Chacarra arrives with little to lose. McIlroy has also finished second here four times without winning, which adds a subplot all of its own. Ryan Fox, last month’s cover star, has Race to Dubai business to settle, too. We also spoke to Corey Finn, the man preparing Yas Links in the summer heat, about firmer greens and why he’s hoping for wind. If you’re going, entry on Thursday and Friday is free with pre-registration. Elsewhere, 3M Open winner Jackson Koivun breaks down his game from speed to putting. Dwyane Wade and Dorell Wright explain how the teammate who once sat on the bench now beats his old captain on the course. And Jerry Tarde reports from St Andrews, where the caddie carrying your bag might be the club’s past captain. Between a technology still learning its limits and a course built to test yours, this is a month about what golf will always ask of the golfer. Until next month – may every lie be a good one.

sales manager Abdel Djeebet abdel.djeebet@motivate.ae gener al manager - production S. Sunil Kumar production manager Binu Purandaran assistant production manager Venita Pinto 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 senior 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 managing editors Stephen Hennessey, Ryan Herrington, Jonathan Wall chief designer David Schlow pl aying editors Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth

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london Motivate Publishing Ltd, Acre House, 11/15 William Road, London, NW1 3ER, UK Email: motivateuk@motivate.ae Golf Digest and How to play, what to play, where to play are registered trademarks of Warner Bros. Discovery. Copyright © 2024 Discovery Golf Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Published by Warner Bros. Discovery. Principal office: Golf Digest, 230 Park Avenue South, New York, NY, 10003. Warner Bros/Discovery Luis Silberwasser, Chairman & CEO TNT Sports; Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices.

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the starter

GOLFDIGESTME.COM

OCTOBER 2026

Cambodia’s double header Vattanac Golf Resort will host back-to-back Staysure Legends Tour events to close the 2026 season

at tanac g o lf r e so rt , the Troon-managed venue in Phnom Penh, will welcome the Staysure Legends Tour back to Cambodia this winter, and this time it’s hosting twice. After debuting on the calendar last year, the resort will stage the Vattanac Legends Championship from 27-29 November, followed by the Vattanac Tour Championship from 4-6 December, which closes the Road to Cambodia and the 2026 season. Scotland’s David Drysdale returns to defend the Legends Championship title he won on 12-under-par, one shot clear of Peter Baker and Anthony Wall. New this year is the Vattanac Legends Amateur Experience. During the opening week, it gives a limited number of amateurs the chance to play alongside the Legends across three competitive rounds, rather than the usual single Pro-Am day. The action will be split across the resort’s East and West Courses. Both were designed by six-time major winner Sir Nick Faldo and draw on Cambodian cultural history and architecture. For Vattanac Group executive director Neak Oknha Sam Ang Vattanac, the aim is to showcase “our country, our culture, our heritage and our hospitality to the world”. –thomas woodgate

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY BY THE CLUB

THE

UNDERCOVER

PRO

The Physio Room Is Our ‘Safe Space’ I’M IN THE DOUBLE DIGITS of tour wins out here. When I first turned pro about 20 years ago, the physio room was nonexistent. Massages, before or after the round, were uncommon. The tour had a trailer that maybe a couple of guys would be in, but it was nothing like today. Now, in any given week, there’s probably 10 full-time masseuses that pros hire on the side for physical therapy, plus the 8

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OCTOBER 2026

tour has its own physios that the nonsuperstars will use. Basically, if you’re ranked in the top 70, you probably have a private guy. Monday is a busy day in the physio room when everybody travels in. This is when you want to get back to full flush or somewhat normal. Immediately get the massage so that you can work out and be full strength for when the work week really begins on Tuesday. On tour-

nament days, some guys get treatments before and after the round. Pre-round is to stretch and make sure everything in your body feels all right; post-round is to get all the bad stuff out. Some will do it after a workout in gym clothes; others will strip down to their underwear as you would for a normal massage. The physio room has kind of become our little sanctuary, the one place nobody can get to us or hear us. It’s our

The player who pays for “priority access” is going to get the table first. Fair’s fair.

safe space. You’ll hear plenty of chirping and talking about the round. We make fun of the physios, too, and they give it right back to us. It’s a lot like locker rooms used to be. Other than at Augusta where the locker room is strictly for players only, the locker rooms week in and week out aren’t actually our locker rooms. They’re overrun with, how do I say this . . . people. Not that that’s a bad thing because most of these people do a ton of work for us. We just have to be more careful. In the physio room, I can say whatever I want without repercussions. The physio room is different than the fitness trailer, which is an 18-wheeler with walls that expand to turn into a ILLUSTRATION BY MADISON KETCHAM

travelling gym. Where the physio room is depends on the availability of spaces at each club. Sometimes a couple of tables are tucked away in a corner of the locker room; sometimes it’s in the women’s locker room; sometimes it’s in some random room of the clubhouse; and sometimes it’s just a tent set-up. Typically, the tour does a good job of making it private, even as our need for a larger space has increased. The physio I work with has about six or seven other pros as clients, so we’re each always fighting for our spot. The key is when everyone’s tee time is. One year at the Genesis—I was using a different guy at the time—there was a long rain delay, and he had a line of five pros

wanting to get work done before we had to go back out. Watching everyone try to schedule him for a few minutes was quite funny. Some guys pay extra for preferential treatment. If a private physio works with five guys and they all come off the course at the same time and want to be treated, the player who pays for “priority access” is going to get the table first. Fair’s fair. As for the physios the tour employs, their services are complimentary to us—and we don’t have to tip them either. Same goes for the medical trailer, which will also have physical therapists, chiropractors, osteopaths, etc. For me, it’s been eye-opening realising how critical physical therapy is for golfers. With the number of balls we hit, we make such a repetitive motion at high speeds. I used to get a lot of minor injuries early in my career, and they all stemmed from not doing enough physical therapy before and after rounds. When I was young, my trainer and I would do a brief warmup before the round, some stretching and some movement stuff that I still do today. But after the round, I was on my own. I might do a workout that night, but I was never doing a 30-minute PT session, getting massaged, doing cupping or dry needling or sauna or cold plunge. All that stuff, you do it, and you realise, man, my body does feel much better. The physios have reinvented how we warm up and cool down, and it’s all in the name of injury prevention. I’d bet money there’s been a lot fewer guys with major “soft tissue” injuries the past five years, whether it’s back, rib, wrist or shoulder issues. The top guys gravitate toward private physios for consistency of care. You want to see the same people every day, get the same hands on you. We’re all creatures of habit. —WITH CHRISTOPHER POWERS OCTOBER 2026

GOLFDIGESTME.COM 9

JOURNEYS

GOLFDIGESTME.COM

OCTOBER 2026

Cassie Porter: ‘A misdiagnosis cost me 18 months of golf ’ WITH KEELY LEVINS

ENNIS WAS MY FIRST LOVE. My dad is a tennis professional and taught at a local school. Golf was his hobby. He and my mom played every weekend at Peregian Springs Golf Club, which is near the eastern coast of Australia north of Brisbane. I rode in the cart, did some colouring. They put me in clinics when I was six. I didn’t enjoy it. I preferred tennis and swimming. But golf was such a part of our family routine—my two older brothers also play—so I decided to learn. I took private lessons and developed this unexpected, strange love. I got good quickly, even better than I was at tennis. I won some junior competitions and was hooked.

golf again. I followed my doctor’s recovery plan but wasn’t getting better. Stress fractures shouldn’t take that long to heal. I lost my patience, as did my parents. We sought another opinion. ●●●

The next doctor told me the problem was sciatica: pressure on the sciatic nerve. It’s the lonWhen I was 12, I played evCASSIE gest nerve in the body, going ery sport I could. My parents PORTER from the bottom of the spine asked if I loved golf enough to AGE: 23 to the toes. After three weeks only play golf. I said “Yes, I’m of treatment, I was pain-free. going to be No. 1 in the world.” FROM: Picking up a club again, I I did online homeschooling so QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA didn’t know what kind of I could cater my schedule to player I’d be, how long it’d practice and competition. ●●● take to be as good as I was, but somehow, Socially, that was a little tricky. See- the swing didn’t feel foreign. I practiced ing pictures of my friends who went to for a month and then won my first three school together, it was clear they were tournaments back. together all the time while I was playing ● ● ● golf. I didn’t go to prom. But I had friends I don’t carry anger towards the docin golf, and through the Australian tors who misdiagnosed me. The exnational program, I travelled the world. perience taught me how to advocate We went to Dubai, Japan and all over as for myself in medical situations. I also a team. I loved that. learned the depths of my love for golf. ●●● I felt physically ill thinking about not beIn 2020, the month before COVID hit, ing able to play again. The normal path I was 17 and swamped with schoolwork. would’ve been to continue climbing in I decided to take a month off to finish the amateur ranks, but after that, I had my exams so that I could graduate early. clarity. I wanted to be a pro golfer, so why I went from working out and practicing wait? I was 19. My parents supported me. every day to doing nothing but sitting at They know I have no patience. my computer. I woke up one morning ● ● ● and couldn’t get out of bed. Searing pain I played mini tours in Australia. In in my hip and back radiated down my 2022, I tried LPGA Q School. I booked left side. everything for my mom and myself. ●●● When we got to Plantation in Fort LauA scan showed a stress fracture in my derdale, I learned there are many towns lower spine. For the next 18 months I called Plantation in Florida. We sped was in rehab. I wore a back brace for sev- three hours to the proper course. On the eral months, wondering if I’d ever play way, I tried to no avail to get a refund on ●●●

PHOTOGRAPH BY KEN RICHARDSON

the weeklong rental I’d booked in the wrong town. ●●●

I earned Epson Tour status, but after that experience, I wondered if I was ready to play in the States. Would I be homesick? I missed traveling with a team and having a manager handling all the details. I was naive about which places could be unsafe. A man, probably homeless, once tried to break into my Airbnb in the middle of the night. I was alone and too terrified to do anything. He couldn’t get in and left. After that, family and friends took turns traveling with me. ●●●

My friend Stephanie Na was on the bag when I won my first Epson event. When I got on the LPGA Tour in 2025, I was fangirling. I couldn’t believe I was playing against these women I’d watched on TV and didn’t really believe I deserved to be there. I finished fourth in China, my second event, which basically locked my card for the next year, but I missed a lot of cuts after. Something had to change. I moved to Las Vegas, which made travelling easier. My boyfriend, who’s a caddie on tour, lives in Vegas, too. I parted with my coach, Dan Morrison, who I’d worked with since I was 13 and who had been caddieing for me. It was so difficult; he’s like a family member. ●●●

I started working with coach Holton Freeman. We made swing changes during tournament weeks and really picked my game apart. We added more shot shapes, which completely changed the creativity of how I look at golf courses. ●●●

This year, I’m starting to see the rewards for that work. I’ve had three top-10 finishes. I’m so grateful to be here, but I’m hungry for more. At first, I was in disbelief that I’d made it to the LPGA Tour. Now all I think about is making the 2028 Olympic team. OCTOBER 2026

GOLFDIGESTME.COM 11

FRINGE

Ballers Former NBA teammates Dorell Wright and Dwyane Wade launch a golf business BY ALEX MYERS

GOLFDIGESTME.COM

OCTOBER 2026

D W YA N E WA D E A N D DOR ELL W R IGHT w e r e introduced to golf through NBA teammates, but neither had any interest in playing the game at first. Wade thought it was a “waste of time” and didn’t understand teammates who were spending so much time on the course instead of “working on their craft” on the court. Wright went so far as to actively mock those who were playing. “I used to go out on the course with them and sit in the cart and laugh at them playing golf,” Wright says. “I used to roll around and think that it was just so lame.” Now the two former Miami Heat teammates look back and laugh about

how wrong their first impressions of golf were. Wade would eventually start playing sporadically, finally getting serious about golf during his final NBA season in 2019. Wright followed as one of the many who picked up the sport during the pandemic when there wasn’t much else to do. These days there’s not much else these two buddies would rather do. “I’ve had a couple of moments this summer where things have happened physically, and all I thought about was, ‘Uh, can I golf?’” Wade says. Few have had better basketball careers than Wade, a three-time NBA IN BUSINESS

Wright (left) and Wade founded ACE Members Only.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN BETTMAN

FRINGE

champ and first-ballot hall-of-famer, and there also aren’t too many golfers with a better hole-in-one story. In 2022, a perfect shot by the former shooting guard on Pebble Beach’s signature seventh hole was caught on camera and had him celebrating like he’d won another NBA title. “I might as well get golf tattooed on my body,” Wade wrote on an Instagram post showing his shot. “I’m locked in for life!” Wade has certainly followed through on that with memberships at Sherwood Country Club in L.A. and North Fork Country Club on Long Island. With a career-low score of 82 this summer, he’s working toward his next goal of breaking 80. In the meantime, the selftaught Wright has played his way to a 5.7 Handicap Index, which means the pecking order has changed between the two from when Wade led the Miami Heat to the 2006 NBA title with a young Wright watching from the bench. “He is my golf nemesis,” Wade says of the self-taught Wright. “It’s cool, though, because there is a reverse relationship. I used to whoop his ass on the basketball court, and now he’s whipping me out here.” Both players still exhibit plenty of competitive fire on the course, so they also like teaming up as they used to on the court in Miami. “When your man is mad, you just gotta give him his space,” Wright says of their on-course partnership. “You know, give him a little tip, ‘Hey, you know, you almost had it,’ or, ‘You just keep your head down,’ you know what I mean? I think a lot of the stuff that we did in our career carries over to golf, so it’s easy to understand guys.” That importance of working together has long been instilled in both having played together under legendary head coach Pat Riley, who once wrote, “Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.” Now that teamwork—and love of golf— has extended into the business world, where the two launched ACE Members Only in 2024. After originally starting as an apparel company built on the acronym standing for Ambition, Commitment and Excellence, Wade and Wright have pivoted the joint venture 14

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more into the events space, currently anchored around annual golf outings in Miami and Pebble Beach that feature a curated network of executives, athletes, entrepreneurs and entertainers. Brand partners sponsor and integrate into these experiences. “It’s cool that we got to have that relationship early in our lives, and then now I’m in my mid-40s, he just touched 40, and we’re in this space which is probably the most important space because you really choose your friends and your teammates,” Wade says of working with Wright. “So we’re choosing each other now, and that makes it even better.” Wright also hosts a weekly L.A.-area outing called the ACE Club, which is a grassroots community initiative with local chapters being built across the U.S. The company has collaborated with lifestyle brand Malbon and has developed relationships with First Tee and Pathway to Progres-

‘I used to whip his ass on the basketball court, and now he’s whipping me out here.’ ~Dwyane Wade sion, the PGA Tour’s player development program. For the latter, Wright mentored a collection of college golfers competing in the Underclass Elite Showcase at TPC Deere Run. A portion of all ACE Members Only proceeds go to the founders’ respective foundations, the Wright Legacy Foundation and the Wade Family Foundation, both of which are helping to fund golf in underrepresented communities. “We want to make sure we’re connecting with the inner-city kids in our neighborhoods that we grew up in and introduce them to the game,” Wright says. “Just imagine if when we were 7 and 8, and we picked up that basketball that we also picked up a club. That became the vision, and that became what we focused more on.” While Wade was known as “Flash”

for his ability to slash to the basket, he hasn’t been as quick to improve his golf as Wright. Wade blames that in part on his “115 jobs” from being a parttime owner of the Utah Jazz to getting into the wine business to hosting the TV show “The Cube” for three years. All those experiences have grown his circle that he hopes to leverage with ACE Members Only. “I’m lucky enough to have access to people because they want to get out there with you, whether it’s a business opportunity or whether they think you’re cool, or whether they heard you can golf,” Wade says. “Whatever it is, I get a lot of calls, but I don’t take everybody up on their offers. I’m not that person. I don’t like golfing with everyone.” Wade and Wright aren’t surprised by the recent boom in celebrity golf— in particular, among NBA players. That includes Wade’s most famous former teammate, LeBron James, who launched his own golf-focused YouTube channel in August. It may have taken these ballers some time to get into the game, but now it’s a vital part of their lives. “You don’t really have a lot of spaces with other men as you get older, where you can have conversations, you can be present with each other and share things,” Wade says. “Golf became like that place where we would go away and have this time together. I fell in love with the things around golf before I even fell in love with actual golf.” Wade has been impressed by what another NBA legend, Stephen Curry, has done with his Underrated Golf Tour that gives playing opportunities to young golfers, and he’s confident James will also do more good things in the golf space when he retires. Meanwhile, Wade is focused on building ACE Members Only, but he also dreams of competing with those guys again—in their second sport, of course. “I would love to be walking up the 18th hole with two shots to win against D. Wright, against Steph, against Bron, like, against the guys that I wanna be good against,” Wade says. “I still want pressure. I wanna be in a pressure situation to win.”

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS

GULF BUSINESS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Dr Azad Moopen Founder & Chairman, Aster DM Healthcare

GULF BUSINESS LEADER OF THE YEAR Raheel Ahmed Group CEO, Rakbank

GULF BUSINESS COMPANY OF THE YEAR Alshaya Group

LEADER AWARDS

COMPANY AWARDS

AI LEADER OF THE YEAR Saeed Nasser Al Ahbabi Chief Shared Services & Technical Officer, ADNOC Distribution

SUSTAINABILITY LEADER OF THE YEAR Salmeen Alameri Managing Director & CEO, Agthia Group

HOSPITALITY LEADER OF THE YEAR Bani Haddad Founder & Co-CEO, Aleph Hospitality

CONGLOMERATE LEADER OF THE YEAR Capt. Pradeep Singh Owner & Chairman, Karma Group

ENERGY LEADER OF THE YEAR Ali Alshimmari Managing Director & CEO, Global South Utilities (GSU)

RETAIL LEADER OF THE YEAR Michael Chalhoub CEO, Chalhoub Group

TECHNOLOGY LEADER OF THE YEAR H.E. Dr Tariq Bin Hendi CEO, Botim, CEO & Board Member, Astra Tech

TRANSPORT LEADER OF THE YEAR Eng. Mohamed Abdulla Al Ali CEO, Parkin

BANKING LEADER OF THE YEAR Raheel Ahmed Group CEO, Rakbank

TOURISM LEADER OF THE YEAR Mohamed Abdalla Al Zaabi Group CEO, Miral

INVESTMENT LEADER OF THE YEAR Prateek Suri Founder & CEO, MDR Investments

HEALTHCARE LEADER OF THE YEAR Hein van Eck CEO, Mediclinic Middle East

LOGISTICS LEADER OF THE YEAR Tarek Sultan Chairman, Agility

RESILIENT BUSINESS LEADER OF THE YEAR Mazen Nahawi Founder & CEO, CARMA and RAIYN

EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARDS FINANCIAL LEADER OF THE YEAR Naser Taher MultiBank Group

EXCELLENCE IN AI INNOVATION OF THE YEAR Andreas Hassellöf Founder & CEO, Ombori

YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR IN THE MIDDLE EAST 2026 Ali Al Musalam NAVA Group

EXCELLENCE IN CFD BROKERAGE Tag Markets

EXCELLENCE IN BUSINESS MARKETING Credibility X

ARCHIVES

Chipping Clinic From the Merry Mex Lee Trevino was a master around the greens BY RON KASPRISKE

I’d go from hole to T’S HARD TO OVERSTATE HOLD ON hole droppin’ balls just how good Lee Trevino was “The taller all around the green. from the late 1960s to early 80s. the grass, the tighter Playing a variety of He won 29 times on the PGA Tour the grip,” including six majors, the first coming Trevino said. shots was much preferable to dumping a in 1968 (U.S. Open) and the last in 1984 shag bag of balls in one spot and repeat(PGA Championship). Trevino, now 86, was known for ing the same stroke. You might get in a his distinctive swing and deadly ball- groove, but you aren’t helping yourself, striking, but it was his play around and it’s dull. Lionel Hebert [the 1957 PGA the greens that was often the envy of Championship winner] once told me to his peers. The “Merry Mex” shared his practice a short shot with just one ball so thoughts on chipping with Golf Digest you concentrate your best.” As far as technique, Trevino said it’s a number of times, including in 1985 best to weaken the grip of your domiand ‘92. This is what he said: “I wintered in Florida and got a mem- nant hand to avoid it over-controlling bership to the Hobe Sound Golf Club. the shot. “I want to see one knuckle 26

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of the right hand at address,” he said. However, he added that grip pressure matters depending on the lie: “The taller the grass, the tighter the grip so that I can keep [the club] moving at a constant speed through the thick grass. And I want that speed to be the same speed on the downswing as it is on the backswing. I just start back gently, and at the top I let it go, allowing my arms with no wrist movement to lead the clubhead through the ball.” His last tip? Try to get the ball on the green or fringe as soon as possible. “Convert the chip to a putt by using whatever club necessary to get the ball rolling on the green,” he said. ILLUSTRATION BY JIM MCQUEEN

BETTER BY SATURDAY

Draw It on Command All it takes are two easy adjustments BY TODD ANDERSON

MOST AMATEURS DON’T know how to hit an intentional draw or fade with the driver. They try to hit every ball dead straight, which is by far the hardest shot to play. Of the three shots, the draw is the longest because it flies lower, lands flatter and typically has less backspin than the other two. As a result, it rolls farther. It’s a great shot to have handy should you be playing a hole that bends from right to left or if you’re hitting into a steady headwind or left-to-right wind. Here’s

PHOTOGRAPHS BY J.D. CUBAN

how to train to hit a draw on command. On the range, take two alignment sticks and place one on your target line, pointing from the ball to where you want the shot to finish. Point the other at your feet, about 20 degrees to the right of the first stick. In your setup, aim the ADDRESSING clubface perpendicuTHE CHALLENGE lar to the first stick, You can shape then align your feet, a shot simply hips and shoulders by adjusting parallel to the second your setup.

stick, which represents the direction you want to start the ball. For this shot I’m setting up for, that’s well right of my target line (below). Here’s where many golfers have difficulty. To hit a draw, you want to swing where your body is aligned and not where you want the ball to finish. If you’re swinging out to the right and the clubface is slightly closed to that path, the ball will start to the right of your target and then curve to the left. The farther you swing to the right, the more the shot will curve to the left (assuming the face stays closed to the path). Add this tee shot to your bag and you’ll be a much more versatile—and longer—driver. —WITH DAVE ALLEN TODD ANDERSON, one of Golf Digest’s Legends of Golf Instruction, is director of instruction at the PGA Tour Performance Center at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach.

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GOLFDIGESTME.COM 27

Time for New Grips? Grip companies will tell you two things: (1) You need to change your grips more often, and (2) you’re using the wrong grip. For the first one, if you can’t remember the last time you replaced your grips, it’s probably time. Golf Pride recommends swapping them out after 40 rounds (even fewer if you’re a big practicer). It’s also smart to match the grips on all your full-swing clubs, something that might get lost when you get a new driver or set of wedges. When it comes to picking the right grip, consider a free app called Gripscript, which makes the process easy and accurate. Gripscript lets you use your phone to scan the measurements of your hands and asks questions about your game and preferences. The app then matches your profile to the top three recommended grips from more than a hundred across various grip makers. Your grip might be faulty, but it shouldn’t be because your grips are faulty.

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E D I T E D

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNNY JAFFE

B Y

P E T E R

M O R R I C E

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HOT

LIST

EXTRA

‘Easy-To-Hit’ Clubs Might Not four irons on the next page were Be the Fix for Your Iron Game ranked the highest product side, the

Clubfitters agree that deep-diving into a player’s game often reveals surprising options. And, yes, you’re good enough to be fit BY E. MICHAEL JOHNSON

Hitting greens is one of the big keys to shooting good scores. Pretty obvious, but you might be shocked to hear that players who shoot about 90 hit only three or four greens in regulation a round. Add 30

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in that it’s rare to find a short-game wizard among players at that level, and the chances for better numbers on the scorecard can seem slim. Help is available, however, both in terms of product and process. On the

LAY IT ALL OUT The choice in irons can be overwhelming, but don’t assume you know what you need.

by our Hot List testers who identify as struggling with their iron game. They feature things such as 360-degree undercuts to help get the ball in the air, special metal alloys for added ball speed and longer shafts in the longest irons to assist launch. Of course, none of that helps if you don’t know which irons are right for you. We understand that like public speaking or blind dates, going for a clubfitting

can be such an intimidating prospect that most golfers still opt out of it. The common refrain from less-skilled players is, “I’m not good enough.” Frankly, nothing gets fitters more riled up than this misconception. “The best response to anyone who says they aren’t good enough to get fit is that they’re not good enough not to get fit,” says Scott Felix, the owner of Felix Clubworks in Collierville, Tenn., which is a perennial honoree on Golf Digest’s 100 Best Clubfitters list. The logic here is if you’re playing with ill-fitted equipment, you are constantly fighting your clubs and likely developing swing flaws to compensate for that equipment problem. If you are able to hit the ball in the air more often than you are topping or chunking it, you’re ready to see if a fitting might make a difference. Regardless of skill level, everyone has a swing DNA. “If you can do it every time, let’s rock ’n’ roll,” says Chris Marchini, director of performance and innovation for Golf Galaxy. “I’ve had players over the years walk in and say, ‘I hit a really big slice every time,’ to which I replied, ‘That’s wonderful.’ They looked at me like I had two heads. However, what they didn’t realise is they are far more consistent than they gave themselves credit for. My point is, we had something to work with. The club path, the face angle . . . that move was probably pretty consistent.” Hot List player-tester Todd Wade, a 13-handicapper from San Mateo, Calif., saw the difference. Reviewing one of the iron models in the game-improvement category from this year’s Hot List, he said, “It delivered the best launched ball that I’ve experienced. A true, high ball flight after a crisp and immediate feel as the ball comes off the club. Great look to the club and nicely balanced throughout the swing. Even felt like there was some workability to the ball as a result of the clubface.” Interestingly, the majority of the clubs picked by our struggling iron players are from the game-improvement category and not super-gameimprovement clubs, which seemingly promise the most forgiveness. There’s PHOTOGRAPHS BY J.D. CUBAN

a reason for that. Game-improvement irons are designed to make mis-hits better, and super-game-improvement irons focus on getting the ball in the air. It’s a subtle but significant difference. Regardless of whether you believe innovation has plateaued (it hasn’t), you now have access to tools that explicitly tell you how much better that

new set of irons is than the throwback gems in your bag. A qualified fitter will happily help you test your clubs versus the latest models and let you decide how much better a new set would be. Then you get to figure out whether “that much better” is worth the investment or you’re content being “that much worse.” The choice is yours.

HOT LIST TESTING

Our testers who struggle with iron play generally preferred gameimprovement irons. Here’s what a few of them liked best—and why.

GARY ABBOTT, 38

MATT NESTLER, 28

13-handicap

7-handicap

Callaway Quantum Max

Ping G440

“Everyone’s going to turn and look who hit it. It’s going right where you want it to go with tremendous distance and coming down with a good descent angle. In the sweet spot, I felt that nice kind of energetic transfer of energy.”

“This design helps you find the centre of the clubface. There’s an offset to them that forces you to forward press at address, which can be helpful. It stayed on line and went straight. You can’t complain about that.”

TIM LINN, 45

DAN LUPO, 33

17-handicap

11-handicap

Srixon ZXiR HL

Titleist T350

“I felt like the club was doing the work for me. It minimised my fade. It was consistent in hitting my targets. My mishits were straight and minimized any sort of danger I might get myself in.”

“Shots came out very springy and high, but it wasn’t to the point where it’s floating and felt like you were losing distance. There was a steeper descent angle even with the longer irons. I felt like I could hold a green on approach shots with a 5-iron.”

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GOLFDIGESTME.COM 31

F I T T E R’S

in association with

CORNER

Let’s Talk About Why You Aren’t Going for a Fitting Your reasons for holding off seem sensible, but with everything you put into your game, how could you not get fit? BY THE EDITORS

E GET IT. YOU HAVE doubts about whether clubfitting is right for you: whether your game is good enough, and whether it’s worth the time, effort and expense. Let’s deal with those now. We know that equipment people telling you to get fitted for your next set of clubs can sound a little self-serving, but bear with us. Ask any experienced fitter and they will tell you the same thing: it is rare to find a golf bag without a weak link in it somewhere. Whether or not you think fitting is a worthwhile exercise, most golfers need to change something in their set-up, and getting properly fitted is the smartest way to make that change. It helps that the technology has caught up. At eGolf Megastore, the re-

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OCTOBER 2026

gion’s largest golf retailer and a fixture of the UAE golf scene since 2011, fittings run through its AccuFit programme. Its master fitters work exclusively with Trackman 4 and Foresight GCQuad launch monitors, the two systems you’ll find on tour ranges. Between them they show exactly what any equipment change adds to your game, or doesn’t. We understand that the whole experience can seem intimidating. It’s also fair to say many golfers don’t believe their games are strong or consistent enough to benefit. Anyone who plays regularly in the UAE will have heard the reasons on the first tee. The question worth asking in return is simple: how much do you spend on golf ? Membership, green fees (which don’t come cheap here in peak season), lessons, even a rangefinder. Whatever you

spend, and whatever you hope to get from it, will only be enhanced by clubs that let you enjoy the game more. Lessons are far more valuable when your clubs are dialled in to your swing. The cost of a round makes more sense when you’re shooting better scores. And a rangefinder is only useful if you know how far your shots actually go. On the question of ability, the answer is blunt but accurate. A Golf Datatech survey found that players with handicaps of 16 and higher were a third less likely to get fitted for new irons than single-figure golfers, which is precisely the wrong way round. A good player can make almost any club work. The average golfer, or worse, needs a club that makes the most of what they have. That doesn’t mean spending Dhs10,000 on a new set (not unless you want to). It does mean you shouldn’t spend a dirham on equipment that doesn’t fit your swing. Nor does fitting tie you to a brand. eGolf Megastore carries the widest range of manufacturers in the region, and its fitters can swap heads, shafts and grips across more than 30,000 combinations to find the best match for you, whoever makes it. Another benefit of a quality fitting is what happens afterwards. eGolf Megastore’s in-house builders assemble each set with loft, lie, swing weight and shaft frequency checked, and rechecked, to spec. And just as a good fitter questions you thoroughly about your game and preferences beforehand, they will check back after the fitting to make sure you’re seeing the improvement you saw together in the hitting bay. With fitters based across eGolf Megastore’s stores in the UAE, Oman and Bahrain, think of it as the start of a long-term relationship, not a one-off.

PHOTOGRAPH BY EGOLF MEGASTORE

Your fitter is going to check back repeatedly after your fitting to make sure you’re seeing the same improvement you saw together.

ROBO

REPORT

A Ball with No Name

We secured and tested confidential prototypes that meet the rollback standard BY MIKE STACHURA

“I only noticed a true difference on a few shots and other than one head-scratcher where a well-struck 9-wood on a par 3 ended 10 yards short, nothing I would give a second thought to if I hadn’t known I was using a rolled-back ball.” —E. MICHAEL JOHNSON, GOLF DIGEST EQUIPMENT EDITOR 13-HANDICAP, 88 MPH SWING SPEED 34

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OCTOBER 2026

rule isn’t so simple, he says. “We know and we’ll keep sharing this: High-speed players, high-launch players are affected one way, low-speed, low-launch, lowspin players are affected another way.” Meanwhile, USGA CEO Mike Whan has been out pounding the streets to tell everyone that although the rollback will directly impact the distance elite professional male golfers hit the ball, average recreational players might not notice it at all, calling it “a nothing burger.” Of course, every one of these hot takes or reasoned theories about the ball rollback’s effects have revolved around a largely undocumented quantity, namely these theoretical rollback balls themselves. But for rare exceptions, these models have only existed in the R&D hubs of golf ball manufacturers. The PGA Tour has been quietly testing what a rollback might do to its competitive landscape as well as its entertainment proposition. It’s been noncommittal and finds itself in a tough spot, realising that a ball that makes its players shorter opens the door for the rival LIV league to market its product now as “longer than the PGA Tour.” While largely disagreeing with the need for a rule change to the ball’s overall distance standard (distance hasn’t im-

“If this particular prototype represents what a conforming ball could ultimately look like under the new testing standards, the average golfer probably doesn’t have much to fear.” —JONATHAN WALL, GOLF DIGEST MANAGING EDITOR, EQUIPMENT 3-HANDICAP, 107-MPH SWING SPEED

pacted scoring average on tour at all, for example), manufacturers also have been trying to find the right recipe for a shorter ball that’s not too short. That challenge has shifted ball development in the opposite direction of the last century, and designers have been secretive about possible innovations. Golf Digest obtained samples of two balls from a manufacturer late in 2025 that conform to the new rules. Over six months, we ran a battery of tests simulating how golfers from Cameron Young to your grandmother swing their drivers. Is the sky about to fall? The short answer: It appears everyone will be losing distance, and in some cases, more than the USGA has been asserting. Still, in other cases, it might be less. Our data, admittedly on a limited

PHOTOGRAPH BY GETTY IMAGES

Controversy and posturing have surrounded the USGA and R&A’s announcement that golf balls will be rolled back in 2030 via a change in the distance test. It’s been the conjecture of some that average golfers would be unnecessarily penalised back to the days of balata balls and Sansabelt slacks. Others have no less lustfully suggested distance is the root of all evil and limiting equipment is long overdue. There has been scant middle ground. The PGA of America and certain manufacturers are adamantly against the idea, suggesting, as David Maher, CEO of Titleist, has put it, “existing golf ball regulation is effective, and rollback is unnecessary, and not in the best interest of golfers.” Philosophy aside, the

“Proto A presented almost zero issues, and had I been given that ball to test knowing it wasn’t a roll back ball, I would have never even had a thought that it was modified in any way.”

sample, suggests the rollback’s effect will be much in line with what the ruling bodies have proposed: To regulate where elite driving distance is going (perhaps temporarily) while having marginal effect, if any, on the slowest swingers. Of course, all rollback designs are works in progress. We used robot testing by industry research leader and Golf Digest partner Golf Laboratories across a range of swing speeds. We tested drivers, 7-irons and wedges. We supplemented the robot numbers with player testing across three levels to get personal and emotional assessments. Our launch conditions were optimised for the various swing speeds in our test, so it can be said that our results in some sense may be a best-case scenario. Could bad swings or certain swing types be more severely penalised? Sure. Could drives and approach shots into the wind be more adversely affected? Also likely. Are there other new balls that might be developed that further mitigate these losses for tour players as well as average hacks? We very much think so. What’s also true is that there are several balls in the marketplace now that would not need to change to pass

—KORN FERRY TOUR WINNER 116 MPH SWING SPEED

the new rollback standards (but none of those balls are played on any professional tour). Still, our test of a prototype tour ball represents at the very least a reasonable baseline assessment of what the rollback might look like. In our robot testing at tour speeds, one prototype ball lost 17-22 yards versus a currently conforming ball. A second prototype, which seems a more likely version to make it to 2030, lost 11-14 yards. As this “better” prototype would appear most viable, we included only its data in the accompanying chart. When we ran tests at driver swings under 100 miles per hour, speeds where most average golfers reside, the results showed as little as a two-yard loss at 75 miles per hour and three to five yards at 85 and 95 miles per hour. What our testing seems to suggest is that balls that are

designed with less efficient aerodynamics, as opposed to a deader core, might offer the best mix of elite golfer penalty with relatively manageable average golfer pain. We conducted on-course tests with an average golfer, a low-handicapper and a former player on the Korn Ferry and PGA Tour. In each case, the differences detected between a current ball and the better of the two prototypes was largely inconsequential. The ex-tour player said the top prototype “performed in all facets exactly how I wanted it to,” while the average player said, “My experience is that distance Armageddon is not in store for the masses, and you can post a reasonable—even very good—score with a rolled-back sphere.” Our intention is not to weigh in on whether there is a distance “problem,” merely to show in the clearest terms available what a “shorter” ball really might mean. If implemented—and there is still debate as to whether the PGA Tour will adopt a rollback—it seems the change would have some effect. How significant and how lasting are both questions with answers that, at least after this test, seem closer to inconvenient than catastrophic.

GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE? We robot-tested a secret prototype ball with driver shots across six sets of launch conditions. Visit GolfDigest.com to read full player reviews and see how this rollback ball might affect you.

CURRENT TOUR BALL

PROTOTYPE A

173

75 MPH

171 213

85 MPH

209 242

95 MPH

239 268

105 MPH

261 302

115 MPH

288 325

125 MPH

314 10

90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 230 240 250 260 270 280 290 300 310 320 330 340

TOTAL YARDS OCTOBER 2026

GOLFDIGESTME.COM 35

EYE

DESIGN

Reclamation Projects The seven most significant course overhauls of our time BY DEREK DUNCAN

N 1965 EUGENE COUNTRY Club hired architect Robert Trent Jones to renovate the greens and tees of its 1926 Chandler Egandesigned course. Despite a stunning Pacific Northwest property with holes darting through corridors of 100-foottall conifers, Jones sensed something

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OCTOBER 2026

off about the architecture and concluded the water features were out of place, with most sitting short distances off the tee and not a concern for better players. The realisation prompted a radical proposition—rather than just remodel parts of the course, he would reverse the entire routing, making every hole move in

the opposite direction, placing the water closer to the greens to enhance the challenge of approach shots. This spotlighting of the property’s strongest assets and the subsequent redesign around them gave birth to a layout more in sync with the land and the demands of the time. The reimag-

out to be a poor fit for the environment. Kyle Phillips Even if everything pushed comes together iniHillcrest tially, a misguided to a new renovation can jeoplevel with ardise the original his work. architecture. It’s hard to define how or when a design fails to live up to its potential. Whether it’s the course’s age, routing, sense of scale or strategies, most attuned golfers can just feel if something is off, if the parts are misapplied. Over the past decade-plus, there has been a mini-wave of bold reclamations that have corrected some of golf’s biggest “misses.” These projects go beyond what’s normally called a “restoration,” which is the intended return of a golf course to a previous, historically accurate version of itself. Rather, the following are major resets that introduce novel design concepts that more effectively summon the best angels of each property. Not all are as revolutionary as Jones’ work at Eugene Country Club, but on these sites, there were always better golf courses. TOP OF THE HILL

HILLCREST COUNTRY CLUB: EVAN SCHILLER

CONGRESSIONAL COUNTRY CLUB (BLUE)

ined version of Euguene Country Club resided inside Golf Digest’s ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses from 1979 through 2012 and in our top 200 until 2022. There was a better golf course on that site, and Jones found it. Golf course design is always a combination of land, money and an idea. Most of the time these factors collaborate to produce, at worst, a perfectly functional and satisfying place to play, but occasionally these pillars wobble. The budget might be too small to make sense of a difficult piece of real estate, or perhaps the founding architectural theory turns

Trent Jones executed a reboot at Congressional in 1957 when he added a new nine and combined it with a heavily remodeled existing nine from the club’s 1920s Devereux Emmet course to form the “new” Blue Course, site of the 1964, 1997 and 2011 U.S. Opens. That design had matured into a one-dimensional, densely treed and prototypically hard tournament course until Andrew Green reversed the architectural tide in 2020 by nearly clear-cutting the site and rebuilding all the holes, including the addition of the new par-3 10th. His iteration of Congressional takes it in a more flexible—and more intriguing—direction with broad sloping fairways and large segmented greens, dynamic pin positions, fescue roughs and menacing prairie-style bunkers.

EAST LAKE GOLF CLUB

Playing East Lake is always memorable due to the Bobby Jones connection (this was his home course during his boyhood and competitive prime). But

the golf, with its procession of parallel, deep-rough holes trudging obediently up and down the property flanks, could leave guests wondering, “Is that it?” No one calls it dull anymore. In 2024, Andrew Green rebuilt the course using an aerial from the 1940s as inspiration, but the shaping on the ground is a 21stcentury improvisation of Donald Ross. That means wider fairways infused with vertical-face bunkers, big funky putting surfaces with tough corner-pocket hole locations and sleek greenside run-offs that create shot-making opportunities Bobby Jones would appreciate.

HILLCREST COUNTRY CLUB

Kyle Phillips’ transformation of San Francisco’s Cal Club in 2007 vaulted the previously unranked design to No. 57 on America’s 100 Greatest Courses after constructing several new holes and crafting bunkers in the spirit of Alister MacKenzie. His 2019 re-do of Hillcrest, the old William Watson/William Bell design in Century City, went even further. Phillips left 12 holes generally where they were but supplemented them with new designs and a new routing. The bunkers and greens are shaped exquisitely, and the set of par 3s, including the downhill Biarritz 12th and the ridgetop fourth with panoramas of downtown and the San Gabriel mountains, are as scenic and diverse as any in the state. Hillcrest always felt like it was buried in the heart of L.A., and now it feels like it’s on top of it.

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN CLUB

Lookout Mountain is best described as a theoretical restoration. Architect Seth Raynor died while the course was under construction in 1926. His associate, Charles Banks, finished the job, but the club ran short on funds, and the design was never completed to plans. Ninetyfive years later, Tyler Rae and Kyle Franz were hired to finally implement the full concept based on a map Raynor left behind. But because the hand-drawn sketch had no construction information, the designers and shaper Benjamin Warren had to invent the details, basing their greens and bunkers on holes from other Raynor clubs (the wild “Dustpan” green at the fifth, for instance, is modOCTOBER 2026

GOLFDIGESTME.COM 37

DESIGN

eled after the sixth at The Creek). Regardless of whether or not Raynor would approve, the brave new templates give the course an electricity that matches the club’s impressive 30-mile views across the north Georgia mountains. THE LONG VIEW

Lookout Mountain infused its Seth Raynor roots into its design.

MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB (NO. 3)

As highly regarded as Medinah’s No. 3 course has historically been (between 1987 and 2010 it never ranked outside the top 20 of our ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses), the merits faded as architectural tastes moved beyond desires for long, punishing, tree-lined “championship” courses. With its ranking plummeting and Justin Thomas shooting 25-under at the 2019 BMW Championship, the club opted to hit the reset button and hired the Australian firm Ogilvy, Cocking & Mead to reimagine the course as it might have played in the 1920s. The designers axed trees, changed the routing sequence and built six new holes on the second nine, 38

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including four around the shoreline of Lake Kadijah. It was awarded the 2026 Presidents Cup. Once an icon of the dark architectural tropes of the ’70s and ’80s, No. 3 now looks like the future.

MONTEREY PENINSULA COUNTRY CLUB (SHORE)

The transformation of the Monterey Peninsula’s Shore Course by Mike Strantz in 2004 should be the avatar of this category of remodel. The Shore was built in 1961 with two-thirds of the holes stretched along a flat plain next to 17 Mile Drive, though the golf never lived up to the splendor of that sun-kissed stage. Strantz, an impresario of strategy and aesthetics, rewrote the entire drama by reversing the routing, so that righthanded players faced the Pacific Ocean on a critical five-hole stretch along the coast. He also created drama by opening rugged scars of sand and using the stoic stands of wind-whipped cypress as focal points and backdrops for the reoriented holes. This is the course that the Shore was always meant to be, one that now comfortably ranks inside our America’s 100 Greatest list, currently sitting at 55th.

SLEEPY HOLLOW COUNTRY CLUB

Despite its historic property and Jazz Age New York membership, Sleepy Hollow was in the architectural wilderness for most of its years. The course was never considered as complete a C.B. Macdonald design as National Golf Links, St. Louis Country Club, The Lido or others, and the routing had been chopped and spliced more than once. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, with the help of the late author and Macdonald expert George Bahto, began clarifying its muddled identity in 2007 by going all-in on the Macdonald pedigree, rolling out greens and deepening bunkers while injecting template concepts like Road and Knoll to seven holes A.W. Tillinghast added in the 1930s. They also pulled down trees to showcase the Olympian views of the Hudson River that are now a Sleepy Hollow trademark. The greatness of the rocky, rolling site was always here, it just needed to be awoken. Sleepy Hollow has steadily climbed up our ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses since it reentered the list in 2019-2020, currently sitting at No. 52, its highest position ever.

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN CLUB: JEFF MARSH

EYE

THE NEXT GREAT “WHAT IFS”

Five courses that could benefit from similar restarts

EAST LAKE GOLF CLUB: EVAN SCHILLER

Pebble Beach Golf Links

Pebble will never have the open, dunes-like bunkers it once had for a short time in the late 1920s, which course-design aficionados love to marvel at in old photographs. Even still, there’s an enhanced and more naturalistic presentation of the architecture in the bones of the design that better matches the course’s epic coastal ruggedness, which is currently buried beneath the need to simply get people around the bucket-list course.

Atlanta Athletic Club (Highlands)

This stern U.S. Open and PGA Champi-

onship venue that force-feeds golfers difficult shots will get the Jones treatment—Bobby, not Trent Jones or Rees Jones who designed then redesigned the original—when Andrew Green reinvents it in the spirit of Augusta National as a strategic, thinking-person’s course beginning in the summer of 2027.

JONES’ SPIRIT

Andrew Green reconfigured East Lake (above), like he will AAC next summer.

Bethpage State Park (Black) Nothing can or should be done to Bethpage Black’s wonderful routing, but the design would benefit from an infusion of Winged Foot-like character into the greens that are currently almost anti-Tillinghast in their timidness. The 18th hole could use serious reconsideration, too.

DESIGN

Torrey Pines Golf Course (South)

The one-of-a-kind Pacific Ocean setting deserves a course that demands more than just hitting the ball straight, namely one that uses natural canyons and ravines in more dramatic and thought-provoking ways.

Augusta National Golf Club

Blasphemy? Perhaps, but architecture enthusiasts pine for a return to the more roughed-up Augusta National that Alister MacKenzie designed. The club will never go for that, but a hybrid vision that combines renewed MacKenzie-esque bunkers and greens and a pre-2002 tree plan with the same slick surfaces and differentiating hole locations would make it the most exciting tournament course in the world. OCTOBER 2026

GOLFDIGESTME.COM 39

BLANK

CANVAS

The Death of the Championship Course BY DEREK DUNCAN

IFFICULTY WAS ALL THE rage in the 1960s through the ’80s. Few things were as esteemed as lush turf and a design that could bring the best players to their knees. The opposite was also true—a golf course thought to be too placid could cause clubs extreme insecurity. When Lee Trevino shot four rounds under 70 during the 1968 U.S. Open, the membership at Oak Hill Country Club, fearing it would lose status with the USGA, panicked and went into full renovation mode to beef up its defenses even though the winning score was just 5-under and only two players broke par. Difficulty was once synonymous with perceived greatness, and from the 1960s onward, architects designed “championship” courses marketed as cutting edge and custom-built for tournaments. This meant lengths in excess of 7,200 yards with strict shot demands, fortress greens framed by bunkers, water and lots of rough. Golf Digest embraced “tournament toughness” in our America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking, rewarding hardness in a category called “Resistance to Scoring.” The result was the elevation of relentless labyrinths like Firestone (South), Cog Hill #4, Butler National, Hazeltine National, Concord and Doral’s Blue as architectural ideals (the last two went by the nickname “Monster”). The roots of championship adulation sprouted in the post-World War II years with the rise of the professional tour. Advances in club and ball technology were also factors, as were the unintended consequences of tree-planting programs that narrowed fairways. Mid-century modernisations of pre-Depression courses made them longer, sleeker and, yes, more tournament tough. As these types of courses gained ac-

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OCTOBER 2026

It’s fair to ask if design has moved too far in the direction of playability. colades and attention, architects, clubs and developers kept feeding the beast, flooding the top end of the market with more “championship” designs that took pride in being hard and durable. It was good business. The 1975 version of our 100 Greatest ranking featured 41 courses designed between 1960 and 1974. In the 1985 edition, there were 42 courses that opened between 1960 and 1980. We’re in a much different place now. Over the past 20 years, golf has come to the not-surprising realisation that most people don’t enjoy losing balls and hacking out of deep grass. Courses should be challenging, otherwise the game would be dull, but they don’t need to be purposefully difficult, and virtually no architect today sets out to build a “championship” course. Importantly, there’s been a broader cultural shift that embraces designs that permit golfers to play well and shoot good scores. Success

leads to enjoyment—and happy customers who want to come back. As a result, golf courses have become wider, less cluttered by trees and more forgiving. Architects and developers now strive for interesting and dynamic golf that embraces the natural landscape, where the focus is on strategic options rather than forced shot shapes. The change is evident in the current America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking, where just seven designs built between 1960 and 1980 remain, replaced by newer courses that allow golfers to play holes with more latitude and less punishment. The shift away from the stringent championship model is indicative of how golf moves through phases. The establishment’s reign gives way to a desire for the new, which in turn kindles appreciation for the old. Ease of use creates a demand for more difficulty, which is eventually rejected in favour of playability. Few lament the banishment of the backbreaking designs of the 1970s, but it’s fair to ask if golf design has moved too far in the opposite direction. It would be entirely in character for architects to start pumping a little more attitude into their courses again. ILLUSTRATION BY EIKO OJALA

THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF

Cat STevens

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A GOLF TRIP IN SILICON VALLEY REVEALS SOME ANSWERS GOOD AND SCARY ABOUT THE FUTURE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAM CHIVERS

BY CURTIS GILLESPIE

San Francisco from the airport recently, I passed a billboard that said, “Welcome to AI country. Population: Everyone.” That seemed to capture things well. The next day, I was at the magnificent Cal Club, momentarily forgetting how AI had become an inescapable part of daily life. I found myself in a bad spot on the 10th hole, facing 200 yards uphill from chewy rough, a shot that also required a fade around a troop of Monterey Cypress. My strategic process proceeded as per usual, which can be summed up as, close eyes and swing. But then I remembered, Wait, must consult the algorithms. In my mission to better understand golf ’s convergence with artificial intelligence, I was getting to try some products before they hit the market. The Arccos AI smart laser looks like any range finder except it pairs with your phone and a tracking device the size of an earbuds case you keep in your pocket. Together, these tools gathered and assessed available data points—distance, wind, gusts, slope, elevation, temperature, humidity, hole location, green shape, bunkering and somewhat unnervingly, my anticipated performance. The app on my phone advised a wedge-out of 90 yards to leave a third of 110 yards, showing precisely where it wanted me to aim on a map of the hole and with what club. This advice was intended to give me an outside chance at a par, probably make bogey. Me being me, I reached for a 4-iron. Ten minutes later, walking off the green with a triple, I reflected on how AI’s future impact on golf might be bottomlessly complex, but how in another sense, it all comes down to one basic question: Given that AI stands to influence practically every component of the game, is this good or bad? The term AI is a broad tent under which many different processes take place. A useful analogy is to think of AI as a shopping mall. The AI mall has a major anchor tenant, which in this case is machine learning, the brute-force computing tool that identifies patterns and relationships through data comparison. Then there are smaller shops for specific products, such as large language models (LLMs), which are very much behind the public AI boom in that they have facilitated mass access to AI via the approximation of plain speech. Other shops

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include the generative AI store, where you can “generate” things that didn’t previously exist (“Claude, please take all these individual expenses and create a single new monthly household budget spreadsheet.”). There is also the robotics-gadget store, the neural network store for facial recognition, and so on. Every outlet in the AI mall is offering some kind of simulated intelligence product, but machine learning makes up 80 to 90 percent of retail volume. Just as a normal mall needs a constant flow of foot traffic to survive, the AI mall must endlessly harvest data to double as both foot traffic and inventory. Wander down a spur aisle of the AI mall and you’ll also find the golf shop. It’s not the biggest, but we golfers do love gadgets and tech. The AI golf shop has products for swing analysis, mental-game assistance and oncourse strategy. AI is also being used in club design, agronomy, tournament organisation and custom fitting. Some of the more accessible DIY applications include golfers using it to plan efficient golf travel itineraries or settle bets with onerous math. Mike Zisman, founder and CEO of Golf Genius, adds that “Even if to the public AI is relatively novel, it’s actually been evolving for decades.” It’s also important to remember, he says, that amidst so much talk of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) one day taking over humanity, AI today is mostly one thing: our anchor tenant, machine learning. AI remains primarily a marriage between math and mind-boggling amounts of computing power enabled by even more mind-boggling amounts of electricity. Hence, data centres so vast condensation from the water used to cool the machines generates indoor rain. We are deploying computing power ceaselessly to hoover up, assess and compare data to predict and then provide answers to our questions. This simulates human intelligence. Will it help us become better golfers?

COURSE MANAGEMENT While in the Bay Area, I also played Lake Merced Golf Club, which has been recently restored, and there was a certain cognitive dissonance in talking about AI in such natural surroundings. I mentioned to my playing partner, David Lee-Tolley, the VP of Product for Arccos, how it all felt a bit mechanistic, a little cold. Where, I wondered, do feel, intuition and experience fit into all this? “To me, the relationship between AI and feel is complementary,” Lee-Tolley said. His opinion was that AI might help me discover, for instance, that I’m better from 90 yards than 50 yards,

and so I might replicate my 90-yard process with those shorter shots. Golfers who took the time to capture data in the past (remember the days of pacing off yardages?) and who were willing to do their own math and analysis might have uncovered similar insights, but AI can recommend strategies for the laziest among us in seconds. There’s cognitive bias in all of us, says Arccos CEO and founder Sal Syed, in the way most people believe they are above average drivers of a vehicle. “We are trying to have people make shot selections based on their average shot, not their one-in-a-million shot.” Both Matthew Fitzpatrick and Edoardo Molinari are Arccos ambassadors who use its product to plot out course strategies based on probabilities, so there’s an argument to be made that AI helped the Euros win the Ryder Cup at Bethpage. As with most tech, it gets easier the more you use it, and as with many AI products, the more you use it, the more it “learns” about you. This happens through a twin-track machinelearning process of analysing your individual results while also clustering you with other golfers who have similar results so that it can make increasingly informed recommendations about what you and your level of player ought to do in any given situation. Golfshot, which is owned by Golf Genius, gathers your shot data through the Apple watch. John Hawley, the chief technology officer of Golfshot, says that the collection and interpretation of data might seem impressive now, but where AI is going to shine in the future will be when refinements allow for verbal dialogue between player and app. “One day there will be a true on-course caddie AI app,” says Hawley, “an app that assesses all the data and then literally has a strategic conversation with you.” That feature isn’t here yet. LLMs or SLMs can have conversations, but it’s taking the golf industry time to “create the right experience,” says Hawley. In other words, yes, there is sufficient tech right now to create an

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BY DEREK DUNCAN

The most intriguing way AI can assist in golf course design is with routings, the process by which architects arrange 18 holes around a given property. In theory, there are uncountable combinations of holes, lengths, orientations and ways to use a given piece of land. AI has the power to analyse a topographical map and quickly produce the most optimal routing based on specific client desires (overall yardages and par, returning nines, etc.), saving architects days or weeks playing with configurations and trudging through the brush. To date, however, AI is not proficient at it. There is no vast database of golf course routings and topographical maps for it to learn from, and no design firm has spent the necessary time feeding the written theory and instructions necessary for it to be useful. This is what architect David Kahn, of Jackson Kahn Design, has discovered by experimenting with available AI systems. “I’ve fed it base maps with very detailed rules about how to arrange a golf course to see if it could do a stick figure routing, and it falls flat on its face,” he says. “It’s not there yet. But if somebody dedicated a month to feeding existing routings and topo maps and refining the instructions, it would work, and it could be objectively great at it.” From that point, AI would be only a few small steps from being capable of autonomously conceptualising the blueprints for an entire course, tabulating grading plans, positioning bunkers and tees, and arranging hazards and contours. This leads to a larger question: Would golfers want to play a course that’s designed by computer algorithms, particularly at a time when an architect’s name carries cachet akin to a movie director or painter? Tom Doak, who has utilised advanced technologies to recreate holes in exacting detail at The Lido at Sand Valley and elsewhere, doesn’t think so, at least not yet. “I don’t know why ‘AI-designed’ golf courses would be sought after by golfers,” he says. “Surely, the main attraction for developers would be that they didn’t have to pay the AI as much as they pay me,” Doak says. “To me, one of the appeals of golf is that it gets us away from the phone and computer

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to spend quality time outdoors with our friends. I get the same enjoyment with my associates the way we build our golf courses, and I wouldn’t want to trade that in for an AI system. Personally, I’d prefer that AI design stick to simulator courses, but I’m sure it won’t, and someone out there will try to come up with a program that is better at design than anyone alive. I wish them nothing but the worst of luck.” Where AI can currently help is in the role of super-assistant, completing existing tasks more efficiently. It used to take Kahn and partner Tim Jackson four-to-five hours to create presentation-worthy renderings of proposed holes for clients. “Now I can do an unpolished draft in 30 minutes that expresses our intent and creative process, and feed that into AI that will then spit out a beautiful, fully articulated version in 10 seconds,” Kahn says. The information in the drawing is still human created, but AI is finishing the job. “That part is already here,” Kahn says. What comes next will be determined by how eagerly architects embrace AI as an asset or whether they view it as a threat.

app that could offer golfing counsel via conversation in the mid-round moment. But you’d have to be connected to the internet, it would have to go through an app, it would need extremely precise inputs from the golfer, it would have to be concise and pitched to the linguistic level of the user, and it would have to be seamless in terms of timing and access. As a golfer, you don’t want to have to fiddle with all that before every shot. Golf already takes too long. Not to mention, an AI caddie app is currently against the rules, strictly speaking. “We can’t ask people to pause playing golf to become immersed in an application,” Hawley says. “The interactions need to be easily accessed, unintrusive and not interrupt the golfer’s natural flow. That can take a lot of time to get right, but that’s where the experimentation is right now. It’s coming.”

THE MENTAL GAME Of course, all the AI strategy in the world won’t help much if you struggle with your state of mind. Deborah Graham is a sport psychologist who has worked with many pros, and she believes AI is set to have a big impact. “I can see so many ways AI could help golfers,” she says, citing areas such as personalised mental-skill tools, tracking mentalperformance patterns, real-time emotional health consults and access to an AI mental coach 24/7. Most golfers don’t use a sport psychologist because it can be expensive and feel like a “serious” player thing. But if it’s cheaper and there’s no self-judgement, a 16-handicapper might access personalised mental training as readily as a pro. Still, there will be risks, primarily that we could develop too much trust in something that, no matter how friendly it sounds, is still just an algorithm. “AI might misinterpret cultural differences, sarcasm, context, and either scare people unnecessarily or miss serious issues, like clinical depression masked as post-loss emotion,” Graham warns. Making myself the guinea pig, before and after several rounds I used Mind Caddie, a sport-psychology app featuring “AI Karl,” which is based on the work of Karl Morris, the European mental-game coach who has worked with pros such as Louis Oosthuizen. I fed some thoughts and feelings into AI Karl as written text, concerns about my dealing with pressure and losing focus. For instance, I told AI Karl, “I find that I really struggle with success. Whenever I am four or five holes from finishing off a great round, I start waiting for the disaster to happen—and it always does.” The responses, generated by a combination of machine learning and an LLM, came back quickly as text advice that was certainly relevant to my questions, but the suggestions (keep a journal, do breathing exercises) felt rather boilerplate.

YOUR AI MENTAL COACH WILL LISTEN TO WHAT YOU ARE TELLING IT BUT WILL ALSO BE SCANNING YOUR PHYSIOLOGICAL DATA THROUGH A WEARABLE DEVICE.

Although, I must say it was nice to finally find a companion willing to enthusiastically listen to narrative recreations of my rounds shot by shot. Therein lies one of the true dangers of AI: Simulated empathy still touches something inside of us. Graham believes AI will become a powerful tool to complement—but never replace—human psychologists. The field will likely shift, she feels, toward psychologists becoming “AI-augmented experts” who can take information about their clients that AI has gathered and interpret what it means, override it when necessary and offer a human reflection. Of course, the complementary, AI-augmented human future is sort of a blanket assessment these days for just about any industry that uses AI, which means all of them. AI will “augment” your banking skills, your travelling plans, your recipe box, your family dynamics—and that’s just what we can see. What we don’t see is that every piece of public or private information we feed into an AI program might assist us, but it’s also being used by AI to make itself better at simulating and reflecting us. AI is a constantly evolving mirror that looks more deeply into us every time we look into it. It’s also entirely possible that one day, sooner rather than later, your AI mental coach will listen to what you are telling it but will also be scanning your physiological data through a wearable device. Your blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature and sleep quality might be indicating that you are feeling tense, under pressure, tired, frightened or overstimulated. AI can recommend a response to this information, but, says Graham, “only a human sport psychologist could come in and say, OK, what is the underlying issue causing all this. Some players have tremendous self-awareness, but many don’t. AI can’t do that exploration, and it can’t provide genuine empathy.” Well, not yet anyway.

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WHERE AI IS GOING TO SHINE IN THE FUTURE WILL BE WHEN REFINEMENTS ALLOW FOR VERBAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN PLAYER AND APP.

SWING TIPS AI assistance with strategy and mental game are potentially valuable, but you still must swing the club. I tested some AI swing analysis tools at the Stanford Golf Course, which winds through the deep valleys and high hills of the Santa Cruz mountains. At certain points you can see the ochre-tiled roofs of the campus buildings and the spires of downtown San Francisco. Golf Digest has a business relationship with Mustard, so I tried its app first. Mustard started as an athlete-analysis tool for baseball pitchers five years ago, co-founded by former MLB player and pitching coach Tom House. The company spent two years developing its golf app with help from investors Justin Rose and Mark Blackburn—voted No 1. on Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers in America—and other experts in motion analysis and coaching. I filmed one swing video and in about a minute, got an assessment of my swing with “scores” in various areas, not raw data. The app uses something called computer-vision technology to locate all the major joints in the body and track their movement. Then, it taps AI to compare the data against tens of thousands of 3-D swing models. Most of the advice it offered on how I could improve seemed manageable, or more manageable than finding a teacher. “Every great coach has frameworks they use to analyse players,” says Mustard co-founder and CEO Rocky Collis. “We spent thousands of hours with golf’s best coaches and turned their frameworks into algorithms, so that Mustard personalises instruction the way a top coach like Mark Blackburn would.” I also tried Sportsbox AI, where, similarly, you upload a smartphone video of your swing within an app and get results in about a minute. The company was founded in 2020 as a breakaway from Voicebox, the company that provided natural voice recognition for Samsung. Jeehae Lee, Sportsbox CEO, played on the LPGA tour and has an MBA from Wharton. “It’s not about what a good swing for Rory is,” Lee says. “We want to find the patterns to tell a person what a good swing is for them.” Lee may not be telling people how to swing like Rory, but she is telling Bryson how to swing like Bryson. An ambassador for the company, DeChambeau used Sportsbox during his 2024 U.S. Open win at Pinehurst. He worked with Lee directly to decode how his swing angles were off at some microscopic level.“We’ve been doing this with Bryson before every major. To me, this is the future. Why, as an instructor, would you ever again just use your eyeballs?” Lee says.

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Speaking of instructors and eyeballs, Sean Foley had both of his keenly focused when he signed on the dotted line to invest in Sportsbox AI. Foley is one of the more well-known instructors in the game, but he’s also something of a free thinker. Want to know why you are pulling the ball with your 9-iron only? Foley can tell you, but he might also add things like, “How is AI ever going to know that to take the next step, a pro like Micheal Kim is going to have to read a specific chapter of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk of Freedom? In Foley’s opinion the golf swing is usually poorly taught, so AI stands to help. “We never had the ability to measure what was actually going on. Now we do. AI allows golf teachers to get a lot better a lot more quickly. You’re not guessing.” I asked Foley if he thinks there’s any danger that AI will one day make his job irrelevant. Never, he said. AI is a great tool, but “AI can’t see what’s needed beyond the mechanics. It’s going to be about how we use it, and it’s never going to make reps unnecessary.”

YOUR GRANDCHILDREN’S GOLF What of the philosophical and ethical considerations of golf mixed with AI? Don Harrison thinks about these things, partly because he’s a single-digit-handicap golfer in the Palo Alto area, but also because he happens to be Google’s president of global partnerships and corporate development. “I don’t lose sleep over AI replacing human intelligence,” he said from the Googleplex in Mountain View, which is a 20-minute drive from the Stanford Golf Course. “Whenever something has limited data, like golf, then AI absolutely has the ability to absorb that data into a single model. It will optimise the swing for any kind of body or style. It will use its own predictive technology in a way that’s significantly

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COULD AI HAVE USEFUL APPLICATIONS FOR RULINGS IN TOURNAMENTS, SUCH AS WHERE TO TAKE DROPS?

better. It will be teaching and helping people in a progressive, bespoke manner.” The most exciting developments, Harrison says, will come when AI can look at the sum of your data and deliver a complete, ongoing and continuously adjustable plan in conversation. Too much of what we’re seeing right now, he says, still boils down to having enough computing power to analyse the data. “No one has yet built a model I’ve seen using small language models,” he says. A large language model (LLM) scans the entire internet universe when asked a question, whereas a small language model (SLM) is a simulated conversation operating exclusively from the knowledge base of a highly specific sector or process, such as golf. “My guess is that companies with significant golf products are starting to experiment with small models. But you haven’t quite seen an example yet of a pure language model providing teaching or guidance that’s going to help you play better golf.” In other words, one day soon, you should be able to open your SLM caddie/swing instructor/mental coach app, upload video, get swing analysis, review strategy, assess your mental and physiological state, all geared toward you alone, and it will all unfold conversationally through a wearable device. Still, AI is ultimately going to be just another tool golfers have at their disposal. If you shoot in the 80s, never practice, have erratic focus and down a couple of beers before the turn, AI is not going to transform you into a 2-handicap. Although if you are this person, I’m pretty sure I’d enjoy playing golf with you. Part of golf’s allure, of course, is that it’s impossible to master. Perhaps AI will sand away some of our inconsistencies, even if it’s those inconsistencies that make us human. Regardless, AI is coming, hard, whether the sport is ready or not. I reached out to the Rules Committees of both the USGA and the R&A. I was curious about the kinds of conversations they are having around AI usage in competition and training. How might it be restricted with juniors? Could AI have useful applications for rulings in tournaments, such as where to take drops? Both organisations declined to comment. When I left the Bay Area, I passed the same AI Country billboard on my way to the airport. Heading south, the other side of the billboard said, simply, “Make something people want love.” Naturally, it made me think about what we love about golf. In that context, perhaps it’s helpful to think of other big changes the game has gone through, with equipment advances and video teaching analysis arguably two of the more consequential in the past few decades. Most of us hit the ball farther than we used to. There certainly aren’t many Miller Barber swings left on tour—or Miller Barber bodies, for that matter.

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Does that mean golf, in sum and for each of us, is better than it was 30 years ago? Is golf something we love or a math problem to be solved? Or is it a combination of two dissimilar things that can live in harmony? I want to shoot lower scores, but I love my annual golf trip with my buddies. I want to hit longer drives, but I love parsing out different ways of playing 60-yard bump-andrun shots. I want to play better tournament golf, but I loved playing with my dad when I was a kid and neither of us were that good. I use the latest drivers and play with top-end golf balls. I have taken lessons in which AI tools identified swing flaws that were corrected and made me better. I enjoy watching Trackman Rory duke it out with AI Bryson. But better equipment, better teaching, better swing analysis and better pros have not made me love golf more than I did when I was 18 years old. Should I be lucky enough to have grandchildren one day, they will probably be golfing with AI tools we can’t even dream of, or, more likely, tools that AI itself has generated. In every sector in which AI is impacting how we play the game—in strategy, in the mental game, in swing analysis—experts felt AI would slot in as a complementary technology, not one designed to replace humans. Though how can any of us know for certain? In the end, your most important relationship to the game won’t be about whether you use AI or don’t use AI. It’ll be about remembering where the soul of golf resides, no matter what tools you’re using. Here’s a hint: It’s not in the data.

BY MIKE STACHURA

A century ago, Bobby Jones was making a backup for his legendary Jeanie Deans driver. He sorted through “5,000 pieces of first-grade hickory to find four shafts” that were close. The process was an elaborate exercise of “guess and check.” Fitting golfers to clubs has changed immensely since then, and yet it hasn’t. It’s still a tentative dance between what the experts think they know and what the golfers think they feel. The most visible presence of the future state is Club Champion, the world powerhouse in elite custom-fitting.

Club Champion founder Nick Sherburne first brought artificial intelligence to the company’s 160-store network five years ago, and now its AI-driven Co-Pilot system can produce recommendations in as little as 10 swings. It has fundamentally shifted the clubfitting dynamic from guess and check to objective digital facts. With tens of thousands of permutations on its wall of clubheads and components, no human fitter could adequately ever process all of a customer’s potential specifications. Now, not only does the human fitter not have to know everything, he or she gets smarter with every other fitter’s findings. Sherburne literally hits a button every week to update the software and make it smarter for every fit at every store. “At first, the new fitters loved it because it made them smarter quicker,” Sherburne says, “but when the old guard would see it recommend something unconventional, they would say, ‘No way, that’s crazy.’ Of course, what’s happening is that somebody somewhere in this organisation was fitting a golfer like that, or else it wouldn’t spit it out. But nine times out of 10 when we try it, it’s dead-on.” Sherburne said the company’s fitting recommendations cover a broader spread than in years past, a direct result of a system that is free from the typical biases that human fitters naturally develop in managing a wildly diverse system of potential solutions. It’s something only AI could reasonably navigate. You can type your launch conditions into a new software package called Eldrick and get instant club and shaft recommendations as part of a new app developed by long-time nationally regarded clubfitters Dan Sueltz and Eric Touchet. Any golfer can have an online session with Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude and get very detailed recommendations about the best new driver based on how you describe your game. The limitations: AI only really knows what’s already out there, including misconceptions from YouTube influencers and Reddit posts. There remains a persistent problem with theory-based clubfitting: the golfer is an inconsistent, perhaps even unreliable witness. Perhaps most frustratingly, AI has not developed a handle on how different golfers perceive performance, particularly feel. Bobby Jones knew the right shaft by its specific heft in his well-trained fingers, but why one golfer responds to the flex profile of one shaft or the sound of this driver hasn’t been completely digitised, only approximated and generalised for the overall golfer population. For the brief present, why you like something seems beyond the realm of 0s and 1s. Understanding the right club for the right golfer remains an art form, just as it was for fitters a century ago. Give Sherburne and his team another six months, maybe less. “We’re probably 90 percent of the way there, but that’s where it gets difficult. The cool part? It’s learning.”

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LINKS TO THE FINISH

TWENTY EDITIONS IN, THE ABU DHABI CHA MPIONSHIP HAS A NEW DATE, A NEW ROLE IN THE PLAY-OFFS AND A COURSE THAT BITES BACK W HEN THE W IND BLOWS. HER E’S HOW IT SETS U P

What’s at stake BY T HOM A S WO OD GAT E

or most of its history, the Abu Dhabi Championship opened the European season in January, when players arrived still shaking off the winter. The 21st edition, at Yas Links from 5-8 November, sits at the other end of the calendar, and it now carries more weight. Since 2024 the event has opened the DP World Tour Play-Offs. The top 70 available players on the Race to Dubai tee it up on Yas Island, and the top 50 after Sunday move on to the DP World Tour Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates. The fourth Rolex Series event of the season offers US$9 million (approx. Dhs33 million) and 9,000 Race to Dubai points. Around the qualifying line, the week is about reaching Dubai. At the top of the rankings, it is the first of two chances to settle the season. 52

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At the time of writing, Patrick Reed leads the Race to Dubai. He won the Hero Dubai Desert Classic in January, lost a play-off in Bahrain the following week and then won the Qatar Masters, and he has stayed at the top of the rankings since. Rory McIlroy, the Masters champion, is chasing an eighth title as Europe’s No. 1, which would draw him level with Colin Montgomerie. A share of second at Wentworth last month cut Reed’s lead to a little over 300 points, on a week when Reed retired injured during the second round. His fitness is the unknown heading into the final stretch. Third is Eugenio Chacarra. The 26-year-old Spaniard left LIV Golf, won his way back on to the DP World Tour at the 2025 Hero Indian Open, and this summer won the KLM Open and the Open d’Italia in consecutive starts. With a PGA Tour card all but secured, he arrives with less to lose than most. “I don’t need to focus on making it to Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” he says. “That’s a great thing, to play these events with a little less pressure. Rory and Patrick are two world-class players, but I know if I play my best, I’ve got a good chance. My goal is to win the Race to Dubai and finish the year in the top 15 in the world, so I can make my debut on the PGA Tour a little easier.”

THE RECORD BOOK 21

editions of the tournament, including 2026.

2006

Chris DiMarco wins the first edition at 20 under par.

Holes-in-one in the event’s history, starting with Darren Fichardt’s ace in 2006.

Wins for Martin Kaymer (2008, 2010, 2011), the most by any player.

Shots, Kaymer’s winning margin in 2011 and the largest in the event’s history.

Wire-to-wire winners: Kaymer in 2008 and Shane Lowry in 2019.

2017–18

Back-to-back wins for Tommy Fleetwood.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROSS KINNAIRD/GETTY IMAGES

From Abu Dhabi Golf Club to Yas The tournament spent its first 16 years at Abu Dhabi Golf Club, where Chris DiMarco won the first edition in 2006 and Martin Kaymer won three of the next five. His eight-shot victory in 2011 remains the largest winning margin in the event’s history. Tommy Fleetwood won back to back in 2017 and 2018. The event joined the Rolex Series in 2019, when Shane Lowry led from start to finish, moved to Yas Links in 2022 and switched to November two years later, when Paul Waring won after opening with a course-record 61. Last year Aaron Rai missed from three feet for par at the 14th, then hit a 5-iron to eight feet at the 16th and holed an 18-footer at the 17th to catch Fleetwood. Both missed birdie putts at the 72nd to finish at 25 under, a tournament-record 263. Rai won at the first extra hole and has since added the US PGA Championship. McIlroy’s name is still missing from the honours board. He has finished second here four times, including one-shot defeats to Robert Rock, Pablo Larrazábal and Gary Stal, and last year closed with a 62 to miss the play-off by one.

Paul Waring’s score at the par-five 11th in 2023, the tournament’s first albatross.

Waring’s opening round in 2024, the course and tournament record.

263 (–25)

The record aggregate, shared by Aaron Rai and Fleetwood in 2025.

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Kyle Phillips, the architect behind Kingsbarns and Dundonald, opened Yas Links in 2010. It plays as a par 72 of around 7,400 yards, with eight holes running along the coastline. It is a links in the sense that matters: firm, fastrunning turf on warm-season grasses, with the wind as the main defence. “The golf course is incredible: the conditions, the layout, how beautiful every shot is,” says Chacarra, who made his debut at Yas last year. “It makes you move the ball both ways, right-toleft, left-to-right. When the wind doesn’t blow, it’s a course that you can go low. But if it starts blowing, it gets tough.” He singles out the holes facing the water, 7 to 9, 14 and 16 to 18, as the stretch where rounds are made or lost.

• The 2nd has a new elevated back tee, about 25 metres further back, which brings the fairway bunkers into play on what had become a driver and a wedge. • The 9th, the Cape hole, asks for a carry over water on the right, and the more of the corner a player bites off, the shorter the approach to a green that falls away at the back. Its bunkers have been reworked with native grasses. • The 11th, a par five, is where Waring made the tournament’s first albatross in 2023. • The 17th is a par three played over a bay. • The 18th is a par five of more than 600 yards, with the shoreline running up the left. Neither Rai nor Fleetwood went for it in two last year. Corey Finn and his team have made firmer greens the focus this year, so approaches should release more. If the wind arrives as well, the winning score will look nothing like last year’s.

GETTING THERE: Entry is free on Thursday 5 and Friday 6 November with pre-registration at abudhabichampionship.com. Weekend tickets start from Dhs75, and under-18s go free with a ticket. Bar On Nine starts from Dhs170, including a Dhs100 food and drink voucher, and the Championship Chalet on the 18th from Dhs1,600. 54

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID CANNON, ANDREW REDINGTON, RICHARD HEATHCOTE/GETTY IMAGES

The course

Who to watch Rai and Fleetwood have both played Yas well, McIlroy has more reason than most to want this one, and Reed’s schedule depends on his recovery. Chacarra, Open champion Ryan Fox and the South Africans Jayden Schaper and Casey Jarvis all have Race to Dubai business to settle, and Waring is worth watching on any week the wind stays down.

TOMMY FLEETWOOD

RORY MCILROY

PATRICK REED

BEFORE THE GATES OPEN Corey Finn, director of agronomy at Viya Golf Abu Dhabi, on a fourmonth build-up in the heat, why firmness matters more than speed, and what’s new at Yas Links for 2026. When does preparation for November start? The day after the last one finishes. We review last year’s tournament straight away and work on anything that wasn’t good enough. This year that meant a drainage and bunker project behind the 18th green, where the hospitality stands and irrigation had left it too wet. The intense work runs from the end of July to November. About four weeks out we start on the bunkers, getting the sand levels right and adding new sand, while slowly bringing the cutting heights down and lifting the rough. How has the move from January changed things? January was much easier because it was cooler. Now the build-up happens in the heat, so we manage staff welfare very closely. Humidity, disease and insect damage are all higher at this time of year, and at times we struggle to get enough irrigation water. That’s what gives me sleepless nights, not any one hole. What’s your conditioning philosophy? Firmness, not speed. You can have superfast greens that are soft, and they won’t challenge the professionals. The Tour gives me their green-speed number for tournament week, and the art is hitting it and adjusting each day. Two weeks out I want to be around 11.5 to 12 feet, so I can go either way without much work. How different is the tournament course from everyday Yas? Not very. We cut short all year to produce a links-style course on warm-season grass, so our heights barely change for tournament prep; the frequency of cut might. For eight to ten months of the year we’re close to tournament-ready.

RYAN FOX

What has changed for 2026? The biggest change is a new elevated back

tee on the 2nd, about 25 metres longer, with a view to the city on a clear day. It brings the fairway bunkers into play and makes the players think, so it won’t be a gimme birdie any more. We’ve also planted native grasses around the bunkers on the 9th for a more links feel, brought some fairways in and made some greens bigger. What part of the job do people not see? Irrigation. There are 3,600 sprinkler heads on the course and a team of six who look after nothing else, around the clock. It’s the boring part, but we can’t do anything without it. My assistant Jack is from Scotland, and the wider team comes from the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and across Africa, and their pride in the course is most of the reason the conditions are what they are. Who else helps in tournament week? International volunteers who work for two weeks for free, from places such as New Zealand, Poland, England, Scotland, Ireland and Prague and clubs including Gleneagles and JCB. My guys get a real kick out of working with them. Staff from Saadiyat Beach and Yas Acres come across too, working from mid-morning until late at night. What do the players say? The feedback is very positive. A lot of the leading players speak highly of the conditioning and how it compares with what they play overseas, including Augusta. But as greenkeepers we’re always looking to improve. What should spectators watch for? The firmness of the greens. We’ve worked hard to make them firmer, so the ball should bounce more and be harder to stop. Watch how the 2nd plays from the new tee. And hopefully we get some wind, because that’s the real defence on a links. OCTOBER 2026

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I CAN’T WAIT FOR MY FIRST FULL SEASON OF PRO GOLF. HERE’S HOW I PLAY

BY JACKSON KOIVUN PHOTOGRAPHS BY MACKENZIE STROH

I’m pumped for next season. The short stretch I had after I turned pro in June was a wild ride, for sure. It was definitely a weird feeling winning the 3M Open that early, in only my third start, and then getting picked for the Presidents Cup. Things were moving hyper fast, and I’m only now able to sit back and take it all in. My first PGA Tour win was definitely shocking, but self-belief has always been one of my strong suits, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think I could do it. What’s next for me is hard to say. I know I’ll be playing in as many tournaments as I can next year, and I’m also joining TGL [Tommorrow’s Golf League] on the new Motor City Golf Club with Brooks Koepka. I don’t set goals; rather I think if I can just get 1 percent better each day, the achievements will come. Since this might be the first time you’re hearing about me, I’ve been asked by Golf Digest Middle East to share my thoughts on my game—how I swing the club, my short game, the amount of time I practice putting. I’ll do all of that on the following pages. Hopefully you can get something out of it for your own game. —WITH RON KASPRISKE

My Need for Speed Some people say my swing looks violent. I know it’s quick, but it doesn’t feel violent. It’s just that as a smaller kid I had to learn how to hit the ball as hard as I could to compete. I’m still only 150 pounds, so my length comes from fast hip rotation and how I side bend into the shot. My hips are so fast, it sometimes looks like they’re firing before I finish the backswing! Also, you might notice that my right side drops down quite a bit (right). That side bend is what I get a lot of comments about, but it’s how I’m able to compress the ball and hit it farther. My coach, Fred Garcia, and I have been working to reduce it, but it’s not something I’m looking to change. I just know that a quick swing like mine relies on timing, so we’re working on making it more reliable—especially coming down the 18th under pressure.

ABOUT KOIVUN Few golfers coming out of college in recent years have had more attention than Koivun. The 21-year-old led the Auburn Tigers to two national championships (in 2024 and 2026) and earned all three major individual college awards in both those seasons—the Ben Hogan Award, the Fred Haskins Award and the Jack Nicklaus Award. Koivun won 11 college tournaments during three years at Auburn, and then turned professional after playing at this year’s U.S. Open. In roughly a month after joining the PGA Tour, he finished T-10 at the ISCO Championship and won the 3M Open, outlasting Scottie Scheffler.

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Why I Love My 8-Iron The putter is my favourite club, but the fact that I go through a lot of 8-irons, and not a lot of the other irons, should tell you what I use most to work on my game. I just think it’s the perfect middle club. It’s long enough that you can work on stuff like shaping shots and mechanical things, and it’s short enough that the head’s shape gives you confidence you can attack with it. With the exception of cutting a 3-wood to hold a green better, I’m almost always looking to hit a little draw (left). I’m not thinking of closing my stance or the face of the club to curve the ball right to left; it just comes from the natural in-to-out plane of my swing. My bad tendency is to take the club back outside, then drop the club inside, which can cause me to get stuck and not draw it. I know if I can get my takeaway in the right spot, where it’s parallel to where I’m aiming at about hip height, I know I’m in great position to draw it.

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Making the Jump From Collegiate Wedges to Professional Wedges My short-game coach, Josh Gregory, and I are working hard on off-speed shots with the wedges. I feel like that’s a huge jump in development I’ll need to compete on tour. From 70 to 120 yards, being able to control spin and flight better and be like, I want to hit this shot exactly 118 yards, you’ve got to have that kind of control. When the shots get shorter than that, pitches and chips (right), I’m most comfortable with a 60-degree wedge. Using one club when you practice gives you more reps for better consistency. I also play a lot of games and try a lot of shots when practicing. Chipping is a creative part of the game, so the shot I play is usually just reacting to where the pin is. That gets my hands and body naturally engaged.

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I’ll Spend All Day Putting I know some people find it boring, but putting is one of my favourite things—always has been. I really like something my friend said: It’s the only time in practice you can see the ball go in the hole. If I don’t spend at least two hours putting, I feel like I’ve been slacking. I’m mostly a straight-back-and-straight-through putter. In my mind, if I keep the stroke straight and the face square, I know where the ball is going. At address, I want the ball one ball back of my left heel and my eyes a little inside to directly over it. When I make a stroke, I also like to keep the club low to the ground and kind of almost hit up on the ball with not a ton of loft. Along with the ball position, that helps me put a true roll on it. If my putts aren’t rolling line over line, I get pretty upset. My stroke is a little long to short (left), but it’s not a pop. I feel like I’m not hitting the putt, the ball just kind of collects off the face. I’m definitely an aggressive putter, though. This might not make sense, but when I start trying to die putts in, the hole looks smaller to me. I want them to drop with some pace.

GEARING UP FOR ARENA GOLF My first visit to SoFi Stadium in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where TGL is broadcast, came during this photo shoot. This place is super cool. I can’t wait to get more time on this mechanical putting green that can change slopes and breaks. Being a part of TGL and showing some of my personality is very exciting. I was playing in the Rocket Classic in Detroit when someone approached me about being on the Motor City Golf Club. I said I’d love to be on the team, and getting a teammate like Brooks Koepka will be a cool experience. It’s one of many things I’m looking forward to next year.

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the me club

The wins, the milestones, the memories, a gallery worth celebrating. Spot anyone you know?

Michelle Walsh-Hall (2026 Lady Captain), Aaditya Oka

19th SGSC Summer Open Champion Sharjah Golf and Shooting Club, UAE

Season Opener, Monthly Medalford in Association with Integrator Media, and The DPWTC Pro Am Jumeirah Golf Estates, UAE

Ramon Leysico

John Ngurugwe and Simon Roger Davies

Hole in One at Hole 17 Trump International Golf Club Dubai, UAE

World Corporate Golf Challenge Qatar Education City Golf Club, Qatar

Sifah Team

Kiril Engeli Poretti

Sifah win 33 – 28 against Al Mouj Jebel Sifah Golf Course, Oman

2026 Reply Italian International Under 16 Champion Trump International Golf Club Dubai, UAE

To read more, visit golfdigestme.com/theMEclub 66

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OCTOBER 2026

PHOTOGRAPHS SUPPLIED

Ubaid Khan