5. The inside story of how “Tin Cup” became a classic

A quarter-century after its release, “Tin Cup” gets plenty of airtime on Golf Channel, but maybe not enough credit as arguably the most authentic golf movie ever made. Alex Myers went deep with the film’s creators, including star Kevin Costner, to learn what went into pulling off a movie that could fly with general audiences and still ring true with golfers.

4. The Sugar Daddies of the PGA Tour

For every Tiger Woods or Rickie Fowler who can fund their early efforts as professionals with the help of endorsement dollars, there are dozens of golfers who need to get creative making ends meet when venturing out on tour. Enter the golf Sugar Daddy, who, as Dan Rapaport explains, either out of kindness or opportunity helps aspiring golfers pay their expenses before they potentially make it big.

3. An alternate reality without Tiger Woods

We think we understand the myriad ways Tiger Woods has shaped the modern game. But to truly grasp how revolutionary a figure Woods has been in his 25 years as a pro, it helps to consider what golf might have looked like if he never came around. Myers explores this bizarro world with the help of players and experts.

2. ‘Lucky bastards’: What it’s like as a guest at Augusta National

Golfers are endlessly fascinated with the Masters and Augusta National, particularly when it comes to those who get to take the drive down Magnolia Lane themselves. Myers reveals what to expect when you get the rare opportunity to tee it up at the most famous course in the world.

1. The new golf cheat code

Depending on your point of view, Scott Fawcett’s course-management system, adapted by a segment of pros and elite amateurs, is either a blueprint to better golf or an affront to the game we all love. Rapaport’s compelling profile of the man and his controversial philosophy stirs passions on both sides of the argument.

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By Sam Weinman
To look at the PGA Tour from enough distance is to perceive a fairly idyllic existence—great money, beautiful locales and, on your worst days, you’re still playing golf.

In two seasons of Local Knowledge, Golf Digest’s narrative podcast, the objective was never to disprove that life at the game’s highest level is pretty great. But as with other subjects we’ve tackled, we sought to reveal the world of a tour professional in greater depth.

In the fourth and final instalment of a year-end series revisiting our favourite Local Knowledge episodes, we’re focusing on life on tour, and what it’s really like when you look beyond its glossy exterior. We examine the game’s ultra-elite—including going deep with Collin Morikawa on how his life changed after his inaugural major win at the PGA Championship. Through Bob May, the unlikely challenger to Tiger Woods at the 2000 PGA Championship, we study the thin line separating the great from the very good. We even try to understand the unique dynamic between a tour player and his caddie, including why some relationships last and some never make it past the first week.

Throw in an amusing collection of anecdotes from players about their rocky introductions to the PGA Tour, and these segments offer at least an appreciation for the challenges pro golfers must overcome to be successful.

You can listen to the podcast below:

The post The life of a tour pro is a dream … and incredibly difficult. Our latest podcast explains appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
Everyone’s searching for a theory to explain why Europe has won seven of the last nine Ryder Cups. The U.S. tends to have the higher-ranked players, so it’s not due to a gulf in talent. Could it possibly be the captains that give the Euros the edge? Is there some special sauce in European team rooms that the Americans haven’t been able to replicate?

At this week’s Ryder Cup, U.S. captain Steve Stricker and his European counterpart Padraig Harrington will have every one of their decisions dissected. We’ll analyze their performance and assess their impact on the matches—despite their not hitting a single shot all week. It’s the new reality for a position that has taken on more importance, at least from the outside, than ever before.

Our latest episode of Local Knowledge zooms in on the Ryder Cup captaincy, a role that has evolved from ceremonial figurehead to ultra-involved tactician. We spoke with a number of former Ryder Cup captains, including Davis Love III, the last victorious American captain, to get the full rundown of the position: how they approached their captain’s picks; what determined pairings; plus plenty of stuff you don’t think about the falls under their purview. Along the way we also question whether team bonding is important or even possible, and how to handle the 12 men once the competition starts, all to answer the question: how much does a Ryder Cup captain really matter?

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By Sam Weinman
Phil Mickelson’s win at last month’s PGA Championship invited all sorts of questions about how an athlete could perform at such rarefied levels just weeks shy of his 51st birthday. Mickelson has credited his longevity to a swing that puts less stress on his joints; to his regimen of 36-hour fasts; as well as the coffee blend he sips throughout competition.

But there was one other factor, apparent to anyone who paid close enough attention: The way Phil inhaled, and the way he exhaled.

“If you watched the final round, you’ll notice two things. One is he was very deliberate about breathing, but what they didn’t see was he was very deliberate about breathing out,” said Dr. Ara Suppiah, a medical adviser to Mickelson and a Golf Digest contributor who also works with a number of PGA Tour players.

“So what Phil did was he took a breath in and then he breathed out really slowly. And as you breathe out you’ll notice your pulse change. So breathing is intimately connected to the heartbeat.”

It’s too simple to say Mickelson became golf’s oldest major champion because of how he breathed. But to Suppiah and other experts, it would be a bigger mistake to dismiss the profound difference proper breathing can make for golfers—whether they’re trying to lock down a sixth major championship, or simply make a better turn through the ball.

In our latest episode of Local Knowledge, Golf Digest’s narrative podcast, we use Mickelson’s breakthrough win as a jumping-off point to discuss the underappreciated role our breathing pattern plays in golf, looking beyond the obvious point that, yes, breathing is better than not breathing. The deeper you go, in fact, the more you learn not all breathing is the same.

“It’s how we breathe that is so important to our everyday lives, from how we sleep to our stress levels, to our happiness, to longevity more and more and more,” said James Nestor, author of the best-seller Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art. “And what I’ve learned is that the majority of us are breathing in a dysfunctional way.“

In discussions with experts like Nestor and others, we begin to understand some principles around breathing, and why golfers especially would benefit from controlling their breath; the reasons breathing through the nose versus the mouth is exponentially better; why exhaling is the key to controlling our nervous system; and why we actually want to breathe less than we do.

In the episode, we even look at some memorable golf moments to see how a player in contention breathed under duress, and whether it made a difference.

For instance, in reviewing footage from another benchmark moment in Mickelson’s career, his double-bogey finish in the 2006 U.S. Open that left him one shot out of a playoff, it’s apparent that Mickelson didn’t employ the same breathing techniques he does now—and it might even have played a small role in the outcome.

“If Phil had the wisdom of what he has now, what he would have done is we have just hit the shot and then not cared where it went,” Suppiah said. “Go to the ball and find it and during that entire walk just focus on his breathing, and focus on breathing out, and keep his whole system very calm.”

Conversely, to see Tiger Woods in the moments before his famous “Expect anything different?” putt at the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines is to see a player who had slowed his breathing considerably to control his nerves over the ball.

“I just think it’s everything,” said Sean Foley, who, in addition to coaching major champions Justin Rose and Danny Willett, was with Tiger Woods between 2010-2014, and who expounded on the benefits of breathing in a recent story for Golf Digest. “It’s coherence. Once you can get the lungs and the heart moving in the same direction. It just gives us the ability to tap into what we’re able to do when we feel like that. It’s nothing we need to do. The processes are already inside us.”

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By Alex Myers
Tiger Woods has authored arguably both the most dominant win in golf history at the 2000 U.S. Open and the sport’s most unlikely comeback victory at the 2019 Masters. Emphasis on arguably, because what if you could somehow combine those two performances?

Then you’d pretty much have what Babe Didrikson Zaharias accomplished at the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open.

Zaharias, some 15 months removed from colon cancer surgery, blew the field away at Salem Country Club to win by 12 shots. And she did it while having a colostomy bag strapped to her side.

With the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open being played this week, we decided to revisit the most incredible win in the event’s history for the latest edition of Local Knowledge. And to examine an amazing woman who helped pave the way for all of today’s professional female athletes.

A winner of a staggering 82 amateur and pro golf tournaments including 10 majors and the only woman to make a PGA Tour cut, Didrikson Zaharias’ golf resume becomes even more impressive when you consider golf wasn’t even the first sport at which she excelled. Not even close.

To dive deeper into Didrikson Zaharias, we talked with ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., whose biography, “Wonder Girl,” is the most comprehensive work on Babe’s remarkable life and career. We discuss the obstacles she overcame, her vast athletic achievements that go well beyond golf, and why despite all of that, she has become as Van Natta describes, “one of the most-forgotten American superstars.”

We’ve done our best, though, to make sure she’s remembered during this week on the golf calendar. Please have a listen to our closer look at this sporting legend.

The post The legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias—and the most incredible performance in golf history appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
The fall of 2017 found Jordan Spieth on top of the world. He was 24 years old, the No. 2 golfer in the world, and he’d just won the British Open in remarkable fashion. With 11 PGA Tour wins and three major championships under his belt, he was just a PGA Championship short of the career Grand Slam. A Tiger Woods-like trajectory.

The year 2020 found Jordan Spieth at the nadir of a highly curious slump. He was 27 years old, squarely in his physical prime, mostly healthy—and he still sat on 11 PGA Tour wins and three majors. As a result, he’d dropped outside the top 80 in the world rankings.

The craziest part is these seemingly inexplicable dry spells happen all the time in golf. It happened to Hunter Mahan. And Francesco Molinari, Matteo Manassero, Smylie Kaufman. Danny Willett, and plenty of others.

Compare that with tennis, where the same three men—Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic—have dominated the sport for well over a decade.

So, why does this happen so much in golf? Why do the greatest players in the world, major winners and multi-millionaires, suddenly lose their games with little warning? And, on the amateur level, how can a player get his handicap to an all-time low and then struggle to make contact the following week?

The newest episode of Local Knowledge dives into the curious phenomenon of the Golf Slump. With PGA Tour player (and former slumper) Harris English as our guide, we consult with sports psychologists and use other players’ insights to try to understand why golfing greatness can be so cruelly fleeting.

You can listen to the full episode below, and please subscribe to Local Knowledge on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

The post What exactly happens when golfers lose their game? Our latest podcast explores the mystery of the slump appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Alex Myers
There was a moment when it looked like the 2020 Masters wouldn’t happen. The annual April tournament had been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and judging by the reactions of golf fans, you would have thought Christmas had been cancelled.

Thankfully, a move to November eventually came about and the sports world exhaled a collective sigh of relief. There would be no azaleas blooming and no patrons roaring, but there would be a golf tournament at Augusta National.

If you think this was the first time this tournament’s status was in doubt, though, you’d be wrong. Long before COVID-19 and before even World War II, uncertainty enveloped the event like the swirling wind around Amen Corner.

On the latest episode of Local Knowledge, we examine the surprisingly humble beginnings of arguably the country’s most exclusive club and the sport’s most prestigious tournament. A time when the home of the green jacket was actually in the red. Deep in the red.

We spoke with longtime New Yorker and Golf Digest writer David Owen, whose book, “The Making of the Masters,” is the definitive history of the tournament and Augusta National co-founder Clifford Roberts. We also talked to legendary sportswriter Dave Kindred, who has covered every Masters except one since 1967. Our chats with both reveal just how close the Masters came to fizzling out in its early years, and why the tournament wound up becoming golf’s premier event.

The post How the Masters—and Augusta National—almost didn’t make it appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Keely Levins
There was a story at the ANA Inspiration about how one of the first-round contenders paid for her own set of irons, bringing golf Twitter into a frenzy questioning why exactly a player capable of being in contention at a major wasn’t getting her clubs for free.

In this episode of Local Knowledge, Golf Digest’s new podcast, we use that circumstance as a jumping point into the real issue at hand: How financially hard is it really for women on the LPGA Tour?

You can see the stars on tour who’ve been able to sign good deals: like Lexi Thompson with her Cobra deal and Red Bull logo on her hat, Brooke Henderson with Ping, and women like Lydia Ko sporting PXG amongst other logos. But Thompson, Henderson and Ko aren’t the average LPGA Tour pro. What’s it like for the women out there who haven’t won a tour event, let alone a major? If you’re an average LPGA Tour player, what’s the financial reality of your tour life? And why is the gap between being 100th in the world on the LPGA Tour so different from being 100th in the world on the PGA Tour?

We talk to tour players both past and present, LPGA Tour commissioner Mike Whan, and equipment representatives to map out what it’s like to be an average LPGA Tour player and ask, is this where we should be?

The post Our latest podcast examines the financial realities of the average LPGA Tour player appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Sam Weinman
This week at the Tour Championship, the winner will take home the FedEx Cup and its $15 million grand prize. The last-place finisher in the 30-man field can soothe his battered ego with a near $400,000 consolation payout. Many players will arrive at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club by way of a private jet.

By now you are likely aware that elite professional golfers are rich. “The money out here is comical,” PGA Tour player Joel Dahmen says. What you may not appreciate is the confluence of events that led to this point. And that’s the subject of our latest episode of Golf Digest’s deep-dive podcast, Local Knowledge. In examining the rise in purses and off-the-course opportunities for golfers, you need to understand the role not just Tiger Woods played in popularizing golf, but Greg Norman, Arnold Palmer, and even Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. You need to recognize why TV has been so integral to the PGA Tour’s growth. And you need to know that despite all these outlandish figures, pro golf still comes with plenty of pain.

“I get to play golf for a living. I’m super lucky, super fortunate. But it’s still work,” Dahmen said. “I’m treating it like work. We’re on the road 25, 30 weeks out of the year. People don’t realize how taxing that is. Catching flights, or hotels, or rental houses, different things every week. They see Thursday-Sunday and a big check on Sunday, but there’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get there. So yeah, I’m super thankful and super fortunate, and I hope I can get there for a long time.”

Dahmen offers one perspective of the financial landscape on tour to host Daniel Rapaport. We also hear from veteran player agents and Golf Digest equipment editor E. Michael Johnson, who has covered the business side of golf for decades.

Along the way we also look at the precarious state of the economy during the pandemic to determine whether this sort of windfall for golf can continue. Short answer: Maybe.

You can listen to the full episode below, or you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

The post ‘The money out here is comical’: Latest podcast looks at the lucrative life of a PGA Tour pro appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Alex Myers
Nick Faldo’s golf career as a both a player and broadcaster has taken him all over the world. For now, though, he’s remained a key cog in the sport’s television coverage despite staying put in Orlando. Not that fans have been able to notice.

The 14-year-plus chemistry developed between the CBS lead golf analyst and booth partner Jim Nantz is so strong that it’s been impossible for viewers to tell that Faldo has been working remotely. Except when the six-time major champ has joked about it—like during Sunday’s coverage of the RBC Heritage when Nantz was by himself as storms caused a delay in play. Not being on the road can have its advantages.

Faldo joined this week’s Golf Digest Podcast to discuss his new work arrangements and how he’s been keeping busy by hosting a pair of new shows for CBS Sports Network and a new partnership involving a pair of SQAIRZ shoes. Faldo also offered his thoughts on Bryson DeChambeau, his legendary career, and his just as legendary sweater collection.

Plus, Sam Weinman and Daniel Rapaport join me to talk about Webb Simpson’s latest Father’s Day victory, an uplifting comeback story on the Korn Ferry Tour, and an incredible act of generosity by an LPGA star. Please have a listen:

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