By now, coverage of the Internet Invitational has rivaled some PGA Tour events and maybe even a few major championships, most of it reflecting the inevitable drama of a high-stakes competition between YouTube personalities. But beyond entertainment, there were also tangible lessons for golfers everywhere, even from the parts that went spectacularly wrong. Specifically, we’re Read more…
The end of my golf season was a mess. I played poorly when I was away, and then when I got home, I hit the ball … even worse. My instinct when stuck in this sort of rut has always been to persist further—hit more balls, analyze more swings, search harder for answers wherever I Read more…
In the modest golf world most of us inhabit, even a two-man scramble qualifies as a reason to sharpen your game. Golf Digest’s annual intrasquad tournament, the Seitz Cup, will never be confused with a major championship. The range of players on our staff is too broad, the format too contrived, plus some players enjoy Read more…
Look closely at how any of us play golf and you’ll find traces of where we play, too. Example: My home course is tight and has small greens, which I miss with enough frequency that it’s made me a versatile chipper. Friends who play golf courses with steep bunkers tend to be better out of Read more…
If you’re berating Rory McIlroy loudly enough to require a squadron of state troopers, something is missing. Either you don’t know the game, or you don’t really care. When it comes to golf, you’re clueless.
My kids were barely old enough to grip a club when our family vacations began to include modest forms of golf—putt-putt, driving range detours, eventually nine-hole rounds in which the boys teed off from the 150-yard markers and we jammed three to a golf cart. Before long, there were real tee-times and 18-hole rounds that Read more…
My lowest score in a round of golf is 80, which I posted for the fourth time last month. Sadly, painfully, I needed two putts from about 45 feet for a 79, but I lipped out the seven-footer for par. Did I choke? It’s easy to say I did. Put it this way: If I Read more…
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…
Australian Golf Digest
