With any luck, the July 4 weekend will be the low point of my golf season, because I was awful. Every day, my scores got worse. I pulled my irons, got easily frustrated and wondered if I was wasting my time. I’m already at the point where I’m glad it happened. Whether out of delusion Read more…
At some point, thinking about golf practice brought me back to my earliest days on skates. Some background here would help: When I grew up playing hockey, most of the drills in practice emphasized isolated skills. The coach would line us up at one end of the rink and blow a whistle, and then we Read more…
The most common affliction in golf is not the slice but the driving range swing that has mysteriously vanished. For many players the typical practice session involves a bucket of balls, a series of swings and the occasional sense that a problem has been solved. If it rarely works out, it’s because this way of Read more…
The bogeys and double bogeys at the U.S. Open earlier this month were usually attributed to the same factors: Oakmont’s dense rough and slick greens, plus a little bit of major championship pressure. No one thought to consider if the golfer might have had a lame breakfast. It would be a stretch to say the Read more…
Like any group of golfers, the Golf Digest staff can kill hours dissecting a player’s game and whether their handicap fits. When a 13-index stops a towering 8-iron five feet from the flag, the initial reaction is skepticism. Then he takes two out of the bunker a few holes later, and it starts to make Read more…
OAKMONT, Pa. — If the U.S. Open is the most difficult golf tournament of the year, the implication is that it’s also the most miserable. By the simplest logic: making birdies is more fun than making double bogeys, and the U.S. Open is when words like “carnage” and “suffering” are liberally employed. If you were Read more…
OAKMONT, Pa.—Let’s be clear that Oakmont Country Club is not ugly. Put another way: If you were to play a golf course this ugly every day, no one would feel bad for you. It’s worth noting that Oakmont is fifth in Golf Digest’s ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, and of any course in Read more…
If Oakmont Country Club represents one of the most difficult tests in professional golf, in at least one sense it will be starkly simple: a shot from the fairway means a player can think about how he wants to play the shot to the green, whereas a ball in the rough will suggest he shouldn’t even bother.
There are no official stats for this sort of thing, but it’s safe to assume the U.S. Open exceeds other major championships in its number of angry participants. Other tournaments dole out ample disappointment and heartbreak, both of which present opportunities for a player to look in the mirror. When a golfer is angry, that’s Read more…
When your kid loves golf, the toughest days are when they also kind of hate it. Water balls, tears, occasional sprints to the parking lot—there’s enough trauma available in golf for a parent to wish for something simpler. The best argument for having your kid stick it out might be how the game can help Read more…
Like an abstract painting splattered on a canvas, the skill of golf course design is easy to dismiss. A tee box, a green, a fairway and some bunkers in between. The whole time you think, Hell, I could do that. Then you dive deeper, and you realize it’s not so simple. Whenever Golf Digest publishes Read more…
A match-play tournament is incomplete without a flare-up or two around gimmes. Our Golf Digest Match Play has been no exception. Some staffers are stingy with concessions, others are generous, and some are generous until they realize they shouldn’t be. In one match recently, a player stewed when her opponent rolled a putt for practice after Read more…
On major championship weeks, my Instagram feed is filled with golf things that I either can’t do, I shouldn’t do, or at least need to do much differently. Rory McIlroy launching high draws. Justin Thomas hitting spinny pitches. Bryson DeChambeau dialing in yardages down to the decimal point. If there is aspirational value in regular Read more…
Golf compliments don’t come around often for a player of my level, but last week at my home course, I got one after sending my drive to a perfect angle into the 12th green. “Smart play,” a playing partner said. But it wasn’t. I caught the ball on the heel, which produced a low, weak Read more…
One day last June, a typical day at Golf Digest’s New York headquarters was interrupted by the announcement of an emergency Zoom meeting. A major strategy shift? No. Breaking golf news? Not exactly. Two staffers were going to a playoff in the season-long Golf Digest Match Play tournament, and a livestream was set up for Read more…
On the short list of things I don’t want to hear on the golf course, someone else’s phone call ranks pretty high. It’s an intrusion I resent when I’m trying to practice, which is different than saying it’s an intrusion I don’t need. Think about how often you play golf and something sets you off. Read more…
Golf is not a game for fiery locker-room speeches, but imagine what it would look like if it was. Player gets riled up in the clubhouse, storms past the green jackets on his way to the first tee and then … what exactly? Lag putts the Masters field into submission? Motivation in golf is tricky. Read more…
For those of us who have played Augusta National – it’s a small club that meets once a week and mostly just high-fives each other – the tournament takes on a new light once you’ve navigated the same holes.
The hardest shot in golf, it’s been said, is the shot right after a shank. Because now you’re rattled, the thinking goes, and the memory is still fresh. The more golf you play, the more bad memories you risk accumulating. This is one of the downsides of experience. At my home course, I could provide Read more…
The pool noodle never made sense. Of all the odd concoctions in those frantic early days, that’s where they lost me. Golfer knocks a putt into the hole, fishes ball out of the bottom, but … don’t worry! This styrofoam pool noodle will keep illness at bay. The rest I got. No hand-shakes, no pulling Read more…
This article first appeared in Low Net, a Golf Digest+ exclusive newsletter written for the average golfer, by an average golfer. To get Low Net straight to your inbox, sign up for Golf Digest+ here. Have a topic you want me to explore? Send me an email and I’ll do my best to dive in. Read more…