Issuu

Tee Sheet 06 Editor’s Letter A year we’ll never, ever forget finishes strong at JGE. by kent gray

The Starter 08 Vattanac Golf Resort Cambodia’s finest club has a second course courtesy of a decorated major champion. by kent gray

Play 10 Conquer the Rough

be at 1 26 Dubai Hills Golf Club Tame the toughest hole at Dubai’s newest course.

38 The Race Reimagined Five reasons why the COVIDcomplicated European Tour season wasn’t so bad after all.

by jack woods

by kent gray

28 Undercover Caddie Yeah, I’ve messed up in competition, and every caddie lives in fear of doing it again.

42 Fire’s Pivotal 5 Where the inaugural Golf in Dubai Championship presented by DP World will be won and lost.

with joel beall

30 What’s In My Bag Xander Schauffele.

How I read a lie and make little adjustments to knock it on. by joaquin niemann

14 Pistol Putting Poor contact and distance control issues? Your set-up is probably to blame. by euan bowden

16 Butch Harmon Good swings vary, but all good divots look alike.

32 Michael Breed If greenside bunkers make you shake, read this to feel better.

Features 34 A Very Strange Year As this Race To Dubai season like no other closes in on its final fortnight at Jumeirah Golf Estates, we ask what happens next for the European Tour. by kent gray

18 David Leadbetter Force plates confirm what we already knew about pitching.

cover story 46 The Curious Case Of Patrick Reed If Patrick Reed becomes the first player from the United States to win the Race To Dubai, will it shush his fiercest critics? Yes, sir. Well, sort of. by kent gray

20 Putting North of 40 Although good putting gets tougher as you get older, you can get your groove back. by tiger woods

22 Equipment Lab When shopping for new irons, check the technology in the sole as well as the face. by mike stachura

4 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

50 Best New Courses 2020 Fewer entrants didn’t dull the competition. Fun, wind and width play outsize roles in our latest award. by derek duncan

66 Jerry Tarde The year that changed everything.

12/20

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

â–ś winner The oceanfront plateau of Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes, our Best New Course of 2020, as seen from Old Macdonald. Photograph by Dom Furore

Editor’s Letter

Not so fast KENT GRAY kent.gray@motivate.ae • Twitter: @KentGrayGolf / @GolfDigestME

OESN’T LEE WESTWOOD’S inspiring victory at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship seem like an eternity ago. It was only January, of course, but so much has transpired since that simple start to an ultimately tumultuous year that has redefined how we all live, work and play. Being confined to barracks for a time, tasked with fighting an invisible enemy by doing little more than retreat to the comfort of our sofas, has somehow stalled time. Many are ready to consign 2020 to history already, almost as if the coronavirus pandemic will conveniently vanish at the stroke of midnight on the final day of this very long year. But golfers are a little different, perhaps because we’ve been able to find an escape from the sobering realities of our new world in a game that goes glove in hand with mental health and the safety of social distancing. Sure, a fresh start will be nice but not so fast for the lucky golfers of the Middle East. We’ve got plenty of distractions to help us whiz through December after all. Topgolf Dubai anyone? Or how about heading back to the sofa, save for the lucky few allowed at Jumeirah Golf Estates, for the European Tour’s seasonending Dubai double-header. It’s fitting that Westwood will again be a central character as the stuttering Race to Dubai season finally hits the home straight roughly a month later than originally scheduled. The 47-year-old will be joined by English compatriot Tommy Fleetwood, reigning U.S. PGA champion Collin Morikawa and Frenchman Victor Perez in trying to pip pole-sitter Patrick Reed on the line during the final, four-day circumnavigation of Earth. Rory McIlroy and defending champion Jon Rahm will sadly be nowhere to be found on Earth but the American factor should ensure a suitably dramatic end to this season like no other. Just as intriguing, even if the field isn’t in the same ball park, is the European debut of Earth’s sister course Fire. Even if most of us will have to watch on Dubai Sports channel, The Golf in Dubai Championship presented by DP World (where would the European Tour be without the global trade enabler?) is exciting due to its novelty factor. It will be fascinating to see how some of the game’s best tackle the “hidden gem”, as the club rightly promote the second of Greg Norman’s two cracking JGE layouts. Westwood will just hope he doesn’t miss, ahem, Fire. He’s fourth in the Race to Dubai standings and needs a big week in The Golf in Dubai Championship to give himself a legitimate shot at overhauling Reed at the DPWTC to add a third Harry Vardon Trophy to his résumé. After becoming just the third player since Mark McNulty and Des Smyth to win on the European Tour in four different decades, you wouldn’t count against Westwood notching up a 26th Old World circuit and 45th worldwide win even if Reed starts as favourite. Much, much stranger things have happened this year and we sat on the sofa for that too. Grab the popcorn, get comfy and enjoy.

6 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

Photograph by Warren Little/Getty Images

“McIlroy and Rahm will sadly be nowhere to be found on Earth but the American factor should ensure a suitably dramatic finale.”

editor-in- chief Obaid Humaid Al Tayer managing partner & group editor Ian Fairservice editor Kent Gray art director Clarkwin Cruz editorial assistant Londresa Flores photogr apher Mustufa Abidi instruction editors Euan Bowden, Tom Ogilvie, Alex Riggs chief commercial officer Anthony Milne publisher David Burke gener al manager - production S. Sunil Kumar assistant production manager Binu Purandaran 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 international licensing director 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 editors Peter Morrice, Mike O’Malley design director Ken DeLago managing editor Alan P. Pittman chief pl aying editor Tiger Woods pl aying editors Phil Mickelson, Francesco Molinari, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson

Scan the QR Code to read, download and share the latest, and back issues, of Golf Digest Middle East.

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Vattanac Golf Resort Sir Nick Faldo has taken care of the design while a familiar face to Dubai golfers will ensure a friendly welcome at Cambodiaâ€™s best golf resort by kent gray f you prefer your holiday golf with a hearty dollop of culture, chalk up Vattanac Golf Resort in Cambodia as a potential getaway. The Troon International-managed club in Phnom Penh, recently named the countryâ€™s best in the annual World Golf Awards, has just opened a second course. Like the existing East course, the new West layout is designed by six-time major champion Sir Nick Faldo. The two courses provide a spectacular setting around famous cultural expressions that include scale models of Khmer historical architectural sites such as Angkor Wat, Preah Vihear and Bayon. Positioned on the 7th hole of the new course, a statue pays homage to King Jayavarman VII from the Angkor period. With former Els Club Dubai GM Karl Whitehead now fulfilling the same role at Vattanac, a friendly welcome is guaranteed alongside the memorable golf. vattanacgolfresort.com

8 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

“We are extremely excited at what we are creating here.”

Photograph courtesy by the club

joaquin niemann was 15th on the PGA Tour in 2020 in strokes gained on approach shots.

Conquer the Rough Don’t just get out of trouble, knock it on BY JOAQUIN NEIMANN

VEN THE MOST accurate guys on the PGA Tour are missing fairways on at least 25 percent of their tee shots. That means we all have to know how to hit good approach shots out of the rough. Part of it is recognising how the ball is going to come out based on the lie. But it’s also making a few simple adjustments in your setup and swing to make sure you catch it flush—which is the only way you’re going to get it to the green from the high grass. Read on to find out how I play into the green from the rough. —WITH KEELY LEVINS

Photographs by J.D. Cuban

Play december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

Play Tour Technique

change your ball position ▶ To set up in the rough, pick a club based on what you see. If there’s nothing in front of the green, I’ll use less club and hit a shot that lets the ball run on, taking advantage of the decrease in backspin with shots from the rough. I then set up with the ball no farther forward than centre in my stance (left). Getting the ball position right is really important in the rough. You want to catch as much of the ball—and as little of the grass—as possible. Playing it more forward puts a lot of grass in the way of the ball, reducing your control.

read the lie ▶ To figure out how the ball is going to come out of the rough, first look at how much grass is behind it. Whether the ball is nestled down or propped up (known as a flyer lie), if you catch too much grass, it will come off the club hot and spin less. The reason is that the grass interferes with the grooves on the clubface, and those grooves create the spin you need to control distance. With no spin, you get those shots that fly far and run hard when they land. The ball might not always react this way, but you should be aware of the potential for a flyer. If there isn’t a lot of grass, you can expect a much more typical ball flight but still less spin than a shot from the fairway or first cut.

12 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

“Don’t try to help the ball up. You have to hit down and stay down.” and stay down ▶ There’s one more thing you need to do to make solid contact—stay down through impact (below). Your instinct might be to rise out of your address posture, trying to use your body to help lift the ball. But when you do that, you’re probably going to catch too much grass and chunk it, or catch the ball on the upswing and blade it. One technique that can help you out of the rough, especially with a flyer lie, is to play a punch shot. Address the ball just back of centre in your stance with the shaft of your club leaning toward the target. Make a swing where you feel like you’re punching down on the ball with an abbreviated follow-through. If you want to get it to the green from the rough, it’s all about hitting these shots as solidly as you can.

come in steeper ▶ Another key in taking less grass is getting steeper in my swing than normal (left and above) . A swing that’s more vertical helps make sure you catch the ball solid, and the easiest way to create that angle of attack is by shifting your weight forward at address. If you pre-set your weight to favour your front foot, it will naturally make your swing steeper without having to do anything else.

december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

Play Putting with Euan Bowden

“Feel as though you are pushing the toe of the club into the ground.” WATCH THE VIDEO

Pistol Putting Struggle with poor contact and distance control on the greens? The issue could be as simple as your set-up

oes the toe of your putter come off the ground as you set-up to a putt? Do you even realise? I see this time and again with golfers who come through the Peter Cowen Academy here at Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club look ing for a solution to their on-going putting frustrations. When you hang your hands too low down the grip, you’re promoting a toe-up set-up. It’s similar to the set-up for longer shots but when the hands sit too low and your wrists flat on the putter, it can lead to a series of issues at impact. The strike can become inconsistent which in turn leads to poor distance control. However, the main issue with hanging your hands low is that it creates an exaggerated arc in the stroke, meaning the clubface will open and

close too much and making it very difficult to control your start line. The foundation to good putting starts with a solid set-up. I like to promote ‘Piston putting’. You want to feel as if you are pushing the toe of the club into the ground and your wrists are set high. The wrists will be in a very bowed position and now in flexion which will give you more control of the clubface, making it more stable. The putter face will not then open and close nearly as much allowing you to control your start line. If you do this even without the putter, you will see how much more stable your wrists are. It will also encourage your arms to be relaxed with your upper arm connected to your sides. You may feel as though you are more bent at the elbows. This will allow you to stay connected throughout the stroke, leading to better distance control. Hone this set-up on the practice green and then take it out on the course. It won’t be long until you’ll see satisfying results. Euan Bowden is PGA teaching professional at Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club’s Peter Cowen Academy Dubai.

mustufa abidi

▶ Euan brings this lesson to life at golfdigestme.com

Play Tee to Green by Butch Harmon

“Good swings vary. Good divots all look alike.”

How to Take Good Divots Get to your front foot and hit from the inside EXT TIME you get to a par 3, compare the divots on the back tee to the ones on the closer tees. You should see two differences: Divot holes from better players start past the all (you can usually tell where the tee was), and they point to the target. The ones from less-skilled players start behind the ball and point left, often way left. The ground can tell you a lot about what was going on at impact. Good

iron shots come from ball-thenturf contact, and a straight divot is a good indicator that the shot was on target. If the divot hole starts behind where the ball was and goes left, you know the shot was fat and produced a pull or a slice.

16 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

Here’s how to improve your divots, which will lead to better iron play. First, focus on starting your downswing from the ground up, with your lower body leading. That’ll keep the club to the inside so your arms can extend out to the ball and produce a straighter swing path and a straighter divot. Next, feel like your chest is “covering the ball” at impact. You can see (above) that my shirt buttons are directly over where the divot starts—that’s what covering it means. It’s a result of moving toward the target, which positions the low point of the swing forward so you strike the ball before the ground. That’s how you hit it pure and take a pro divot. Now go pick it up and repair the turf!

▶ At the 1995 Masters, Tiger played with José María Olazábal in the first round. I was working with both at the time, and their games were very different. Tiger was a 19-yearold bomber. José María was a short-game king. Giving up 50 yards on drives, José María later told me that after two holes, he never watched Tiger hit another tee shot. But José María shot 66 that day to Tiger’s 72. I asked Tiger how it went, and all he wanted to do was learn more about how José María chipped. Over the next few years, Tiger revamped his wedge game, and we often talked about that day at Augusta. He always wants to adapt what he sees in the great champions. Tiger has many special skills, but his desire to keep learning is the one I admire the most.

—WITH PETER MORRICE butch harmon, a Golf Digest Teaching Professional, is based at Rio Secco Golf Club in Henderson, Nev.

Photographs by J.D. Cuban

steve munday/allsport/getty images

never stop learning

AED 99 only

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Play BioGolf by David Leadbetter

“More weight shift means less control of the clubface.” Pitching Around a Post Stability is key to crisp—and straight—shots orce plates are used to track how golfers shift their weight between the feet during a full swing. But it’s also interesting to examine weight transfer during a pitch shot. For decades I’ve been teaching a pitching action in which golfers pivot their bodies around a stable post—the lead leg— as they swing down and through. Data from force plates supports this technique. Biomechanist J.J. Rivet, who consults for the European Tour, tested dozens of professionals on force

plates as they hit pitches. Shot after shot confirmed that professionals start with their weight favouring the lead leg, and it stays that way throughout the swing. Furthermore, from the start of the downswing to halfway into the follow-through, the amount of weight on the lead leg remains virtually unchanged (75 percent, see chart). These numbers make sense. Less weight shift means more stability for a shot that requires precision over power, allowing the pros to better control the clubface.

18 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

Contrast that with a group of amateurs Rivet tested. They had roughly two-thirds of their weight on the back foot as the club reached the top. Although they correctly shifted into the lead leg in the throughswing, the shift gave them considerably less control of the clubface. So set your weight forward to start, and rotate your torso around your lead leg to the finish (below). —with ron kaspriske david leadbetter is a Golf Digest Teaching Professional.

pitch perfect ▶ Percentage of weight on a pro golfer’s lead leg address

67 65 75

backswing

downswing

followthrough

Photograph by Dom Furore

Play TW

Putting North of 40 Don’t let your age dictate your stroke by tiger woods eople tend to think that the first thing to go when you get older is speed, and therefore how far you can hit the ball. But with the advances in training and nutrition, as well as the incredible equipment we have today, guys are still able to carry it 300-plus yards well into their 40s— and sometimes 50s. I’ve actually found that as the years pass, putting excellence might be one of the hardest things to maintain. It’s not a coincidence that you see so many guys on the Champions Tour switching to longer putters or different grips. They do it in the hopes of regaining some of the success they had as younger players. But it’s a real challenge. First, it’s harder to put in the hours of practice you need to stay sharp because bending over to get into a good putting stance is not easy on the aging back. Second, it can be harder to see the right line because your eyesight simply isn’t as good as it used to be. (Not to mention it’s harder to crouch down on the greens.) And then there’s the attitude part of putting. When you’re young, you putt super aggressively, especially on the shorter ones. But as you age, sometimes you

20 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

Harry How/Gett y ImaGes • tom PennInGton/Gett y ImaGes

2004

gutter credit tk

“My approach to putting hasn’t changed in 24 years on the PGA Tour.”

2020

start to think more about the comebacker, which can lead to defensive strokes and even more misses. But no matter how long you’ve been putting, when you find yourself struggling on the greens as I was during parts of this year, it’s so important to return to a few consistent keys to get your stroke back—the things that made you a better putter in the past. Although I experimented with a new putter and a new grip over the summer, my approach to putting hasn’t changed in 24 years on the PGA Tour. You can see in these two photos, taken roughly 16 years apart, that my setup and stroke look pretty darn similar. And back in 2004, when that first photo was taken, I led the tour in strokes gained putting. So I know my methods work. To that point, there are two drills you’ll see me practicing on the putting green before every tournament—year in and year out. The first is hitting putts with just my right hand on the grip. Some guys like a straight-back, straightthrough stroke, but I’ve always preferred to feel the toe of the putterhead open a bit on the backswing and release through the ball. Hitting practice putts with just my right hand allows me to feel the appropriate release of the putterhead through impact. For my other longtime drill, I put two tees into the green just wide enough that my putterhead can swing between them when I make a stroke. Then I’ll hit putts trying not to strike either tee. It’s a simple but effective way to make sure you’re making a good stroke and hitting the ball in the centre of the putterface. I didn’t putt as well as I would have liked this past year, but I have full confidence that if I stick with my principles and these two drills, I’ll turn it around. —with daniel rapaport

december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

Play Equipment Lab in association with

m i zu no jpx 921 tour ▶ The long irons in this set feature wider soles for forgiveness, and the short irons have narrower soles to improve turf interaction. Mass was moved to the perimeter to improve feel. RRP AED 5,075 Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

honm a tr21-x ▶ This hollow design’s thin, L-shape face wraps around the sole for better flex. Heavy tungsten (50 to 89 grams) placed low in the head improves launch, and internal foam helps feel. RRP AED 6,825

s rixon zx5 ▶ The face insert, made of high-strength steel, has channels on the back designed with the aid of artificial intelligence. The intent is to have increased face flex on all impacts. RRP AED 5,195

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

titleist t100•s ▶ A stout amount of tungsten (an average of 66 grams) is forged into the heel and toe on this faster version of the players-shape T100. It also has a thinner face and stronger lofts. RRP AED 6,195 Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

22 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

The right sole width and bounce angle can help you flush it. taylor m a d e p•7mc ▶ Designed for players who hit the centre of the face, these forged irons move more mass behind the impact area. This forging process tightens the steel’s grain structure for maximum feel. RRP AED 5,795 Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

Ground Game Find a sole that fits your iron swing BY MIKE STACHURA UST ABOUT EVERY new iron these days features some kind of high-tech face construction that gets shots flying faster than a race car. Distance technology is certainly desirable, but there’s another facet of club design that could improve your iron play: the sole. We know. Sole design sounds about as exciting as kale or proper tire pressure. But here’s a secret: Matching the right sole to your swing can help your shots fly farther, especially the ones you don’t flush. Sole design is more complex than it might seem. Irons with wide soles have more mass low in the clubhead. This translates into a lower and often deeper centre of gravity to help launch the ball higher and farther. An exceptionally wide sole can also help the club slide through the turf on those dreaded fat shots. Of course, it’s also true that irons with wider soles are harder to manipulate coming into the ball. For players who like to control trajectory or work the ball with fades and draws, this is less than ideal. Regardless, everyone needs a sole that helps the club move through impact with the least resistance. Those precise curves and angles on the shape of a sole are not a trivial piece of engineering, says Jeff Brunski, vice president of research and development at Cleveland/Srixon. “Even if you’re a good player and not taking a divot before

wi l s on staff model cb ▶ Tungsten in the toe helps align the centre of gravity with the impact area and improves off-centre hits. The Y-shape bars within the cavity stabilise the frame for a more solid feel.

c o b ra king tour ▶ A metal-injection process forms these heads from a powder of two steels. That makes them more precise for shape, weighting and soft feel. Heavy tungsten in the toe adds stability. RRP AED 5,595 Demo this club at eGolf Megastore, or buy online at egolfmegastore.ae

Photograph by Dom Furore

Play Equipment Lab

A wider sole can be more forgiving, but you still need to rotate your body.

in association with

RANGE MAT TELLS ALL

CAN THE RIGHT SOLE END THE FAT SHOT? adly, no, your swing plays a big role, too (but read below for some tips). However, the right sole design can mitigate fat shots. A Wilson study of players with a 10-handicap or higher revealed that nearly 12 percent of their shots were hit fat. “Our research shows that at a minimum this is a 10-yard problem, but because some shots in our test didn’t go anywhere and couldn’t even be recorded, this could be a 50-yard problem,” says Bob Thurman, vice president of Wilson Labs. It led the company to design its LaunchPad irons with a wide sole meant to help the club glide rather than dig into the turf. Even elite players whose swings are faster and steeper are looking to have the club not get stuck in the ground at impact. That’s what motivated designers at Srixon to add more relief to the front part of the sole on its irons. The design reduced by half the turf’s negative effect on clubhead speed through impact.

▶ Fitters use lie-angle tape to see if the sole is contacting the ground at the centre. A practicerange mat can reveal the same thing with the green marks on the sole. Generally, if the marks are toward the heel, your shots will start left of the target (for a right-hander), and your irons might be too upright. If the marks are toward the toe, the lie angle is too flat, and misses will start to the right. According to Titleist research, a lie angle on a 7-iron that’s 2 degrees off will produce a miss that’s 20 feet wide of the target. The misses for short irons aren’t any better.

SOLE DESIGN IS MORE THAN JUST WIDTH ▶ Wide—or narrow—sole designs build in forgiveness with playability. Some game-improvement irons position extra mass toward the sole to help shots launch higher (left). But by adding relief on the trailing edge, there’s less surface area contacting the ground. Meanwhile, the narrow soles on players irons use softer, rounded leading edges for more forgiveness and less digging at impact.

FAT SHOTS NEED RIGHT SOLE and RIGHT SWING ost golfers who hit behind the ball don’t rotate their body enough, if at all, says Kevin Sprecher, director of instruction at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. “A widersole iron is going to be more forgiving for players who hit fat shots, but you still have to turn.” There are a number of reasons an amateur might lack body rotation, Sprecher says, such as locking into an arms-only swing in fear of missing the ball. Other times a physical limitation prevents a healthy turn. Often rotation is lacking because the

24 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

golfer doesn’t know what a proper swing should feel like. No matter the cause, Sprecher says a few external cues can improve rotation for crisper iron shots: “To get the bottom of the swing ahead of the ball, turn the buttons on your shirt away from the target as far as you can on the backswing. Then, on the downswing, turn your belt buckle and shirt buttons toward the target. When that happens, the lead arm pulls forward, which pulls the handle of the club forward, allowing you to make ball-first contact.” —ron kaspriske

top: stuart franklin/getty images • clubs: dom furore • illustrations: t.m. detwiler

you reach the ball, you’re still engaging with the turf a lot,” he says. “The sole design affects feel because of how the club goes in and out of the turf. But if the sole design is correctly matched to your swing, you’re going to see more consistency in your results when you factor in all the mis-hits.” The width of a sole is only part of the technology story, of course. The way the sole angles back from the leading edge, known as the bounce angle, can determine how smooth turf interaction might be for a particular swing, even for average golfers. “Without the proper sole design, you will not optimise your ball speed, launch and spin,” says Nick Sherburne, director of clubfitting at Club Champion, a national clubfitting chain. He says golfers with steep swings need more bounce, and golfers with sweeping swings need less. However, even if the soles on your irons are the right fit for your style of swing, he says, you’ll only reap the benefits if the lie angle and shaft length are correct, too. So when buying new irons, be sure to check the tech in the sole as well as the face. As always, a quality clubfitter is a great place to start.

A NEW AGENCY CONNECTING WORLD-CLASS TALENT WITH BRANDS

Play Course Management

Stroke Index 1 New Dubai Hills Golf Club head pro Jack Woods has the honour this month in our series designed to help you tame the regionâ€™s toughest holes

Photograph courtesy by Dubai Hills G.C.

HE CHALLENGING par 4 7th hole at Dubai Hills Golf Club is perfectly sandwiched between two of the more scoreable holes at the region’s newest course and two tough, long holes to close out the front nine. ▶ At 440 yards off the black tees, all but the longest hitters will be left playing a longer iron or more with their approach. Accuracy is vital off the tee to avoid the drop off waste area on the right and the cleverly positioned bunker on the left. Only then will finding this long two-tiered green seem realistic. I have seen many cases of players getting off to fast starts over the first six holes only to come unstuck at this tough hole, myself included. Here I will share my thoughts on how you can avoid this problem.

Jack Woods tee shot: From the back tees the bunker on the left is 230 yards to reach and over 250 yards to carry so it’s important that you have a realistic understanding of how far you can hit the ball. Few players are going to have the firepower to launch it over that trap, so the line is just right of it. A gentle fade off the bunker suits the shape of the hole well. Anything too far right though will kick off the slope end up down in the waste area and then it’s simply pot luck as to how you find your ball sitting. If you do end up down there don’t try to be a hero, simply get the ball back in play and keep the damage to a minimum. approach: Even if you do manage to find the fairway, the approach to this green is no cinch. Any shot landing too close to the front right of the green will roll down the run off area potentially leaving a tricky chip back up the slope. Playing towards the left centre of the green is always a safe play and a miss slightly left could still leave you with a chance. With the ball often slightly below your feet on this shot it is likely to finish right so adjust for this. Make sure you club up for your approach as well - the green is slightly raised and anything short will run back further away from the green. A bunker front left is also waiting to catch anything slightly under hit. A green in regulation is a great effort but by no means is the hole complete.

7 th

PAR 4 Black

440 yards

Blue

421 yards

Silver

389 yards

Red

367 yards

closing out: The green slopes back to front and gently left to right following the general shape of the hole. Pace putting is a priority here. Anything left and long and you will need to be cautious with your speed - don’t get aggressive with your first putt or you'll leave yourself an awkward length coming back. Walk off this green with your score still intact and you should be one very happy golfer.

december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

Play On Tour

“Yeah, you better believe we’re terrified of making mistakes.” Undercover Caddie Players aren’t the only ones who choke have nightmares about it. The scenarios change—start of the tournament, an early Saturday tee time, as we’re walking down the 18th fairway with a fiveshot lead—but the story doesn’t: I find a 15th club in the bag. I consider myself a standup guy, but I never do the right thing in the dream. I keep the discovery to myself, tomahawk the club into the woods, once even snapped it in two and tried to flush it down a PortaJohn. I wake up petrified and disappointed in myself, and the dream keeps happening. For the record, my guy has never had 15 clubs in his bag. So yeah, you better believe we’re terrified of making mistakes. They happen. Don’t care if you’ve been out here for two months or 20 years, everyone has a story of slipping up, and—as my night terrors prove—we all live in fear of the next miscue. The blunders are not as public as caddie Myles Byrne discovering 15 clubs in the bag for Ian Woosnam at the 2001 Open or Bandon Dunes looper Brant Brewer touching the sand on the 18th hole to lose the hole, and match, for Oliva Pinto at this summer’s U.S. Amateur. Sometimes they’re the simplest of things, like oversleeping a tee time or leaving the raingear out of the bag, only for the heavens to open up. That doesn’t make them easier swallows. Giving yardages sounds simple. Is simple. But when you’re giving them out 18-plus times a day, four times a week, 30 weeks of the year, you’re going to give a wrong number. Maybe you walked three yards off but added three, or read the distance to the middle instead

of a back-tucked pin. For these guys, a wrong number by three yards makes all the difference. Done it three times in the past 15 or so years. First time, my player came up 10 yards short of the green. I realised what happened and told him. Had to. To his credit, he took it in stride. Maybe too in stride, as he joked to his playing partner about his “mystery” number. “Oh, yeah?” said his opponent, a Hall of Famer. “Any more ‘mysteries,’ and it won’t be a mystery why he’s out of a job.” Oof. The second time was a practice round about five years later, same guy. Should have been 180 yards; told him 188. If I would have looked up from my book, it was clearly 180, and he knew it. But he said nothing and hit his ball

28 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

well over. As soon as the ball’s in the air, he turns to me and yells, “Start doing your job!” Man, did that sting. But you have to own it. It’s your fault. Then there are the complex mistakes, and the majority of the time they happen when you’re in a pressure situation. What can I say? Just like players, we sometimes stumble in the clutch. The first is giving the wrong club. First round, you usually let your guy feel his way out, talking him out or into a different stick only if it’s egregious. When you’re on the cut line or in contention, you tend to assert yourself more on those inbetweeners. By the way, this is not a wrong-yardage thing. It’s part strategy, part knowing the effect adrenaline and pressure

and stress are going to have on your guy. Two examples: Last year I got my guy into a club lower at TPC Sawgrass’ islandgreen 17th because I knew with the blood flowing he was going to hit anything a few yards farther. That time it worked— he hit it to 10 feet and made his bird. But this season on a drivable par 4, I got him into a 3-wood because I thought the driver brought too much trouble into play. I didn’t read the situation right, because that affected his confidence. He still found the trouble. Most of the time we’re right when suggesting another club. When we’re wrong, it can be bad. And there’s a chance your guy goes sideways the next hole because he’s thinking how you just screwed him. Another way caddies mess up with the tournament on the line is being timid. You want to stay out of your player’s way and let him focus on the course, but if you’re not talking as much or acting differently— trust me, they notice—they take it as doubt or fear. But the biggest way we fail when it matters most is . . . positivity. It’s human nature: You want to keep your guy in an upbeat, bullish mood. Everyone wants to deliver the pump-up speech, but if your guy is good, he’s going to be in contention a number of times. Do the rahrah thing in each of those instances, it loses its effect when you really need it. And golf isn’t football or basketball, where we need to get amped up. We’re (mostly) trying to keep calm. Besides—and a former player told me this, which I pass on to all new caddies—it’s OK to let a player be mad. You tell him it’s fine after he makes bogey, and it might just piss him off more. Nothing wrong with letting him stew; he’s about to get an extra 10 yards off that next drive because of it. Just make sure on the first tee it’s the only driver in his bag. Sorry, that was the nightmare talking. —with joel beall Illustration by John Ritter

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Play Equipment

What’s in My Bag Xander Schauffele driver

—e. michael johnson

club

yards*

driver

290

3-wood

265

5-wood

250

4-iron

220

5-iron

205

6-iron

193

7-iron

182

8-iron

168

9-iron

155

140

53˚wedge

127

57˚wedge

110

61˚wedge

* carry distance

30 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

specs Callaway Mavrik Sub Zero, 8.3°, Graphite Design Tour AD BB 7x shaft, 45.43 inches. ▶ This is the triple diamond Sub Zero model, which is the most neutral head they have in terms of face angle. I like to shape the ball all directions, and I want that to be on me and not the club. I use the adjustable hosel to bring the loft down to 8.3 degrees.

fairway woods specs Callaway Rogue Sub Zero, 15° and 18°; Graphite Design Tour AD DI 8x shafts. ▶ From 250 yards, I used to watch other guys float 5-woods onto the green and hold it. I was using a long iron, hoping to land in a greenside bunker because I couldn’t stop it on the green. That’s why I carry the 5-wood now. The shot I hit on the last hole at Sentry [2019 win] was a 5-wood. It’s a go-to club.

i miss the fans ▶ It’s a different atmosphere without fans. Moments like walking up 18 and the crowd inspiring you are different. It’s just walking with your caddie, so, yes, I miss them.

irons specs Callaway Apex Pro (4-PW), True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts; Golf Pride Z Grip cord grips. ▶ I wanted a little less offset on these. I don’t lose much on a mis-hit, but they move through the ground like a blade. I’ve been trying a prototype Apex recently. Don’t be surprised to see those in my bag soon.

wedges specs Callaway MD5 Jaws (53°), Titleist Vokey SM6 (57°), Titleist Vokey SM8 (61°); True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shafts.

reliable spin ▶ I switched to this Callaway Chrome Soft X at the Memorial. I like hitting low-flighted half shots, and this has consistent spin on those shots. I use four to six balls during a round.

▶ I keep my gap and sand wedge as is, but I mix things up with the lob wedge. I have four or five sole grinds I use depending on the turf conditions we’re playing that week. Each of my wedges is bent a degree weak to hit the right distance gap.

putter specs Odyssey O-Works #7 Red Crank Hosel, 34.375 inches, 3° loft, SuperStroke Tour 2.0 grip. ▶ The hosel on my putter is one you normally see on blades, not mallets. It creates a little bit of toe hang, whereas many mallets are face-balanced. The hosel helps it swing a little easier, and those two long, white parallel lines let me know when I’m not doing the right thing with the stroke.

a cool two bits ▶ Several years ago at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, a spectator gave me this 1964 quarter that I use as a ball marker. He gave me another last year so now I have two.

Photographs by Dom Furore

schauffele: ross kinnaird/getty images

age 27 lives San Diego story Winner of four PGA Tour events, including the 2017 Tour Championship. trying times California was one of the first states to go into lockdown mode in the spring. I’ve always wanted time off during or after a season, but not in this style. When things got bad, the gym in my condo complex shut down. After that, it was a challenge to stay motivated. When golf courses opened up, I practiced for about a month before we started playing the tour again. I was fired up about that.

â€œI mix things up with the lob wedge: I have four or five sole grinds.â€?

Play The Leading Edge by Michael Breed

“Think, Turn and extend.” Bunkers Make You Shake? Then you need this tip

CAN ALWAYS TELL when golfers are nervous in the sand: They make no body turn through the shot—it’s just a fast swipe with the hands. And when the hands get active, they tend to close the clubface, which makes the leading edge dig. You want to do just the opposite: Slide the clubhead through on its back edge, called the bounce. As long as the body keeps turning, using the bounce is easy. Now, here’s how to check your rotation. Focus on turning your chest through so it points left of the target at the finish (below). Another thing to confirm is that your arms are extended in the follow-through, with your hands away

32 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

from your body. When the body turns, the arms can extend; when the body stalls, the arms break down. So these two keys work together: Turn and extend. That’s a great swing thought. Last tip, this one about the bounce. How do you know if you’re using it correctly? When the clubhead is sliding as it should, the sand will feel very light, like you’re swinging through powder. When the leading edge is digging, the sand will feel heavy. So keep it light, and you’ll pop the ball out. —WITH PETER MORRICE breed is Golf Digest’s Chief Digital Instructor. He operates the Michael Breed Golf Academy at Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in New York.

Photograph by J.D. Cuban

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One very sTranGe year as this race to dubai season like no other closes in on its final fortnight at jumeirah golf estates, we ask what happens next for the european tour. by kent gray

ne w n o r m Social distancing and other advice against COVID-19 is seen during practice prior to the Austrian Open at Diamond Country Club

keith pelley is in doha trying, like everyone else, to wrap his head around a strange new world. ▶ It’s March 7, a day before Spaniard Jorge Campillo would capture the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters at Education City Golf Club and Pelley shortly thereafter pulled the trigger to suspend the European Tour’s 2020 season. The coronavirus is sweeping the world and golf’s global house of cards is falling on the Canadian chief’s watch. The Maybank Championship and Volvo China Open had already been cancelled and now the following week’s Magical Kenya Open was gone. Everyone had questions and Pelley, quite understandably, had very few answers. What he did know was that his every move had the potential to radically alter the lives of everyone associated with the world’s second largest circuit. “There are probably quite a few moments I could recount as it has truly been a year without parallel for all of us,” the European Tour chief executive says when prompted for a particular event that has defined 2020 for him personally. “But in terms of a moment... it was the day after our tournament the following week in Kenya had been cancelled by the Kenyan authorities and a player came up to me on the range in Qatar and said: ‘The Masters will be okay though, won’t it?’. “At that time nobody knew what to think, but the very next week it was cancelled by Augusta National. I think it was at that point that everybody thought, right, this is going to be one very strange year.” Indeed. By the time the 12th DP World Tour Championship is decided on Earth come December 13, more than a month later than originally scheduled, Pelley’s tireless team will have successfully delivered 23 tournaments in the four crazy months since the tour’s July 9 resumption. Of those, 16 have been created from scratch including the

“YOU CAN EXPECT TO SEE US CONTINUE TO PLAY IN GEOGRAPHICAL CLUSTERS A LOT MORE.” EUROPE AN TOUR CEO KEITH PELLEY

Golf in Dubai Championship which will be played on Fire, Earth’s sister course at Jumeriah Golf Estates, the week before the Race to Dubai decider. Pivot, pivot and pivot some more. Events have fallen over, some never to return as corporate giants were suddenly confronted by a new and still uncertain fiscal dawn. Purses have plummeted, making the rich PGA Tour even more attractive to the game’s biggest names. Galleries have gone too with no certainty when a free flow of fans will be allowed back behind the ropes. The challenges of global travel, even for those who can afford private jets, means the DPWTC won’t have a defending champion this year. Like Jon Rahm, you likely won’t find any trace of Rory McIlroy on Earth either. Thankfully, the top 5 in the Race to Dubai standings - Patrick Reed, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa, Lee Westwood and Victor Perez - will tee it up in the decider. But the European Tour has changed forever and it’s no stretch to suggest what happens after the final putt on Earth will be the most fascinating moment of this weird year. Normally Pelley would front a ‘state of the nation’ style press conference at JGE but with very few media representatives seeking accreditation, the announcement is now “planned before the end of the year”. So what will 2021 and beyond look like? As Pelley and co. scrambled to re-set the season during the lockdown, the chief executive braced his members for a “radically different” tour and even a “glimpse into the future”. It started with a pair of events in Austria and then a six event UK Swing. Expect more of the same, perhaps even the bunching together of the Middle East’s five early season events – Abu Dhabi (Jan. 21-24), Dubai (Jan. 28-31), Saudi (Feb. 4-7), Oman and Qatar – to allow players to remain in a bio-secure bubble. “You can expect to see us continue to play in geographical clusters a lot more,” Pelley told Golf Digest Middle East. “We’ve always traditionally had the Middle East or ’Desert Swing’ at the start of our season, but since our resumption, we have had december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

two events in Austria, two UK Swings, the Iberian Swing, the two consecutive Cyprus events following the Italian Open and now the South African swing and the two Dubai events. It has worked well and the feedback has been positive from players, partners and broadcasters. This has shaped our approach to our 2021 schedule.” The postponement of the Ryder Cup in Whistling Straits, thus pushing the next European hosting in Italy out to 2023, was a particular hammer blow for the European Tour. As Golf Digest’s John Huggan noted in a feature that measured the financial impact of the postponement, the biennial matches aren’t “merely about pride” for the Wentworth-based European Tour. “It’s about money. Lots of money. Survival money.” “A 12-month delay to the seven- and eight-figure windfalls the European Tour receives in the years of the event—and needs to continue in anything like its familiar form—has potentially severe implications. Especially in an economic environment that is so uncertain.” Pelley had earmarked the challenges even before Whistling Straits was put on ice. “The reality is, the pandemic is going to have a profound impact on the tour financially, as well as many of our partners, both in sponsorship and broadcast areas.” There is still a feeling something has to give. Bubbles are great for keeping everyone safe but outside of the majors, high-profile (read rich) events are what motivate the world’s best. And the majority of those tournaments are now in the U.S. Rumours of a PGA Tour takeover, which only intensified during the lockdown, continue to swirl in the background. Whether there is any foundation to the whispers remains to be seen but a continuation of the Middle East’s central role in the future of whatever new iteration of the European Tour that follows looks more certain. With golf’s most talked about man in 2020, Bryson DeChambeau, and world No.1 Dustin Johnson among nine major cham-

“RUMOURS OF A PGA TOUR TAKEOVER CONTINUE TO SWIRL.”

european tour events cancelled or postponed in 2020 ▶ Names in brackets denotes winner of event rescheduled and subsequently played

january Hong Kong Open*

march Magical Kenya Open Hero India Open WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play

april

top rig ht : Eddie Pepperell and Lee Westwood and Swede Marcus Kinhult listen to protocol during Day 1 of the Betfred British Masters be low: Tees, scorecards and pencils are laid out in protective plastic packets alongside hand sanitiser on the first tee during the Austrian Open

The Masters (Dustin Johnson/November) Maybank Championship Volvo China Open Estrella Damm Andalucia Masters (John Catlin/Sept)

may Golf Sixes Cascais U.S. PGA Championship (Colin Morikawa/August) Made in Denmark Dubai Duty Free Irish Open (John Catlin/Sept)

june Trophée Hassan II Scandinavian Mixed BMW International U.S. Open (Bryson DeChambeau, Sept)

july Open de France Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open (Aaron Rai/Oct) 149th Open Championship (Rescheduled for 2021) Betfred British Masters (Renato Paratore/Aug) Olympic Games (Rescheduled for 2021)

august Real D+D Czech Masters OMEGA European Masters

september Porsche European Open KLM Open BMW PGA Championship (Tyrrell Hatton/Oct) Ryder Cup (Rescheduled for 2021)

october Alfred Dunhill Links Championship Italian Open 8-11 (Ross McGowan/Oct 22-25) Open de Espana Portugal Masters (George Coetzee/Sept) WGC-HSBC Champions

november Turkish Airlines Open Nedbank Golf Challenge DP World Tour Championship (Rescheduled for Dec. 10-13) *Postponed due to Civil Unrest

36 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

new events established post the covid-19 outbreak ▶ Name in brackets denotes winner

july Austrian Open (Marc Warren) Euram Bank Open (Joel Stalter) Hero Open (Sam Horsfield)

august English Championship (Andy Sullivan) Celtic Classic (Sam Horsfield) ISPS Handa Wales Open (Romain Langasque) ISPS Handa UK Championship (Rasmus Højgaard)

september Open de Portugal (Garrick Higgo)

october Scottish Championship (Adrian Otaegui) Aphrodite Hills Cyprus Open (Callum Shinkwin)

november Aphrodite Hills Cyprus Showdown (Robert MacIntyre) Joburg Open (Joachim B. Hansen) Alfred Dunhill Championship (Nov 26-29)

december Golf in Dubai Championship presented by DP World (Dec. 2-5) South African Open (Dec. 3-6)

b e low : 1. Marc Warren 2. Joel Stalter 3. Sam Horsfield 4. Andy Sullivan 5. Sam Horsfield 6. Romain Langasque 7. Rasmus Højgaard 8. Garrick Higgo 9. Adrian Otaegui 10. Callum Shinkwin 11. Robert MacIntyre 12. Joachim B. Hansen

pions already lured to Royal Greens Golf & Country Club for the 3rd Saudi International in February, the Kingdom’s ambitious foray into golf has again been reiterated. There’s still even murmurs about the Saudi-backed Premier Golf League, seemingly dead before COVID and deathly quiet since, simmering away behind the scenes. Whatever happens, the question remains whether the European Tour can survive, much less thrive, if the game’s big name players dip in and out of the season only when the big money is on offer. It’s a perplexing conundrum for the Wentworth brains trust although Pelley says the quirk that could see Morikawa crowned Race to Dubai champion this month despite only playing one pure European Tour event – the $8 million DPWTC finale itself – is a peak 2020 scenario. “Collin joined the European Tour as an affiliate member at the start of the year and became a full member when he won the US PGA Championship in August. He had been looking forward to coming over to play some regular European Tour events in the summer months, but the situation this year has not allowed for that,” Pelley said. “You probably saw his comments about coming to the DP World Tour Championship when he said how excited he is to be able to play in the Middle East for the first time so early in his career and have the chance to win the Race to Dubai. So we’re looking forward to welcoming him to Jumeirah Golf Estates and to more European Tour events next year too.” With regards to Pelley’s final comment, Middle East fans should definitely watch this space. The region is also fascinated to see how the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, now under European Tour control after passing from IMG, plays out too. Will the marquee names of years past return? Will there be fans? Will Muscat and Doha be tagged onto the early season Desert Swing? Will other Middle East events be added? So many questions, still so much uncertainty. This unprecedented Race to Dubai will thankfully be decided by the players at JGE which is a win in itself given how the pandemic has changed everything. But what happens next will be the definitive play of 2020. As it was in Doha when Pelley had no other alternative but to suspend the season, you somehow suspect he won’t have all the answers straight away. COVID is proving a formidable, relentless foe. The scramble for survival continues. Photographs by Getty Images

THE RACE BY KENT GRAY

lee westwood in abu dhabi ▶ Ahhh, January. Remember how easy life was way back then. Lee Westwood made golf look simple too, most of the time anyway, en-route to a 25th European Tour title at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship to become just the third player to win on tour in four decades after Mark McNulty and Des Smyth. Lucas Herbert’s playoff win in Dubai was dramatic, Graeme McDowell’s Saudi triumph rather romantic. But Westwood’s lesson in longevity won Abu Dhabi the Desert Swing. We wonder now what Westy's defence will look like.

38 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

FIVE REASONS WHY THE COVID-COMPLICATED EUROPEAN TOUR SEASON WASN’T SO BAD AFTER ALL

great to be back ▶ Four months after the season was suspended in Qatar, the European Tour returned to action at Diamond Country Club in Atzenbrugg near Vienna. It has been a fraught wait and the Austrian Open rather fitting crowned Marc Warren champion. It was a fourth European Tour title after the sweet-swinging Scot’s own long wait – six years – since his previous win. It was low key but absolutely brilliant to be back. Photographs by Getty Images

the uk swing ▶ The European Tour went back to its roots with a hastily-arranged, six-event UK Swing that was an unexpected bonus for lovers of “traditional” golf. The geographicallyclustered swing was, as CEO Keith Pelley sign-posted at the time, a “glimpse into the future” and we are down with that. If we had one wish for the future it would be the promotion of courses like Sunningdale in the magical Surrey/Berkshire sand-belt. Wishful thinking maybe but hey, who would have thought a few months ago that a face mask would be an essential piece of golfing kit? If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s how we suddenly treasure the pleasures of great things from our past.

spaceman We’ve had a soft spot for Andy Sullivan ever since the genial Englishman won a space flight as a hole-in-one prize at the 2014 KLM Open and promptly turned it down. "I’m thinking, if anything happens to the pilot, I’m in charge and that’s not a position I want to be in. So I’ve put the mother-in-law up for that one,” Sullivan joked in a Golf Channel interview two years later. We loved Sully’s seven-stroke win at Hanbury Manor and didn’t his post-victory video link-up with the family after the English Championship epitomise how even celebrating has changed in the era of COVID. The laughter, and tears, flowed after a near-five year wait for his fourth European Tour title. "It was just the people that have missed this win, my brother-in-law was only 24 and he was taken from us. so it’s quite emotional for him not to witness it. It means quite a lot for me to do it for him today, and a good friend of mine has passed as well. It’s nice for my family, to win for my little boy who is only two years old, it’s just nice for him to see Daddy being successful.” How cool is golf.

40 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

(6) getty images

belfry Sam Horsefield galloped away with a pair of UK Swing wins but for us it was Rasmus Højgaard’s triumph at the ISPS Handa UK Championship (pictured) that got us all emotional. More specifically it was the return to the Brabazon course at the Belfry that had us romanticising glories of Ryder Cups past. Sure, time and technology has moved on but here was proof why we shouldn’t totally dismiss tradition.

links luvviness Englishman Garrick Porteous hits from the hay on the 16th hole during the final round of the Scottish Championship presented by AXA at Fairmont St Andrews; Adrian Otaegui (Spain) tees off on the 14th hole en-route to victory

the home of golf ▶ With the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship canned, it was a bonus to return to St. Andrews for some links luvviness at the new Scottish Championship presented by AXA – especially as we’d been robbed of the season’s ultimate (links) highlight, the 149th Open at Royal St. George’s. It was doubly sweet that Adrian Otaegui, with his Dubai-links, won on the Fairmont course. With that said, here’s a memo to Keith Pelley re scheduling, along the line of our earlier Sunningdale plea: How about events at gems old and new like Royal Dornock, Cruden Bay, Nairn, Western Giles, Machrihanish and North Berwick? If you really want to appeal to the purist, head back to Prestwick. We know, we know, the original home of the Open would be embarrassed by today’s big-boofers. But would it really if the weather gods were alerted? Hey, it’s been a tough year. Let us dream on.

home of golf: getty images • fire course: courtesy of jge

golf in dubai championship ▶ We’ve loved some of the new destinations added to the reimagined Race to Dubai schedule, the double-header at Aphrodite Hills with those breath-taking Cyprus vistas a fresh case-in-point. But for those of us who regularly golf the UAE, the exposé of Greg Norman’s Fire course at Jumeirah Golf Estates will be a special treat. More than a few believe it is a stronger design than Earth. Whatever your opinion, the 11-days at JGE culminating in the DP World Tour Championship are sure to provide a dramatic ending to this unthinkable year, a European Tour season that hasn’t turned out so bad after all. december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

Fireâ€™s

Pivotal 5 dubai golf head of academies stephen deane surveys the holes set to play a crucial role in the outcome of the inaugural golf in dubai championship on fire

Golf in Dubai Championship

these are exciting times

for Jumeirah Golf Estates. Back-to-back European Tour events are a golden opportunity to showcase the Dubai Golf-managed club’s two Greg Norman designed courses, Fire and Earth, to a global television audience. It will be a boon for Dubai Inc., showing the world that the Emirate is open for business after the complications of COVID-19. There’s more to come with the OMEGA Dubai Desert Classic at sister club Emirates G.C. in January, not to mention the opening of the Middle East’s first Topgolf facility on the old Faldo driving range this month.

Back at JGE, there’s sure to be numerous shots of the picturesque range and world class short-game improvement area beamed around the world too as the European Tour’s class of 2020 prep for their final fortnight. It’s a timely sales pitch for Dubai Golf’s network of Peter Cowen Golf Academies. “We wish Peter Cowen Academy

tour players Jazz Janewattananond, Thomas Pieters, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Callum Shinkwin, Eddie Pepperell, Mike Lorenzo-Vera and Romain Langasque every success as they compete in the penultimate event of the European Tour’s 2020 season,” Dubai Golf said ahead of the inaugural Golf in Dubai Championship, scheduled for Dec, 2-5 on Fire. “We’re also excited to announce the launch of our online academy coming soon, giving students globally the opportunity to improve their games remotely when and whenever they maybe.” In the meantime, we’ve commissioned Dubai Golf’s JGE-based Head of Academies Stephen Dean to help us negotiate the holes on Fire set to decide where the European Tour’s newest event will be won and lost.

Hole 2

Hole 7

This is a challenging hole so early in the round. With a 230-yard carry to reach a green complex well-guarded by bunkers, a solid long iron or hybrid shot here is a must. The large, undulating green provides the opportunity for some challenging pin placements come the weekend. The 2nd has the potential to be a momentum maker or breaker for the rest of the round.

With a green easily reachable in two shots for the European Tour’s best, expect plenty of red numbers on this straight away par 5. Birdies and eagles will abound with the hole a chance for the front-runners to extend their lead or perhaps those tripped up earlier, maybe by the tricky 2nd, to claw their way back into proceedings.

Par3, 250 Yards

Par 5, 555 Yards

december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

Hole 10

Par 4, 490 Yards The longest par 4 on Fire has a double defence with out of bounds down the entire left hand side and well placed bunkers in the landing area off the tee and guarding the green front right. The contenders need to stand up and hit a solid tee shot here because there is no bail out. Will be a pivotal hole as the pressure heats up moving into the back nine come Saturdayâ€™s final round.

44 golfdigestme.com | december 2020

Golf in Dubai Championship

Hole 11

Par 3, 251 Yards The longest par 4 on the course is followed by Fire’s longest par 3. It’s home to a long green that will again provide some testy pin placements. The leaders will need to pay close attention to their club selection as anything short can easily find the well placed bunker on the right and anything long or flighted too low will release quickly through the back of the green. Anyone playing the 10th and 11th under par will certainly make a move on the field.

Hole 16

Par 4, 340 Yards A great short, risk-reward hole that will tempt many to have a nudge at the green off the tee, depending on the tee location and wind direction. A raised green means any miss to the right brings a problematic, but far from impossible, up and down birdie into play. This hole will produce many birdie and eagle opportunities and will challenge the players’ strategically each day. A front tee, downwind scenario come the final round will certainly make this a pivotal hole as the players close in on the European Tour’s newest piece of silverware. december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

12th dp world tour championship

The Curious Case Of

PATRICK REED if â€˜captain americaâ€™ becomes the first pl ayer from the united states to win the r ace to dubai, will it shush his fiercest critics? yes, sir. well , sort of.

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By Kent Gray

T’S FAR TOO EASY to relitigate the litany of incendiary moments that mark the extraordinary life and times of Patrick Nathaniel Reed. ▶ On the cusp of securing a place in history as the first American to become European No.1, it is perhaps even unfair to propagate his status as the modern day antihero of world golf. Yet to paper over the controversies would serve no justice to the story of one of the most intriguing and complicated characters in the game. It would also ignore some fairly damning evidence. It started in college where Reed was famously booted off the team at the University of Georgia in 2009. Chalk up his arrest for underage drinking and possession of a fake ID while at Georgia to a youthful mistake righted by 60 hours of community service. But the allegations of inaccurate scorecard accountancy, golf’s most heinous crime, that have dogged the now 30-year-old since his brief stint at Georgia have been tougher to shake. At his next school, Augusta State University, most of the roster reportedly tolerated him as a necessary evil in helping deliver the school consecutive NCAA championships in 2010 and 2011. He was even thumbed for stealing from team-mates. “Those on the professional circuit who were college teammates with Reed at Georgia and Augusta State have nothing to do with him,” Kevin Kisner told Golf Digest in late 2018. “They all hate him.” Reed has continued to strenuously deny all and every charge but his historical defence was considerably weakened at last year’s Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. Penalised for improving his lie in a waste area while leading Photographs by Getty Images

Tiger’s end of season hit and giggle, Reed continues to argue that the angle of the camera shots that caught him painted an unfair TV picture. Reed was inevitably and ruthlessly heckled at the Presidents Cup the following week. Some in the gallery carried plastic shovels and one American-accented fan even joked out loud, “Patrick, are you really going to make your caddie carry 14 clubs and a shovel?” ‘Captain America’ kept his cool at Royal Melbourne until the second day when a fan yelled out “miss it” just as he was about to pull the trigger on an important six-footer. Reed reset and duly sank the putt before twice making exaggerated shovelling gestures with his putter. Some saluted it as a quick riposte, others saw as a callous omission of guilt. Such is the tightrope Reed walks. Off the course, Reed’s feud with his parents Bill and Jeannette, an awkward silent treatment that extends to his younger sister Hannah, has also served to deepen the intrigue. It has played out since Reed, just 22 at the time, married Justine Karain in late 2012 after they’d met at Augusta State. Reports that Justine

ordered security to escort Reed’s estranged folks out of the 2014 U.S. Open have subsequently been corrected by a USGA official who confirmed the pair had been removed on the “observation of local law enforcement, who reported Bill Reed had made what they described as an intimidating movements towards Justine Reed.

EXPERIENCING NEW CULTURES AND PLAYING IN DIFFERENT CONDITIONS ULTIMATELY HELPS ME BECOME A MORE WELLROUNDED GOLFER AND PERSON. — p at r i c k r e e d

THERE ARE OBVIOUSLY SOME THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED, BUT AS A PERSON HE IS TOP DRAWER. —robert macintyre o n p at r i c k r e e d “Patrick and Justine Reed had nothing to do with Bill & Jeannette Reed’s removal from the course, their badges being confiscated, or any request for them not to return to the event that week.” You can’t choose your family but you can choose your friends, right? Reed may be thought so until the 2018 Ryder Cup when, slighted by the breaking up of his previously successful partnership with Jordan Spieth, he called out both Spieth and U.S. captain Jim Furyk following a 17½10½ thrashing at the hands of Europe at Le Golf National. Critics point to that New York Times exposé as all you need to know about Reed’s self-centred character and insist the aforementioned (alleged) indiscretions are just the tip of the iceberg. They may have a point. Since his Masters win in 2018, Reed has also been involved in a verbal dust-up with a TV crew and a bizarre social-media incident with the PGA Tour involving baseball tickets. Whisked together, it muddies one of the most impressive records of the modern era; a Masters green jacket, Ryder Cup cult-hero status (until Paris at least) and eight PGA Tour titles including a World Golf Championship and FedEx Cup playoff wins.

Reed’s triumph at the 2014 WGC-Cadillac Championship had the potential to transform his public perception. And yet his great play to pip Bubba Watson and Jamie Donaldson at Trump National Doral in Miami, allowing him to become the youngest winner of a WGC title, was lost in a typically honest interview afterwards. “I have three wins on the PGA Tour. I truly believe that I am a top-five player in the world,” said Reed, unwittingly repositioning himself in the public crosshairs. a bove : r e e d is e m br ac ed by wif e j u st in e a f t e r win n n g t h e 2018 m a st ers . be low: wit h c a d d ie k e ss ler k a r a in at t h e r ec e n t zozo c h a mp io n s h ip

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It was a bold claim from the then world No.44, especially as he hadn’t yet teed it up in a major. But Reed doubled down after also becoming just the fifth pro to capture three or more PGA Tour titles before his 24th birthday, joining Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy. “I don’t see a lot of guys that have done that besides Tiger Woods and the legends of the game. I believe in myself, especially with how hard I’ve worked. I’m one of the top-five players in the world. I feel like I’ve proven myself.” Others can and have gotten away with such brazenness (Brooks Koepka, anyone?). But golf is a game that generally likes its champions humble and if nothing else, squeaky-clean

on the course. Reed, a man who continues to speak and stand by his own truth, insists he is no cheat but many won’t afford him any more mulligans. Others, like recent European Tour winner Robert MacIntyre, reckon Reed’s strong self-belief might simply be misunderstood. “I have played him a fair few times now, and I think he is an absolute gem of a guy,” the Scottish lefty, who was paired with Reed for the opening 36 holes of the PGA Championship, told the UK’s National Club Golfer magazine. “I have actually spoken about it with [my caddie] Gregg and other players, because the two of us get on. There are obviously some things that have happened, but as a person he is top drawer.”

World View

ot long before Justine gave birth to the couple’s first child in May 2014, her bother Kessler Karain took over caddie duties from his sister. But the greater weight has continued to be shouldered by Reed ever since he anointed himself a “topfive” player. History records that he’s yet to reach that lofty plateau although Reed has gone agonisingly close, ascending to 6th spot in the OWGR following the Charles Schwab Challenge in June, the PGA Tour’s first event post COVID. It’s easy to dredge up past incidents and pin perceived cockiness on Reed but in his defence, there are also ample examples of good deeds and an appreciation of his place in the bigger scheme of golfing things. Reed is scheduled to return to the Saudi International for the third successive year in February and has already been teed up to reunite with the young students at The World Academy in King Abdullah Economic City. Critics might argue that a tidy appearance fee makes any after hours appearance thinly

veined PR fluff. But Reed seems earnestly engaged. “I enjoy meeting new fans and travelling to different parts of the world to help grow the game of golf, and I truly enjoy the different cultures and countries that we visit,” he said. “To be able to play at some of the best courses around the world is such a gift and something that I am truly grateful to be able to do.” Indeed, join the queue to say what you will about the current world No.11. But criticism of his support of the European Tour since 2015 cannot be levelled. His commitment was rewarded in January 2019 when Reed joined Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson as the only Americans to be awarded Honorary Life Membership to the European Tour. It has also been underlined this year when, after missing the cut in Saudi, he ignored the risks of trans-Atlantic

jumeirah golf estates

roll of honour DPWTC Year Race to Dubai Jon Rahm Danny Willett Jon Rahm Matt Fitzpatrick Rory McIlroy Henrik Stenson Henrik Stenson Rory McIlroy Alvaro Quiros Robert Karlsson Lee Westwood

2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009

Jon Rahm Francesco Molinari Tommy Fleetwood Henrik Stenson Rory McIlroy Rory McIlroy Henrik Stenson Rory McIlroy Luke Donald Martin Kaymer Lee Westwood

travel and the restrictions of bio-secure bubbles to finish T-3 at the tour’s flagship BMW PGA Championship in October, regaining in the process the Race to Dubai lead he first established in February after winning the WGC-Mexico. Reed has always voiced his desire to be seen as a world player. The trick now is to record his first win outside North America with that trademark, cut-off iron (and sometimes driver) swing and silky short-game of his. “It would be an honour to become the first American to win the Race to Dubai and I’m really looking forward to the challenge of competing at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai,” said Reed who finished T-2 to Danny Willett in the 2018 DPWTC and second overall in the Race to Dubai that same year. “Being a worldwide player is certainly at the forefront of my mind as a professional. Experiencing new cultures and playing in different conditions ultimately helps me become a more wellrounded golfer and person.” Which begs the question: surely Reed is aware of his negative public reputation? Is it not important to you to be popular, Patrick? “You know, that’s one great thing about the sport we play is you know, whether it’s here, whether it’s anywhere else we play around the world. A lot of

a bove: reed recei ves h on o ury li fe memb ers h i p of th e europe a n to ur from k ei th pelley. b elow : reed pl ays i n to th e 18th green at jge d uri n g th e 2018 dp w orld to ur ch a mpi on s h i p

the fans, they respect great golf and they want to see great golf,” said Reed on the eve of his Masters title defence in 2019. “It all depends on how you handle yourself, and the more interactive you are with the fans, the more they are going to respect you. Because at the end of the day, the more the fans and the people get to know you, the more they realise that you’re just a normal guy out there playing golf and you’re just doing your profession.” Reed perhaps hasn’t

handled himself the way others would have hoped for since those comments at Augusta National 20 months ago. But the desire to play great golf worldwide remains. “He relishes the chance to be seen as a global player and to experience new cultures, so it has been great to see him embrace the opportunities the European Tour can offer in that respect as golf’s global Tour,” said European Tour CEO Keith Pelley. “He came over to Wentworth again in October for the BMW PGA Championship and finished tied third, then he also played well in the [top-10 at the Nov 2020] Masters to extend his lead at the top of the Race to Dubai, so he now has a good chance to realise that ambition at the DP World Tour Championship.” There’s the thing. Unabashed ambition. Come at Patrick Reed all you want but the only critic he listens to is himself. And in Reed’s mind at least, the best way to answer the only critic that truly matters is to win. Queue another four-day circumnavigation of Earth. “Winning the Race to Dubai and the European Tours’ Order of Merit has always been a goal of mine. I came close in 2018 and you can bet I will do my best to earn the No.1 spot [this year].”

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b ra in s an d be au t y The green of the par-3 third (right) is elevated well above the conjoined 16th green, giving it an unobstructed view of the ocean. Itâ€™s a clever trick that maximises exposures of the coast, a directive given to architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.

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COORE & CRENSHAWâ€™S SHEEP RANCH ADDS TO THE LORE OF BANDON DUNES BY DEREK DUNCAN december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

n a year riven with change, with ground shifting weekly and everything from offices to school to food and safety and the very bonds of society open to re-examination, finding consistency in the world of golf-course design is notable. In golf architecture at least, the advent of this decade resembles the beginning of the last. Before 2010, Golf Digest annually announced Best New Course winners in several categories, including Best New Public Under $75, Best New Public Over $75 and Best New Private as well as for various forms of renovation, going so far as listing the top-10 finalists in each division. But with only a few dozen courses making it across the finish line that year because of the economic calamities of 2008 and 2009, the magazine chose not to officially name a Best New Course in 2010, the first time since it was created in 1983 that no award was given. It’s humorous now to think that the 40 or so new courses that opened in 2010 didn’t form a critical mass large enough to merit the magazine’s full attention and thus an award. The courseconstruction recession was considered a temporary squall, but course openings have remained maddeningly scarce over the past 10 years, and this year’s class consists of just 15 graduates. But feeling that new course openings are now more newsworthy than ever, we’ve decided to proceed with the prize—though because of travel difficulties and the extenuating circumstances of the moment we gave each facility that opened in late 2019 or 2020 the option to postpone its candidacy until 2021. (A number of courses took us up on the offer; wait for them next year.) That said, some remarkable similarities remain between the bookends of the past decade. In 2010, Bandon Dunes, the golf Shangri-La in southwest Oregon, opened Old Macdonald, the resort’s fourth course. Photographs by Dom Furore

Designed by Tom Doak and Jim Urbina, Old Macdonald took the “ideal” hole concepts that C.B. Macdonald introduced at the National Golf Links of America in 1911 and blended them into a rugged seaside arena of dunes and gorse. Now, 10 years later, Bandon Dunes has debuted another new links-inspired course, Sheep Ranch, the resort’s fifth 18-hole layout. Old Macdonald did not win Best New Course of the Year back then—remember, no award that year—but Sheep Ranch, in 2020, has. Sheep Ranch, by any standard, is a worthy winner and a breathtaking addition to the world of golf. Eight greens occupy cliffside positions—nine if you count that of the par-3 third, elevated above the conjoined 16th green offering a box-seat view of the Pacific. It is by far the most open of Bandon’s oceanfront rota— Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and, to a lesser extent, Old Macdonald, each break out spectacularly toward the coastline, but their interior sections play through broken topography with holes tucked in pockets and protected by dune ridges. Sheep Ranch is entirely exposed, its holes rambling across a naked blufftop plain to the north of Old Macdonald. The ground heaves with large and small contours, but because the soil is a heavy, gravelly clay rather than sand—locals call it red buckshot—there’s no dunal protection. The holes wander entirely atop the landforms rather than down and between them. The relatively small projection of land that encompasses Sheep Ranch— including Five Mile Point, the spit of cliffs where the aforementioned third and 16th

cha lle ng ing The lovely but perilous green of the par-3 16th, part of the original Sheep Ranch course, is perched on the promontory of Five Mile Point, one of the most exposed and windiest places on the Oregon coast.

greens stretch out over the beach—is one of the windiest spots on the Oregon coast, more so than the other Bandon courses. The persistent gales influenced nearly every design decision made by architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. “The wind was probably the most significant factor in regards to how we laid out the holes,” Coore says. “I guess you could flip that and say the decisive factor was trying to take advantage of the coastline and the natural, extraordinary contours of that site, but at least equally, if not more so, was the consideration of the wind.” Their thinking was constantly, What’s the wind doing, what’s the ground doing, and how do we marry these two elements to make it not only pretty and even dramatic, but playable?

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No surprise, the property was once a wind farm populated with stanchions of towering turbines. It was also, more recently, a different golf course, the secretive Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch, consisting of 13 informal and barely maintained holes laid out by Doak, Urbina and Don Placek when they were building Pacific Dunes in the early 2000s. Few people knew about the course, and fewer had the chance to see it—it was not available to the public—but those who did encountered a humble, originalist version of the game on a playing field that 18th-century Scottish shepherds would have recognised. The land provided enough room for these rudimentary holes that could be played in a variety of directions because

of the emptiness of the course. But as Bandon developer Mike Keiser and former business partner Phil Friedmann, co-owners of the Sheep Ranch property, upscaled to 18 holes, the site became suddenly tight, bound by natural borders to the west (the ocean) and on the south end (Whiskey Run ravine), and property lines to the north and the east. The puzzle would be how to best utilise such rare ocean frontage, yet still provide enough room for the holes away from the coast. “When I first went to the property, the thing I was trying to really study was the coastline,” Coore says. “Mike and Phil were very adamant about it—they said, ‘Bill, you and Ben find a way to take advantage of every foot of it.’ ” Coore knew that to maximise all the

EIGHT GREENS OCCUPY CLIFFSIDE POSITIONS— NINE IF YOU COUNT THAT OF THE PAR-3 THIRD, ELEVATED ABOVE THE CONJOINED 16TH GREEN OFFERING A BOX-SEAT VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN. december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

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o ce a n vie ws The par-3 fifth is one of nine greens at Sheep Ranch located along the Pacific bluffs. In the background, the par-4 sixth engages the shoreline in a different way, requiring a calculation of the wind and how much of the cove to bite off.

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yo u’l l se e gh o sts The par-4 17th shows the extreme latitude needed to accommodate Sheep Ranch’s heavy winds. Iconic shore pines stripped bare by weather, known at Bandon as “ghost trees,” are a testament to the site’s forces of nature.

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spectacular aspects he had to find ways to run holes out to the cliff edge and back rather than strictly parallel to it. The par-4 sixth with a diagonal tee shot over the beach and the par-4 17th play entirely along the coast, as does the second half of the 15th and the par-3 16th. But the first, third, fifth, seventh and ninth greens all receive crosswind shots coming from perpendicular or oblique inland angles. Combining certain tee complexes was the second key to generating holes that were wide enough to capture the extreme dispersion of drives screaming along the hardened ground or riding the seasonal north or southwesterly winds. Coore’s

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a-ha moment was realising that two holes playing next to each other from the same point but oriented in slightly different directions would fan out into everincreasing space, resulting in fairways 100 yards across in some places. The concept is geometric, a theory of triangles and expanding interior angles. Coore looked at it slightly differently. “I wasn’t thinking about it so much in terms of degrees of angles or mathematics,” he says. “I kind of looked at it as, well, you’ve got a piece of pizza here. If you put the pointy end of the pizza at the tee, you’ll have a wider place to hit to out there.”

As with all courses designed by Coore, Crenshaw and their associates and shapers, Sheep Ranch is a menagerie of found objects. Five greens are built atop the foundations of the old Sheep Ranch greens, mimicking them but in exaggerated form. Several of the holes away from the ocean—the fourth, 10th and 14th in particular, all muscular par 4s—show off natural ground contours that are equally exciting and audacious. The breadth of these holes, the running turf and the robust shaping of the putting surfaces combine for playing experiences that change day to day depending on the wind, hole locations and personal proclivities.

“I KIND OF LOOKED AT IT AS, WELL, YOU’VE GOT A PIECE OF PIZZA HERE. IF YOU PUT THE POINTY END OF THE PIZZA AT THE TEE, YOU’LL HAVE A WIDER PLACE TO HIT TO OUT THERE.” —BILL COORE The 11th might rival the seaside holes for conversational material. Abutting woodlands on the property’s eastern boundary, it’s a par 5 that climbs toward an old quarry that the original design team used to harvest sand. Coore and Crenshaw’s crew collapsed a portion of the quarry’s high earthen wall that enclosed it to expose a large cavity where the green now sits, deep in the pocket and mostly blind from the fairway below. The concept of the eighth green, meanwhile, bulging and rolling on each side of a deep swale, was essentially discovered in the ground when cleared of gorse, and the strong central spine that cuts front to back

through the centre of the 15th green was part of a construction road that used to run along the ocean bluffs. Another anomaly at Sheep Ranch is the absence of bunkers—at least traditional sand-filled bunkers. The site was deemed too windy for them, but what’s here are in fact bunkers. They are excavations of earth with irregular-shape edges and grass floors, places beneath the wind that animals would, were they present, scrape ever deeper when harboring from severe storms—which is in fact how golf’s earliest bunkers formed. A bigger playability concern is the space between the holes. When left alone, the native grasses (and the gorse) grow high and thick, adding a lovely visage when billowing in the breeze but also becoming cruel in their appetite for golf balls. Yet the course takes on a stark, abstract appearance when these areas are uniformly mowed. What to do? Call it a work in progress. The synthesis of wind, ocean holes and extravagant contour gains Sheep Ranch entry into an elite category of American links. Modest as usual, Coore says: “We just wanted to do something there that was worthy of the site and worthy of being a family member of Bandon. Time will tell.” For Golf Digest panelists, the time is now. ▶

o p t i o n s Though it plays no more than 155 yards, the seventh (top) can require long irons and even metalwoods into the winter headwinds, but might be just a bump sand wedge downwind in the summer. The green at the par-5 11th (below) sits high above the fairway in the bowl of an old sand quarry. Second shots played too close to the base of the hill leave steep, uphill approach to a blind target.

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nice i n t ro d u c t i o n Sheep Ranch wastes no time making an impression, taking players at the par-5 first from secluded interior ground down a tumbling fairway toward an infinity green set against the Pacific Ocean horizon.

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december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

INTRODUCING THE FUN FACTOR a confession here: Golf Digest’s course-ranking process has never been perfect, but it has always been transparent. So in the interest of full disclosure, let it be known that in past years our eight course-evaluation criteria were a bit cumbersome and confusing, not just to readers but to some of the 1,800 low-handicap male and female golfers who volunteer as panelists. So in 2018, we retooled our system by redefining and renaming four categories and tossing out two others in favour of two new ones. The result is a process that’s easier to understand; it’s also likely to generate some surprising changes in future rankings. That’s because one of the new criteria we’ve introduced is called Fun. Yeah, in all the years Golf Digest has been ranking golf courses—America’s 100 Greatest started in 1966, America’s Best New Courses started in 1983—we never gave much thought to fun. You could argue that we were too infatuated with the notion of championship golf, but honestly, what kept consideration of fun out of our previous course rankings was our desire to eliminate expressions of emotion in our deliberations. In the past, we always strove to have our panelists judge courses clinically, dispassionately, without bias or favouritism. What changed? The realisation that even back then, we had one category—Aesthetics—that relied on emotional reactions. Defined as “How well do the scenic values of the course add to the pleasure of a round?” it remains today as one of the two categories not redefined or eliminated in our revised format. (The other is Conditioning, which is not

used in our Best New formula because new courses are still growing in and thus immature in turf qualities.) In retrospect, our persistence in removing as much emotion as possible in our deliberations was probably a disservice to our readers. Fun is the foundation of golf. It’s why we play the game. Fun is also fundamental to every golf architect’s thought process. It’s what drives traffic to their products and generates repeat business. If a course design isn’t fun to play, it won’t survive. As much as we want our panelists to be judges, not critics, we recognised that our course rankings lacked the emotional element that most golfers use in judging courses. Therefore, we now have a category called Fun: “How enjoyable for all levels of golfers would this course be to play on a regular basis?” The 2020 Best New Course survey is the first to include Fun in the rankings formula. Whether it will be factored into next year’s ranking of America’s 100 Greatest remains to be seen—enough panelists have to judge all courses in that new category before we’ll be comfortable including its average score as part of the 100 Greatest formula in 2021—but if not then, certainly it will be included by 2023. (Fun replaces our old Playability category, which had perhaps the most convoluted definition of them all.) Our other new category is Character, which replaces our Ambience criterion, the one we called our “catch-all” category. Character is defined as, “How well does the course design exude ingenuity and uniqueness and possess profound characteristics that you would consider outstanding for its era?” Its emphasis of comparing courses within eras will likely have an impact on our rankings as well. As for the others, Shot Values has become Shot Options with a slightly revised definition: “How well does the course present a variety of options involving risks

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and rewards and require a wide range of shots?” Resistance to Scoring is now known as Challenge with a slight tweak in its definition: “How challenging, while still being fair, is the course for the typical scratch golfer playing from the tees designated as the back tees for everyday play (not the seldom-used championship tees)?” Design Variety is now Layout Variety: “How varied is the physical layout

of the course in terms of differing lengths (long, medium and short par 3s, 4s and 5s), configurations (straight holes, doglegs left and right), hazard placement, green shapes and green contours?” Memorability is now Distinctiveness: “How individual is each hole when compared to all others on this course?” By tradition, the Shot Options average score is given double weight over all others in every course-ranking formula, but as we said, it’s the new Fun factor that might prove to be the wild card. —ron whitten

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ru nne r- u p The par-3 16th at Troubadour Golf & Field Club near Nashville.

FAZIO’S TROUBADOUR A RUNNER-UP

courtesy of troubadour

Best New Course ceremony without Tom Fazio would be like an Academy Awards without Meryl Streep. Beginning in 1987, when Wade Hampton in North Carolina earned the Best New Private Course prize, Fazio has produced 13 winning original designs and too many additional top-10s to count. That doesn’t include several renovation awards. Two years ago, Congaree Golf Club in South Carolina earned Best New Private Course, and Fazio is back in 2020 with the silver medal for Troubadour Golf & Field Club. Troubadour, part of the Discovery Land Company’s growing international

portfolio, is integrated into a high-end, amenity-rich development 30 miles south of Nashville. (The name is a reference to traveling musicians, familiar figures in these parts.) Sparing no expense, the course is built upon the bones of the former Hideaway at Arrington course, originally routed and built by the firm of von Hagge, Smelek and Baril. Interestingly, nine of this year’s Best New Course candidates were redesigns of existing courses or properties, a sign of the times. Troubadour’s elevated tees take players on a tour of the surrounding central Tennessee foothills. Though the holes play mostly down through established corridors, the redesign has eliminated much of the previous severity, replacing

fields of steep, grassy moguls and ornate bunker clusters with longer, graceful lines. A number of greens were remediated away from hazards to more accessible locations, significantly at par 5s like 3, 9 and 12. Fazio and associate Blake Bickford also pushed the lateral boundaries farther toward the tree line, creating substantially more playing space, establishing greater visibility for their lovely golf compositions and introducing clean, large-format bunkers that guide the eye toward favoured landing areas. The highlight is the panorama-rich run of holes 10 through 15 that ride up and down through isolated topography, cross creek ravines and generally look like they’ve existed there for decades, not months. ▶ december 2020 | golfdigestme.com

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GOING WIDE: SHEEP RANCH IS THE LATEST NOD TO VARIETY sheep ranch, the Best New Course of 2020, is an embodiment of the old choreographies of links golf. It is also an expression of a new movement—a revival, actually—toward creating increased width and spaciousness. Though Sheep Ranch sits on a relatively small site—fewer than 150 acres—the playing fields are enormous, with fairways 60 to 100 yards wide. One of the factors motivating the width movement of the past two decades—exemplified by places like Streamsong, the Bandon Dunes courses and Chambers Bay—is a renaissance of neoclassical design ideals and a renewed appreciation for the architectural elements that unite so many of the world’s great courses. Architects of the early 20th century, for instance, implemented much larger playing areas than their successors did because they believed the room was needed to incorporate diverse strategies and to set up multiple angles of play, important considerations given the pre-modern equipment of the era. Properties now being developed for golf, often in sparsely populated destinations where space constraints are of lesser concern, offer that possibility again. Architects working on these relatively enormous pieces of land have more freedom than ever to utilise scale and create epic presentations. Places like The Prairie Club (Nebraska), Sutton Bay (South Dakota) and Erin Hills (Wisconsin) also happen to be intensely windy, requiring large, receptive turf areas and green surrounds. Seaside sites like Sheep Ranch, Tara Iti in New Zealand and the Plantation Course at Kapalua are even windier and might need fairways widths of 60 to 80 yards, if not more.

But perhaps the best explanation for why width is in vogue is because it allows for the greatest amount of fun and variety. A belief shared by many of the day’s most influential architects—and one the previous generation too often didn’t share—is that above all else, golf should be enjoyable. The game is intrinsically difficult, so the playing grounds needn’t make it more so. They should be encouraging instead of formidable, and designed for interest, variability and excitement. No architect has been more vocal recently in advocating for courses that are fun and forgiving than David McLay Kidd. Two of his latest creations in particular exemplify the effectiveness of width on psychology and scoring. Gamble Sands, situated atop a high-desert plateau in central Washington, features extremely wide fairways and presents players diagonal carry options on the majority of tee shots. It’s a golf racetrack, one of the most exciting and daring driving courses in the world, yet there’s an almost infinite amount of space to accommodate the weary and the wild. Mammoth Dunes, at Sand Valley in Wisconsin, is possibly the largest course

brian oar

ur third-place winner is the Pfau Course at Indiana University, another complete remodel, by Steve Smyers, of the school’s narrow, tree-lined 1950s-era layout. Smyers’ views on classical strategy have changed in recent years, particularly as they relate to elite players, and at Pfau he put his evolving design theories into practice. Traditional strategic paradigms dictate the closer one plays to a bunker or hazard (taking on a higher degree of risk), the shorter the next shot or the better the angle becomes (the reward). Smyers, an accomplished amateur player, believes the best golfers don’t play that way anymore. Instead, they aim away from trouble, and as long as they’re in the fairway they can orient approach shots toward the centre of greens and try to work the ball left or right off that spot toward hole locations, a tactic enhanced by the consistency of modern turf conditions. To counter that at the Pfau Course (and in addition to building 7,900-yard tournament tees), he has attempted to goad the best collegiate players into taking overly aggressive lines off the tee, angling perceived ideal landing zones so they effectively play smaller than other sections of the fairway. He doesn’t want to punish golfers but rather induce them into playing approaches from a short cut of rough that prohibits precise spin, leading to a loss of distance control and slightly longer roll-outs once the ball lands on the greens, which are often sloped away from the line of play. These are subtle rather than obvious strategies. Students, faculty, alumni and public guests will mostly notice the stroll through a beautiful, wooded property with newly widened corridors decorated with long native grasses and features shaped to reflect a rustic turn-ofthe-20th-century aesthetic. They’ll also appreciate 17 greens that are open in front, the comparatively modest contour of the putting surfaces and the shallow depth of the bunkers. The holy grail of golf design has always been to create courses that optimise the greatest fun for the greatest number, but that can also challenge the game’s best. Pfau becomes an attractive addition to that ongoing quest, and along with Sheep Ranch and Troubadour, represents the latest chapter—so far—in the never-ending story of American golf design.

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SMYERS’ INDIANA UNIVERSITY COURSE IS THIRD

relative to scale that has been built, with boundless holes filling enormous pockets of land along high, wooded dunes. Though there are a number of diagonal carry options, driving at Mammoth Dunes is more about placing the ball in certain sub-sections of the fairway to gain tactical advantage on the approach. This kind of design—and it’s the key to them being such fun to play—emphasises being able to find your golf ball and play it, even from sub-optimal positions. In other words, wider courses allow you—encourage you—to recover from poor shots and to keep a decent round or match alive. The architectural trick, however, is to also make them a worthwhile challenge for scratch players and those who want to earn a good score. At Gamble Sands that’s done on the tee, where the angles over arroyos, bunkers and sand washes incrementally taunt long drivers into taking aggressive,

perhaps too-aggressive lines. Ambitious play gets a distance reward, but the relatively tame, open-front greens also allow all golfers to advance forward with a chance to hole putts. There’s much more movement around and within Mammoth Dunes’ greens, but despite the prodigious room off the tee, bombers who drive it thoughtlessly will end up in bunkers, with an awkward stance, a blind shot, a disadvantaged angle or some combination of each. Even though these courses and their brethren appear to possess lateral limitlessness, they require analysis and strategic thinking to play well—in fact, the most thoughtfully designed wide courses, because of all the navigational options, actually require more strategic consideration than narrow courses. But they also promote feelings of freedom and opportunity that the majority of courses too often lack. In other words, they’re fun. And that’s a positive trend, far preferable than searching for lost golf balls. —dd

A HISTORY OF WIDTH ▶ circa 1850 The Old Course at St. Andrews Allan Robertson mows and clears gorse to create the Old Course’s double-wide fairways. ▶ 1911 The National Golf Links of America C.B. Macdonald’s “ideal” holes explore a previously unseen scale of American golf. ▶ 1914 The Lido Golf Club (extinct) The National 2.0, this time on a flat, expansive shoreside site.

▶ 1926 Royal Melbourne Melbourne’s Sand Belt is the perfect medium for Alister MacKenzie’s exploration of width and strategy. ▶ 1926 Yale Golf Course

A Leviathan golf site demands Leviathan architecture to match.

▶ 1933 Augusta National MacKenzie and Bobby Jones create one of the game’s greatest laboratories of width and contour. ▶ 1940-1990 The Age of Diminishing Fairways ▶ 1991 Kapalua (Plantation Course) A supersised property and holes to match are necessary for Maui’s coastal tradewinds. ▶ 1999 Tobacco Road Architectural post-modernism is expressed via exaggerated fairways that bulge and contract. ▶ 2001 Kinloch Club

Extreme width is necessary to handle all of Lester George’s double fairways.

▶ 2006 Erin Hills

Profound natural glacial formations are the ideal foundations for spacious, rollicking holes.

▶ 2007 Chambers Bay

Upper and lower sections of fairway require a prodigious amount of lateral room.

▶ 2010 Old Macdonald

When it opened, the rippled, rambling fairways were some of the largest in modern golf.

▶ 2014 Gamble Sands

Wide-open spaces and tantalising vistas encourage a go-for-broke mind-set.

▶ 2015 Tara Iti

Writhing swaths of fairways form immense loops through fields of dunes and sand.

▶ 2018 Mammoth Dunes

One of the largest courses ever created in terms of volume and scale.

▶ 2020 Payne’s Valley

Tiger Woods’ first public design is geared toward playability, and thus massive playing space.

▶ 2020 Sheep Ranch

70- to 100-yard-wide holes are needed to handle one of the windiest golf sites in the United States. —dd

w id e op e n in wis cons in The extreme width of Mammoth Dunes’ first and 18th holes.

Last Shot

The Year That Changed Everything by jerry tarde Editor-in-Chief

n this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year, many golfers find themselves feeling a tremendous sense of guilt. You know what I mean. In the worst of times, for the lucky ones it’s been the best of times. We’ve all talked about the quality hours and days we’ve spent with our families. Hanging out with our kids— especially grown kids who have moved back home—we took long walks, we cooked meals, we conversed like friends, we watched Netflix, we did board games, and we even played golf together. Boy, did we play golf! Nationally, the game nose-dived at the outset of the COVID-19 shutdown March through May but has rebounded dramatically. The research firm Golf Datatech is still forecasting a 6-percent increase in rounds played in 2020. Similarly, retail sales for golf equipment sunk in the first half but grew by 30 percent in the late summer

and is likely to finish the year flat—a remarkable recovery in a tough economy. And those numbers seem under-reported based on our personal experiences. Golf at the local level appeared to boom. My club in Connecticut is up 30 percent in rounds played this season as tee times were booked solid, more families played together, and there was a casualness on the course—leaving the flagsticks in, walking and carrying fewer clubs, not raking the bunkers, playing faster—that simply exuded a big dollop of fun. “I’ve heard people say, ‘It’s been the greatest summer of my life,’ ” Dr. Bob Rotella says. “Not getting on planes, not traveling, working from home, spending more time with my wife and kids. Even when we play golf, we just play. There’s no 19th hole, no lingering, just four hours of clearing your mind.” It’ll be the year we look back on that changed everything. As the pandemic forced us to quarantine and wear masks, golf became our great escape. “Men never talk about mental health or wellness,” sport psychologist Jonathan Fader told me. “Ninety percent never go

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to a therapist. They deal with their mental health through an activity, usually sports. Golf is the only sport you can do in groups and do it safely. We deeply need to be together. The real pandemic victims are the people who have tragically been affected by death. But for more of us, it’s been a pandemic of isolation—a loss of control. Golf helps you regain control. If you’re depressed, the two best things you can do is walk every day and be around people.” That sounds like a sport I know. “Golf has helped reboot our mind,” says Rick Sessinghaus, a performance coach best known for his work with Collin Morikawa. “The game gives us a wider horizon to look at—simply being outdoors in nature shifts our perspective. Getting away from golf and then coming back has made us more grateful. ‘Gosh, I missed it so much.’ The message is about appreciating something taken away and given back.” The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews launched a campaign to promote the mental and physical benefits

of golf. Research conducted by the University of Edinburgh found that golf as a physical activity helps prevent or treat 40 chronic diseases, including diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, breast and colon cancer, depression and dementia. According to a landmark medical study of 300,000 members of the Swedish Golf Foundation, golfers enjoy a 40-percent increase in mortality, meaning we live an average of five years longer than nongolfers. One of the more beguiling studies was conducted by Golfsupport, a British sporting-goods retailer: Based on a survey of 6,500 sports fans worldwide in September of this year, golf was found to be the happiest sport. Golf fans scored the highest “happiness ratings,” followed in order by fans of track and field, tennis, Formula 1 racing, cricket, baseball, boxing, basketball, football and soccer. I don’t know if I actually believe the science of this study, but why not. So what is golf’s secret sauce? The best answer I heard was from Dr. Fader (the perfect name for a golf psychologist): “There’s a mindfulness about the game,” he said. “It requires focus and a willingness to engage. What separates golf is the amount of time it takes.” I told him it always fascinates me that the act of making a swing and striking a golf ball takes only a second and a half, which adds up to a couple of minutes a round, but 18 holes takes four hours. Golf is what happens between the shots. He replied, “Abraham Lincoln said, ‘If you gave me six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening my axe.’ ” I thought it was Hogan who said that, but I didn’t argue. The point is, this is the year that changed everything. For the lucky ones, golf has been our refuge.

Sheep Ranch: dom fuRoRe

“Getting away from golf and then coming back has made us more grateful.”

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