Harry How

On the other hand, since I put my handicap police hat on, I’ve had numerous people reach out to me, including Larry’s father, with glowing testimonials about the future NFL Hall-of-Famer (Imagine how good he’s going to get when he finally retires?) and current GOAT of net scoring in golf. So perhaps it’s not right to label him a sandbagger. Although, to be fair, anyone who has ever won a net competition (myself included) has received some ribbing about their handicap. Also, I have never played a full round with Fitzgerald, so I can’t properly evaluate his current 9.0 handicap. Yep, that’s definitely how we should settle this debate. Larry, invite me out to Seminole or Whisper Rock for a few rounds and I’ll be the judge. Preferably, before the cold front arrives here at the end of the week. Either location works for me. Let’s do this. Please.

WE’RE BUYING

Nick Taylor: How has this guy only won once before?! Faced with windy conditions and a pairing with a living legend who everyone was rooting for, this Canadian channelled Clint Eastwood and said, “Make my day.” After a back-nine stumble, a chip-in on 15 and a rare birdie on 17 gave him a four-shot, life-changing win at a place where just last year he announced a life-changing moment.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Byy0P05Fhx2/?utm_source=ig_embed

And now:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8aTH1NlnGz/?utm_source=ig_embed

Pretty cool.

Victorian Open/Min Woo Lee: While Golf Twitter bitched (a bit too much) about coverage of the AT&T Pebble Beach, this tournament rightfully drew rave reviews. Or rather, tournaments with simultaneous European Tour and LPGA events happening on the same course while men and women played for the same purse. Congrats to the two winners, Min Woo Lee and Hee Young Park:

2 trophies. 2 wins. 1 equal purse ? #VicOpen pic.twitter.com/YVgOND8tIQ

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) February 9, 2020

Lee is particularly impressive. The 21-year-old Aussie who won the 2016 U.S. Junior was already the longest hitter on the European Tour despite weighing only 165 pounds. But he might have put on a few LBs celebrating his first win:

We think @Minwoo27Lee enjoyed his maiden tour win… ? #VicOpen pic.twitter.com/bE151za4KW

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) February 9, 2020

He just needs to work on his celebrations with his caddie:

We can all relate to this… ?@Minwoo27Lee #VicOpen pic.twitter.com/OpC83PEfEz

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) February 9, 2020

Then again, so do most tour pros.

Golf Digest: That’s right, GOLF DIGEST. Editor-in-Chief Jerry Tarde partnered with Nick Taylor, received some serious Sunday airtime in that group that also included Phil Mickelson and Steve Young (NBD), and some serious praise from CBS’ Jim Nantz, who noted Taylor had “the calming influence of Jerry Tarde every step of the way.” Our boss did pretty well golfing his own ball too as he and Taylor finished T-2 in the Pro-Am, which is basically a win, because, well, Larry Fitzgerald. And how about Jerry’s sweater game?

Straight fire! OK, now we’re heading into potential brown-nosing territory. And Team Taylor/Tarde finished five shots back despite Nick winning the tournament by four, so it’s not like Jerry played like Tiger at Pebble in 2000. OK, now we’ve gone too far the other direction. . . Anyway, staff writer Daniel Rapaport picked up Matthew Fitzpatrick’s staff bag and helped his Northwestern buddy make the cut:

Not the finish we wanted but what an unbelievable week! pic.twitter.com/etUHs4MsOw

— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) February 9, 2020

Talk about a great side gig for a golf writer. Dan, you’re bringing in donuts or something the next time you’re in the office.

WE’RE SELLING

Ernie Els not captaining: After leading a spirited challenge at the 2019 Presidents Cup, the Big Easy said he’s done being the big cheese of the International squad. Too bad. The team seemed headed in a positive direction.

Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Rory McIlroy’s taste in movies: I love nearly everything about Rory McIlroy, especially his running interview series with the Independent’s Paul Kimmage. HOWEVAH, McIlroy made a real bogey with his assessment of “La La Land”:

To be clear, I have no problem with him crying at a movie. “The Shawshank Redemption” gets me every time. Obviously. But “La La Land”?! And specifically the music of “La La Land”?! Rory, let’s go see a real musical sometime.

Bryson DeChambeau’s fitness ranking: All power to Bryson for getting yoked this off-season, but he’s the 24th fittest athlete on the planet? Really? He’s fitter than, oh, I don’t know, Russell Westbrook? Or DK Metcalf?!

Or any NFL player for that matter? Even the kickers are jacked. Or . . . Brooks Koepka? Sure thing, Sports Illustrated. That being said, I love how this list just stokes the silly Brooks/Bryson feud. Live look at Brooks right now:

ON TAP

The PGA Tour heads to La La Land (Get your tissues ready, Rory!) for the Genesis Invitational, AKA that event Tiger hosts at Riviera, which always prompts lectures from all the golf architect geeks on Twitter. Get ready for a week of hearing about the 10th hole!

Random tournament fact: Tiger Woods has never won in 10 starts as a pro at Riviera, the most times he’s ever played a PGA Tour course without winning. He also teed it up as an amateur in 1992 and 1993, missing the cut both times. Rest assured, you will be able to recite all these facts from memory by week’s end.

RANDOM PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—Larry Fitzgerald will be let back onto Pebble Beach property next year if he still has a 9 handicap: 1-MILLION -to-1 odds

—Tiger Woods will finally win at Riviera this week: 18-to-1 odds (Actual odds)

—Rory will be ribbed for his “La La Land”/”Pretty Woman” comments this week: LOCK

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Check out this incredible shot Tim Herron took of Pebble Beach’s 18th hole:

Thankful to wake up at one of my favorite spots on earth today. @attproam pic.twitter.com/gLRKdQuZ8E

— Tim “Lumpy” Herron (@PGALumpy) February 6, 2020

Kidding.

Just an FYI, I found this beautiful pic on the inter web as I can barely take an in-focus shot with my phone!

— Tim “Lumpy” Herron (@PGALumpy) February 7, 2020

Same, Tim. Still, it’s a great photo. By whomever took it.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Shout-out to Sam Harrop for this fantastic song parody about Tony Finau’s lack of wins. The Charles Howell and Rocco Mediate lines killed me:

Many of you will know by now that music is my first love (though golf's pretty high to be fair)

So…I decided to pen an ode to Tony Finau, set to the tune of an REO Speedwagon classic. As you do.

First time I've done something like this, so go easy on me ?

RTs appreciated! pic.twitter.com/9FpX6cB2aw

— Sam Harrop (@sam_golf) February 6, 2020

And good to see Tony is a good sport:

?? loads of funny lines. I dig it bro @sam_golf after the next win I'll be looking for the remix! https://t.co/Kelhg5qnBT

— Tony Finau Golf (@tonyfinaugolf) February 7, 2020

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“There’s more than just guys, you know. It just makes sense. We should do this more often. The fact that this happens only once in a year is just nonsense.” —Geoff Ogilvy on the Victorian Open. Well said, Geoff. And Ogilvy had Golf Twitter in a tizzy talking about karma as he grabbed a share of the 36-hole lead in the event. Too bad there’s no such thing as karma and he finished last among the 38 golfers who made the three-day cut.

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS (NOT NAMED LARRY FITZGERALD)

Seeing Macklemore take six practice swings before topping one off the tee was tough, but the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am still produced some fun celebrity moments with Bill Murray. As usual. Here he is sweeping a putt in backward:

Does it get any smoother? ?pic.twitter.com/JlmZ6WOnxR

— GOLFTV (@GOLFTV) February 10, 2020

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS (NOT AT PEBBLE BEACH)

The Rory McIlroy-Caroline Wozniacki engagement didn’t last, but it looks like the former World No. 1 women’s tennis player has held onto a thing or two from her ex when it comes to the golf swing:

Glacier golfing! (Don’t worry the balls were bio degradable) ??‍ pic.twitter.com/huon1S49HZ

— Caroline Wozniacki (@CaroWozniacki) February 6, 2020

Very impressive.

THIS WEEK IN PGA TOUR PRO-WAGS PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

Justin Thomas used his off week to give the two special ladies in his life a nice night at a Las Vegas Golden Knights game:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8WpnhNBu5a/?utm_source=ig_embed

Awww. And JT, if that’s your girlfriend’s idea of a romantic night out, she’s definitely a keeper.

THIS WEEK IN PHIL BEING PHIL

I would have moved this up to the “buy” section, but it was already getting too long. But even with a tough finish, Phil Mickelson had himself a great week. Just days after saying he’d turn down a potential special exemption into the U.S. Open if he didn’t qualify, Mickelson nearly took care of that himself with a third-place finish. And he did it with his usual flair. Only Phil would be able to pull off a bunker shot like this AND immediately rank it:

Some par saves rank higher than others.@PhilMickelson said this one is in his top 5.#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/6Kvjkaiyg2

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 8, 2020

Then the following day, he got up and down from here!

"He's not giving up yet."

Phil continues to thrill. Wow.#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/ENryORGr4M

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 9, 2020

He may be outside the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking, but he’s still the game’s No. 1 content king. And it would be a travesty if he’s not battling the grandstands at Winged Foot in June. Again, CONTENT.

THIS AND THAT

Phil Mickelson became the third player (Sam Snead and Raymond Floyd) to record a PGA Tour top 10 in 30 consecutive seasons. Now that’s some impressive, um, phitness. . . . Editor-in-Chief Tarde hopped on this week’s Golf Digest Podcast to talk about that Pebble Beach experience and tell a great Phil story:

https://soundcloud.com/user-96678684/golf-digest-editors-incredible-sunday-in-the-final-pairing-at-pebble-beach

And finally, check out this guy who was really ready to mark his golf ball. At Costco.

Spring can’t get here soon enough.

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Does that dude belong to a good golf club?

If so, does he need a fourth?

Can I bet on Larry Fitzgerald at Pebble Beach next year?

The post Larry Fitzgerald defies the odds again, Rory McIlroy’s ex shows off her golf swing, and Rory cries at the movies appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Alex Myers
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — It wasn’t quite the capsized cargo ship that has captured everyone’s attention this week, but seeing Tim Herron’s name climbing the leader board at the RSM Classic on Friday was an unusual sight in its own right.

Less than three months away from turning 50, “Lumpy” arrived at Sea Island with seven consecutive missed cuts and having posted one sub-70 round in past 15 starts dating back to 2018. On Friday, however, he looked like the player who won four times on the PGA Tour from 1996 to 2006, firing a bogey-free 64 to move inside the top 20 heading into the weekend.

Making things even better for Herron? Having his 17-year-old son, Carson, on the bag.

“It’s been awesome,” said Herron, who shot his lowest score on tour since a second-round 63 at the 2016 Barbasol Championship. “When it looked like I could get in this event, I asked him if he wanted me to pull him out of school and caddie or play in his junior tournament (in Orlando). He elected to caddie and it’s been a great experience. At least the Herron family is going to make some money, right? I don’t know how much. You don’t get paid until you tap in on the last hole.”

And Carson, who holds a plus-one handicap, hasn’t just been along for the ride. The elder Herron says Carson had to inform him he was looking at the wrong hole on the yardage book five times on Thursday.

“It’s been really cool, and he trusts me,” said Carson, who also caddied for his dad earlier this year in the Dominican Republic. “Most of the time.”

Perhaps, Carson will wind up being the key ingredient Tim has missed in his career at this event. In six previous starts at Sea Island, he has three missed cuts and nothing better than a T-49. Not that he’s been tearing it up anywhere. Herron hasn’t had a top 25 in 18 months and he has just one top 10 in the past seven seasons.

“I’ve been looking for the promised land all summer,” Herron said of joining the PGA Tour Champions when he turns 50 in February. “I just wanted to go out with a bang, and I could do it with my son, so how cool is that? Not many people can do that. It’s been awesome. He’s had fun. He probably wants to play golf this afternoon so I have to get him to a golf course.”

At this rate, the kid deserves whatever he wants.

The post Tim Herron turns back the clock at the RSM Classic after turning to his teenage son to caddie for him appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Ben Hogan died 20 years ago, but for a few hours on Tuesday he lived again on the practice tee at Colonial.

The Hawk won what’s now called the Dean & DeLuca Invitational five times, and there’s a statue of him by the clubhouse. But we thought of a more intimate way to feel him: by blowing the dust off a couple of his drivers and a Hogan model 1-iron, and putting the odd, old sticks in the hands of PGA Tour professionals. Who, for the most part, couldn’t hit them.

“Forty-three inches, D-2, extra-stiff Apex 5 shaft,” said Mike Wright, the head professional at Shady Oaks, the keeper of the Hogan flame and of his old locker. “This one’s persimmon, this one’s laminated. Tipped. Zero bulge and roll.”

Those last specs might need some explaining. “Laminated” means layers of wood—often maple–glued together. Most purists in the “wood-wood” era insisted on solid blocks of persimmon. But Hogan manufactured clubs, and he loved to experiment, and he found laminates to be perfectly fine. “Tipped” means that the bottom of the shaft was driven through the club head, for still more stiffness; Ben’s clubs were about as limber as telephone poles. “Bulge and roll” is the side-to-side and up-and-down curvature along a wood’s face, an ingenious late-19th century invention that corrected a bit for mishits. Hogan did without B&R because he didn’t mishit much, and he wanted to know when he did.

“How big is this thing?” asked Stewart Cink. He uncovered his white, Taylormade R15 5-wood and compared; the metal club’s head was plainly bigger.

“Probably still some of his sweat in these grips,” said Cink, waggling the approximately 200 cubic centimeters of heavy Hogan lumber, less than twice the size of today’s drivers.

A closer look at the driver and grip from Hogan’s club

Time and hours of abrasion from the owner’s ungloved hands had worn the rough rubber “cord-line” grips to slickness. Hogan had run a piece of string underneath the grip and a little to the right so that his hands fell naturally into a “weak” position. That rib and the other custom features in the Hogan drivers virtually eliminated his bugaboo, the unexpected hook.

Knowing this, Cink, 44, who was among the last on tour to use a flammable club, tried to hit a hook. Did he ever; the ball veered like a drunk driver swerving five lanes left. His next two tries sliced right, over the yellow ropes and into the rough on Colonial’s adjacent fifth hole.

Chris Stroud, practicing next to Cink, laughed. Then he tried the half-century old club, and laughed again, as he, too, swatted a couple hard to the starboard side.

“He didn’t like to hit it left, did he?” said Stroud. “But the club head is very stable at the ball; it just doesn’t move. It’s beautiful.”

As the clubs moved up and down the tee, the hit-and-giggle pattern continued. J.T. Poston’s banana balls cracked up Billy Horschel. Tim Herron’s line drives got big laughs from three caddies. Jason Kokrak swung, and swung again, and the guy manning the Trackman chuckled, amused by the numbers coming up on the launch monitor.

Launch angles with the throwback club were much lower, around 9 degrees instead of Kokrak’s usual 11. Spin rates were dramatically higher, 3,100 rpm versus the usual 2,200; thus, the curve balls everyone was hitting. Ball speed was 164 mph against the 179 Kokrak gets with his Titleist 917D2. As for distance: Kokrak’s tournament roll-included average of 304 yards contrasted with his max carry of 271 with the old club. Of his 10 drives, most flew in the low 260s.

The size of Hogan’s driver compared to today’s standard club is striking

Kokrak, from Warren, Ohio, 6-foot-4 with a program weight of 225, looks like he could have played offensive line at Ohio State. The club appeared to be too small for him, and the acoustics seemed too puny, too. Even with Kokrak’s lusty attack, wood on ball sounded like a knuckle rapping on a door, while nearby the cataclysmic threek! of 460cc titanium heads reminded us that modernity was close at hand. Still, Kokrak got into it, and a small crowd gathered behind him. Caddies, reps, two writers, and a physio.

“Heavy and flat,” said Steven Bowditch of the weight and the lie angle.

“I kinda leave it off to the right,” commented Daniel Summerhays.

“My launch is a little low,” understated Herron.

“Felt awesome when I hit one in the middle of the face,” said Poston, 24. “I don’t really remember these. I think my grandpa had ‘em. … My regular driver’s gonna look enormous.”

“I played Hogan woods in college and growing up,” said Keith Clearwater, 57, the 1987 Colonial champ. “And for a few years I snuck one in my bag on tour.”

“What’s the loft on this? Two degrees?” asked Tony Finau. He swatted out a couple of drives—solid shots, probably 260 in the air—and then he snapped a photo of his big modern driver next to the little old one.

“We really should be using balata balls,” pointed out Graham DeLaet. Exactly: with a softer-covered ball with rubber-bands wound around the center, the distances would be still less and the area over the fence even more dangerous.

“Let me try that 1-iron,” Kokrak said.

Ah, the 1-iron. Hogan is identified with it. He hit one of golf’s most famous pressure shots with the unfriendly-looking stick, his second to the 72nd hole in the ’51 U.S. Open at Merion. The two things people always say about the longest long iron were quickly said. Someone compared it to a butter knife. And an equipment rep repeated Lee Trevino’s old joke about holding a 1-iron above his head in a lightning storm, because “not even God can hit a 1-iron.”

But Vaughn Taylor could. “What’s the loft on this—zero degrees?” he asked. Then he struck three square shots in a row, with his slow, rhythmic swing, and said, “That little blade narrows your focus.”

Jordan Spieth put the Hogan 1-iron behind a ball—then declined to hit it. “Ouch,” he said after his first shot with the driver, a short soft slice you could have caught barehanded. But he nailed his second try, and the ball sizzled through the air.

“What if you had to use a whole set of these,” asked his caddie, Michael Greller. “Could I beat you?”

Spieth thought for a moment. “No,” he answered. “I’d adapt.”

A few spaces away, the ghost of Ben Hogan burned a cigarette and narrowed his eyes. He threw the butt down, took another swing, and then he faded away.

The post How would modern tour pros do hitting Ben Hogan’s old clubs? We had them try, and it wasn’t pretty appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.