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How To Beat The Young Guys BRANDT SNEDEKER
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6 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
8 Editor’s Letter BY STUART MCLEAN Voices 10 The Undercover Pro WITH JOEL BEALL 12 Golf’s important skincare lesson BY JERRY TARDE 14 Journeys Lucas Herbert. WITH KEELY LEVINS 16 The Open’s future Is growth coming at the price of tradition? BY JOEL BEALL 20 Stupid problems ‘Stolen ball’ phenomenon BY CHRISTOPHER POWERS
44 Find more fairways BY MARK BLACKBURN
46 Warp Speed Swing Michael Thorbjornsen. BY DAVE ALLEN
88 The Best Indoor Drills BY SEAN HOGAN
92 Band Aid your Wedges BY RYAN HAGER
94 One-handed pitches BY DAVID LEADBETTER Features 50 How to beat the Younger Guys It’s not just about making more putts. BY BRANDT SNEDEKER 78 How AI will transform your game BY CURTIS GILLESPIE 96 A Bridge to Better Putting BY JASON GOLDSMITH 102 Conservation Cup Supporting wildlife education. Where to Play 58 Rodeo Dunes The next great golf resort. 60 Presidents Cup Medinah’s transformation. BY DEREK DUNCAN 64 Nedbank Challenge New first hole at Sun City. 66 Tough opening holes At SA’s Top 100 courses. BY STUART MCLEAN What to Play 70 The wrench that came with your driver is the most important thing in your bag. Why “easy-to-hit” clubs might not be the fix for your iron game (page 72). Oversize putter grips and rusty wedges: Are they right for you? (page 74). Everything in Sahith Theegala’s golf bag (Page 76).
22 Don’t chuck it RULES BY RON KASPRISKE
24 SA’s Major Drought BY GRANT SHUB
26 SA PGA Awards Five annual award winners.
28 Letter from America BY MAX ADLER
30 The Fringe Finnegan’s Foursome golf movie. BY ALEX MYERS How to Play 32 Hit Down on It To hit crisp fairway irons.
34 Stalk your Putts BY PATRICK CANTLAY
SHUFFLED DECK Medinah’s tough new par-4 18th will play as the 14th hole during the Presidents Cup from September 24-27.
36 Two-Minute Clinic Flop it & Stop it. BY KATIE DAHL 38 Don’t swing harder, swing longer BY DAN CARRAHER
40 Get laser focused BY LUKE KERR-DINEEN
43 From the Archives Overcoming the yips. BY JOHNNY MILLER
EDITOR’S LETTER E ICONS CUP COMING TO FANCOURT
Golf ball Spin Slope How Pros Hit the “Stinger” 5 Numbers golfers need to know Craziest 29 minutes in Open history CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW TO VIEW OUR TOP SIX VIDEOS
T eam events are a big part of autumn tournament golf in the northern hemisphere, with the recent Walker Cup and Solheim Cup providing us with a different perspective to the weekly grind of 72-hole strokeplay contests on the respective world professional tours. These biennial team events arguably attract the biggest television audiences outside the major championships, and the head-to-head matchplay in differ- ent formats is both entertaining and nail-biting, especially when the under- dogs get the better of the mighty Unit- ed States teams, whose players don’t appear to travel especially well these days when they embark for Europe or the United Kingdom. The Walker Cup at the ancient La- hinch links in Ireland was particularly memorable, even though the partici- pants were amateur golfers of which we knew little beforehand. Some may be- come future stars. It’s the oldest team contest of them all, established in 1921. This year’s edition was the 51st, and the result was a rare one, in that the Great Britain & Ireland team conquered the Americans for only the tenth time. In the most dramatic of circumstances. The Walker Cup today has become the antithesis of the Ryder Cup, its pro- fessional equivalent. It’s a timeless oc- casion and would easily be recognised as the same event by those who played in it a century ago. The Walker Cup tro- phy is one of the biggest in sport – it was donated by an American after all – and dwarfs the Ryder Cup, given by an
Englishman. The trophy stood promi- nently on the first tee at Lahinch, and the only spectator seating around the opening tee were three rows of chairs. The match is wrapped up in two days; there is no commercial signage or corporate presence; the crowds are limited to 8 000 a day; there are no grandstands, and spectators are gener- ally allowed to walk down the fairways behind the players. They are also of a more sporting nature, not inclined to hurl continual abuse at the visiting team, or cheer when they miss a putt. South Africans would dearly love to have a team event which involved our own top players. Historically we missed out on that possibility, not having estab- lished a rivalry with another country. However, a new teams event in De- cember at The Links at Fancourt might prove an entertaining distraction for holidaymakers from December 11-13, the week following the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City. Ernie Els will be captaining a team of South African sporting celebrities in a match against a world team led by Ryder Cup icon Jose Maria Olazabal. The event is the Icons Cup South Africa, part of the Icons Se- ries. It will be televised. Els represented the International team at nine Presidents Cup matches between 1996 and 2019 – the final oc- casion as team captain, while the Spaniard took part in eight Ryder Cups between 1987 and 2012 – the final one as a victorious captain at Medinah. There will be 12 players on each team, as in the Ryder Cup (the format
Fix Me: Webb Simpson World Handicap System
has fourballs, greensomes and sin- gles), and early selections for the home side include cricketers A B de Villiers, Shaun Pollock and Vernon Philan- der, plus Springboks Fourie du Preez, Butch James, Schalk Burger and Victor Matfield. Team World have announced Brian Lara, John Terry and Ash Barty. De Villiers has already played in an Icons series event at Liberty National in New York for Team World against Team USA, and says he found it “insanely competitive and nerve-wracking.” In- terestingly he revealed that he only met Ernie for the first time recently. “I never met him during my cricketing days,” said De Villiers. “Then, on holiday at Herold’s Bay my wife and I saw this guy walking past us towards the sea. It was Ernie. I grew up watching him on TV, so I walked over to him like the biggest fan in the world and introduced my- self. We became friends and had a beer together.” Stuart McLean stuartm@morecorp.co.za
GOLF DIGEST USA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JERRY TARDE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR MAX ADLER EXECUTIVE EDITOR PETER MORRICE INTERNATIONAL EDITOR JU KUANG TAN
TEACHING PROFESSIONALS: TODD ANDERSON, MARK BLACKBURN, CHUCK COOK, HANK HANEY, BUTCH HARMON, ERIKA LARKIN, DAVID LEADBETTER, CAMERON MCCORMICK, JIM MCLEAN, MICHAEL NEFF, RENEE POWELL, RANDY SMITH, RICK SMITH, DAVE STOCKTON, JOSH ZANDER PROFESSIONAL ADVISORS: AMY ALCOTT, RANDY MYERS, NICK PRICE, JUDY RANKIN, LUCIUS RICCIO, BOB ROTELLA, BEN SHEAR, RALPH SIMPSON, DR ARA SUPPIAH PLAYING EDITORS: COLLIN MORIKAWA, JORDAN SPIETH
EDITOR STUART MCLEAN DESIGN ELINORE DE LISLE MEDIA SALES DANIEL EGDES (daniele@morecorp.co.za)
A licensing agreement between Warner Brothers Discovery and Morecorp, owners of The Pro Shop and World of Golf. Warner Brothers Discovery is a global leader in real-life entertainment, serving a passionate audience of superfans around the world with content that inspires, informs and entertains.
8 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
THE UNDERCOVER PRO
Why Pro Golf Is Full of Bad Marriages
EARLY IN MY CAREER, a person I respected told me to find a woman who didn’t know who I
other matter. I’m not talking about bad marriages. For most guys out here, the right part- ner is the only reason any of this is sustainable. She’s running the house, the kids, the calendar, the bills while you’re three time zones away missing a cut by one. She’s the voice on the phone Sunday night calming you down after a closing 74. The right person at home
is the most underrated edge in profes- sional golf, and it’s not close. Plenty of guys would have washed out years ago without the unglamorous, unphoto- graphed work of a spouse holding their life together. That’s what makes the harder cases so confusing. Sometimes the genuinely supportive spouse or girlfriend, the person doing everything correctly by any normal standard, can
was. On the surface, it made sense. Mar- ry someone who isn’t chasing the life- style, isn’t measuring you by your world ranking, loves you for reasons that have nothing to do with your sponsors. The reasoning is airtight. What such a relationship does to your game is an-
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a pre-tournament trip he would have previously considered non-negotiable. He texts back faster. He’s present in the ways he wasn’t before. By most human measures, he is better. But the game has no interest in what’s reasonable or mature. It only knows what you give it. That’s the uncomfortable truth at the centre of all this. Professional golf doesn’t reward balance. The guys at the top of the world rankings are not bal- anced people. They are obsessive, sin- gle-minded, occasionally impossible to be around and completely fine with all of that. When a player starts genuinely dividing his attention – not just his time, but his mental energy, his hunger – his golf notices before he does. His best is still very good. It just doesn’t happen as often, and out here, the real trick is getting the most out of yourself when your best isn’t available, so that’s exactly where you see the drop off. The genuine disasters – the control- ling spouses who create scenes, who make demands of agents and spon- sors, who insert themselves into de- cisions that have nothing to do with them – are rarer than tour gossip might suggest. Most of the horror stories are exaggerated, or they’re about friction on the business side rather than any- thing that touches the actual golf. Even then, it’s not always a straight line to worse tournament results. I know one player whose wife was, by consensus among everyone who dealt with her, a complete nightmare. Managers, spon- sors, tournament officials – everyone had a story. Yet, this guy played some of the best golf of his life when she was at her worst. (After the kids, she settled down.) The explanation I heard from a mutual friend made more sense than it should have: If she was going to cause that much trouble, he’d better make the whole thing worth it. Sometimes chaos focuses a man. It’s not a model I’d rec- ommend, but I’ve seen stranger things produce birdies. As for me, I parted ways with my long-term girlfriend last summer. Nothing dramatic to relay, only that she wanted more time than I could afford. Unfortunately, for me at this moment, golf doesn’t allow another lover. – WITH JOEL BEALL
Netflix. She’s been shown a thousand demonstrations of what this life actu- ally requires, and somewhere along the way made peace with it. That’s no small thing. That’s years of negotiation that never have to be spoken aloud be- cause the terms were established before anyone had anything to negotiate over. That dynamic works. The woman who meets you when you’re already out here, who falls for the version of you that’s successful and sponsored and on television, she’s meeting a finished product. She didn’t sign up for the obsession because she never saw the ugly underbelly that of- ten powers it. She saw the result, which can look from the outside like a man who plays golf for a living and has a lot of free time. Explaining the difference is harder than it sounds, and some guys never quite manage it. Sometimes relationship dynamics shift. Some guys hit their mid-30s, their kids are getting older, and they want a change. They don’t want to wake up and find the children are off to college, that they missed ballgames and birth- days, that their kids barely recognise them. That’s a man getting his priori- ties straight. It’s often the same deal with a second marriage. Players who have been through a divorce are usually not making the same personal mistakes twice. The issues that ended the first marriage – usually just travel and time, not anything scandalous – are front of mind. That player has done the reflec- tion. He’s had the hard conversations, probably with a therapist, definitely with himself at midnight in a hotel room on the back nine of a bad season. He knows where things went wrong, so he adjusts. He softens. He eases the schedule, comes home earlier, takes fewer optional practice rounds, skips ‘Players who’ve been through a divorce are usually not making the same personal mistakes twice.’
wire backward into bad golf. A lot of the best players out here have been with the same person since before they were famous. The high school sweetheart, the college girl- friend – she’s been there through the grind. She was there in the mini-tour years when you were sharing a rental car with your caddie and eating at Mc- Donald’s. She watched you miss cuts and come home deflated and go right back out the following week. She knows what a Monday qualifier looks like. She understands why you’re on the range at 7 in the evening when the tourna- ment ended at 4. She’s not asking why you’re binging course footage instead of
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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
ILLUSTRATION BY MADISON KETCHAM
THE NEXT ONE’S GOOD
The Phone Call that Scared Justin Thomas and Me BY JERRY TARDE
month – the first removing a portion of my cheek that was about the size of a 50-cent piece. Further testing resulted in a second procedure that removed about a silver dollar. For a short pe- riod of gauze wrapping, I resembled Humphrey Bogart in “Dark Passage.” This was followed by plastic surgery to reconstruct my face, which sounds worse than it was, only my skin had to be dragged up from my neck, and I’m now left with a handsome little scar. Six-month checkups have followed, and so far there has been no recurrence. My advice is to follow the ABCDE of skin cancer detection: The warn- ing signs of melanoma are moles that are Asymmetric with uneven Borders, multiple Colours, larger than a pencil eraser in Diameter, and Evolving in size or shape. Golfers are susceptible to skin can- cer. Fred Couples, Greg Norman, Davis Love, Tom Kite, Gary Player, Stewart Cink and Adam Scott have all reported scares. In the early 1990s, when Retief Goosen was still in his 20s, he found a lump near his collarbone that was diagnosed as melanoma spread to his lymph nodes. His physicians told him it could have been fatal without the suc- cessful surgery he had before winning two US Opens. Justin Thomas, on his yearly check- up in 2019, discovered that the mole on the back of his left calf required a biopsy. He still remembers getting a call from his doctor at 9pm telling him it was melanoma, “an eye-opening thing to hear for a 26-year-old, a scary mo- ment in my life,” says Thomas, now 33 and healthy. “I didn’t think it happened to people my age. My doctor shaved off the mole, leaving a three- or four-inch scar the shape of a football on my leg, and no further treatment was required. The more I read, the more I realised how extremely lucky I was.” Thomas signed an endorsement deal with WearSPF and became a spokesman for awareness. He advocates using 50 SPF sunscreen lotion, paying close atten- tion to any changing moles, and getting annual checkups with a dermatologist. Skin cancer doesn’t care about your age or handicap. You need to take this lesson seriously.
FIVE YEARS AGO, I HAD A small brown spot appear on my face that I didn’t notice, but
About 230 000 Americans are diag- nosed annually with melanoma, split almost evenly between noninvasive and invasive (penetrating the deeper layers of the skin). If it’s superficial, you have 99 percent chance of surviv- al; if it spreads to the lymph nodes, it’s about 76 percent; if it spreads to distant organs, the number drops to about 35 percent, according to the American Melanoma Foundation. In a lifetime of being lucky, mine was caught early and turned out to be Stage 0 or in situ, meaning remaining in the top layer. In the way only golf connects us with the medical profession, I occasion- ally play with Dr Phil Ozuah, who is known among friends as “Nitro” for his explosive power off the tee. He is also the president and CEO of Montefiore
my daughter Lauren did. It looked like nothing, but I was due for my annual dermatology exam anyway, so I went to my local doctor, Jason McBean of Fairfield, Connecticut, who did a rou- tine inspection of my whole body. He paused on my left cheek. “Need to do a biopsy of this,” he said in his normal monotone. A few days later, I got a call with the bad news: It was melanoma, the most serious and aggressive form of skin cancer. Golfers in their 60s who have spent years in the sun like I did should not be surprised by a diagnosis of basal or squamous cell carcinoma. It usually can be dealt with by an outpatient pro- cedure removing the tumour in thin layers and immediately examining the results under a microscope. It’s typi- cally found on the exposed areas of the body like your head, ears, shoulders and legs. You endure a little pain but walk out of the office cured.
Medicine, one of the great health institutions in the New York area. He arranged three quick surgeries in a little over a
SPF 50, PLEASE Justin Thomas has become an advocate for checkups since overcoming a skin cancer scare at 26.
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JOURNEYS
LUCAS HERBERT
AGE 30
WINS LIV GOLF (2 IN 2026), PGA TOUR (1), DP WORLD TOUR (3) LIVES PEREGIAN BEACH, QUEENSLAND
‘I Lost Control and Rebelled by Partying’ You must have faith in what you’ve got. I didn’t have faith. I admit it wasn’t the right way to handle it BY LUCAS HERBERT, WITH KEELY LEVIN
G olf wasn’t incredibly popular where I grew up in Australia. I wasn’t a massive fan of it right away, but I played because it was fam- ily time with my dad and grandfather. Other sports were faster paced, more fun. But when I was 11, kids started getting bigger. I was small and scared of getting knocked around. That pushed me towards golf.
nine holes after practice just for fun, re- learning the enjoyment of golf – 2020 felt like a new beginning. ● ● ● Then I won in Dubai. My approach on the first playoff hole went into the water. Everyone thought Christiaan Be- zuidenhout had won, but I got up and down to force another playoff hole. I birdied it and won. I moved to Orlando, Florida, and when I had a break from the European Tour, I’d play Monday qualifiers and try to get invites to PGA Tour events. In 2021, I finished 18th at the Memorial and 19th at the Travelers. That got me into the Korn Ferry finals. I played well and clinched my PGA Tour card for 2022. ● ● ● I was drunk when I booked my flight to Columbus for the next Korn Ferry event. I landed and gave the rental-car desk my confirmation number, and they said, “That’s in Columbus, Ohio.” I’m like, “Well, where are we?” They said, “Columbus, Georgia.” I flew out the next day, shot 69 and finished T-58. ● ● ● I missed the cut in my first two PGA Tour starts as a rookie in 2021. I went to Bermuda, knowing the field was go- ing to be weak. I was in the last group on Sunday. Some diabolical weather came through. I knew I could play in it and thought it would eliminate a lot of guys. Once I took the lead, I never lost it. ● ● ● That win changed my season. The highlight was playing the 2022 Masters. I brought my parents and friends. My girlfriend, Maggie O’Shea, caddied for me in the Par 3 Contest. On the seventh hole, I nearly made a hole-in-one. Ev- eryone was going crazy, and those who had believed in me despite my mistakes were there. It was a perfect moment.
I made the primary school team, and suddenly golf was all I wanted to do. My dad’s no golf genius, but he taught me how to hold the club and what a swing should look like. I started working with Dom Azzopardi when I was 13 and still work with him today. Now I can look after Dom financially, but back then, after a lesson, my dad would ask what we owed. Dom would ask, “What’s in your wallet?” It could be $20; it could be $80. We were fortunate to have Dom. ● ● ● I missed a lot of school for golf. My mom was the assistant principal. She explained my absences to my teachers but told them to fail me if I didn’t do my work. When I was 18, I received schol- arship offers from colleges in America, but I wasn’t keen on studying anymore. ● ● ● I wanted more than anything to be a PGA Tour pro, but when I turned pro, I wasn’t convinced I could do it. I knew I was good. I’d been winning amateur and junior tournaments. As a teenager, I noticed I had this ability to get the ball in the hole in a way that my competi- tors couldn’t. I could get myself out of trouble and save par. I could make the putts that had to go in. My friends and parents believed in me. ● ● ● I was on the Australian national team. All of us were broke, sweating $5 money games. The structure wasn’t working for me. I had to use their coaches and follow their rules. You must have faith in what you’ve got.
When I couldn’t prepare how I wanted, I didn’t have faith. I lost independence and control and rebelled by partying and practising the minimum. It wasn’t the right way to handle it. I was kicked
out. ● ● ●
My parents encouraged me to use the setback as motivation. I recon- nected with Dom, but at the New Zea- land Open, I bogeyed three of the last four holes to miss the cut by a shot. My caddie, one of my best mates, said I could blame him if I wanted, but I had my own stuff to look at. “All these peo- ple around you are making sacrifices for you, and you’re not taking this seri- ously. You’re not putting in the work.” Hearing that from him, it hit me, and I started to really practice. ● ● ● In the 2017 Australian Open, I was in the final group with Jason Day. This was the season after he was World No 1. We juggled the lead all day, but Cam Davis ended up winning. I’d been a professional for two years but never had proof my game stacked up against the best. For the first time, I believed I could make it on the PGA Tour. ● ● ● My game was good enough to earn a European Tour card for 2019. I put all this pressure on myself to win. Half- way through the season, I wasn’t sure I wanted to play anymore. My mental coach helped me realise that thinking only about winning made every week feel like a failure, so I set goals that weren’t result-based. I started playing
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PHOTOGRAPH BY JENSEN LARSON
THE OPEN’S FUTURE
were allowed to get. The competition and the people who showed up for it was the product. For years, that was the reality. It's still the promise. It's just not entirely the experience anymore.
THE OPEN’S BRANDED “EXPERIENCES”
Players now are driven everywhere in Mercedes courtesy cars. The merchan- dise area has grown to the size of a de- partment store. The R&A, it seems, has done the maths on what the Masters makes off sales like these. The grounds overflow with branded "experiences," from whisky to tourism, to credit cards and insurance and watch-making. Hospitality has expanded, too, tiered now into "Signature," "Platinum," "Pre- mium" and "Select," in descending or- der of how close your money gets you to the game. Signature is the top of the ladder. It buys access to "Clarets," the venue overlooking the 17th green, plus three others around the course. A reserved grandstand seat at 18. A Q&A with a past or current player. A photo with the claret jug. A fast track through the Open Shop. All-inclusive food and beverage. Early-bird pric- ing ran at R22 000 for Wednesday, R55 000 for Sunday. It's not that these changes are being made – this is happening at all of golf’s biggest events – but how. Only the Old Course has hosted the Open more than Royal Birkdale over the last 70 years. That legacy didn't stop the club from remaking its setup wholesale since 2017: a full redesign of the short par-4 fifth; a shortened and rebuilt par-3 sev- enth; the old par-3 14th erased entirely; the old par-5 15th rebuilt to become the new 14th; a new par-3 15th that shares almost nothing with the hole it replaced. Erasing the old 14th also opened ground to carve out a short- game area that wasn't there before. The changes collectively feel like a betrayal of what a links is supposed to be. A proper links isn't a sequence of holes so much as a single organ- ism. One that breathes with the land, exhales with its weather and remem- bers, hole to hole, what it asked of you a few holes back, the way a good novel
The Open keeps growing
tant time. Lately it feels like the art is being altered just to get more people through the door, compromising the very reason they came. This isn't a rant against commer- cialism for its own sake. The R&A is transparent that Open week funds nearly everything the organisation does the rest of the year. Grassroots grants, course-access programmes, sustainability research, the amateur game, women's and girls' initiatives. It’s money that reaches well past St An- drews, into municipal courses with no connection to major championships. The R&A is not a private equity fund extracting value. It's a good steward putting the money to good use. The more this week makes, the more work it can do the other 51. That's all well and good. It's just that the Open guards a purity that much of the rest of the professional game waved goodbye to long ago. Players historically used the same modest clubhouse lockers. You see them walk- ing into town for dinner, unbothered, sometimes unrecognised. Get a tee time at a neighbouring course at dusk and you'll find a caddie or two playing nine with a local, chasing the last of the light. Fans camp in distant fields and walk in at dawn. The merchandise tent, until recently, looked more like a pro shop than a flagship store. No tier system for how close to the game you
But is it coming at the price of tradition? BY JOEL BEALL
THE FAN VILLAGE AT Royal Birkdale sat right of the 13th hole at the 154th Open Cham-
pionship, all retail tents and corporate fortresses and vendor buggies. Rising from the open field it was an impres- sive sight, so long as you didn’t think too hard about what it had replaced. This used to be Birkdale's practice range, where Jordan Spieth’s tee shot strayed during the dramatic final round of the 2017 Open and caused a 29-minute delay in play over a ruling. Where Spieth's shot had cleared the dunes and vanished into the unknown, you could buy a claret jug hat for R450. It was one change in a wave of them at Birkdale. Each was defensible on its own. Together, they have left things unsettled. The Open, at its core, is an exercise in preserving art from a dis-
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The spectator village at Royal Birkdale, located in what was the club’s previous practice facility. The other structures are corporate hospitality on holes 15, 17 and 18.
teresting is it's so obvious as to which holes had been redone. They look like they're not even on the same course. You look at 14, 15, 16, those green com- plexes and the amount of slope that they have off them are pretty severe and quite challenging. The fifth hole is kind of like that, seventh hole as well. It was pretty obvious like, oh, these are the holes that got redone because they look like they're on a different course." RECORD ATTENDANCE If you're wondering why a links trac- ing its roots to the 19th century made changes this drastic, it wasn't entirely for shot-making. It wasn't for tour- nament toughness, either. It was for crowds, crowd flow and the bottom line. In 2017, the Open drew a then- record 230 000 at Birkdale. This year, that number jumped 33 percent to a new record of 306 000 on the grounds. The maths is simple: more tickets, more merchandise, more money. In his annual address to the media, R&A chief Mark Darbon pushed back against the idea that Birkdale had bent to spectator demand. "Given the strength of partnership that we have with our host venues, of course we're part of some of those discussions, and
Bolt three or four new holes on to that organism, built to modern spec, with modern equipment and modern crowd-flow maths in mind, and you don't get a stronger version of the same course. You get a graft that never quite takes. Scottie Scheffler, perhaps acciden- tally, delivered a dagger on the eve of the Open, stating "I think it's pretty obvious … the one thing I found in-
plants a line in the opening pages and cashes it in Chapter 20. That rhythm isn't decorative, as old Scottish and English architects walked the ground until it told them where the holes al- ready were, and then they got out of the way. It's the entire architectural philosophy separating links golf from the parkland style America perfected, where nothing is imposed and every- thing is discovered.
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THE OPEN’S FUTURE
at the US Open, layering in more cor- porate hospitality tiers each cycle. The Ryder Cup, run by the PGA of America, now functions as much as a hospital- ity event as a competition, with ticket packages becoming controversial. Still, is there a cost to what the Open is doing? This championship has a version of the game closest to how it was invented. Played over land no one built, on ground fast and cruel enough that luck and skill blur into the same thing, in weather nobody controls and nobody thinks to complain about. Ev- ery other major sells controlled perfec- tion; the Open, historically, has sold the opposite. Not pure, exactly. But the closest thing left. The Open's value was never tradition for tradition's own sake but a reminder of what this game once was and, if only for a week, can still be again. At Birkdale, there sure felt like a lot of proverbial scaffolding. And the thing about that is, put it up, keep it up long enough, and even- tually people forget there's a building underneath at all. They start to think the scaffolding is the attraction. If the Open gets sanded down into something more legible for a bigger gate, it won't have necessarily failed. Attendance up. Revenue up. Grants written, courses funded, good work done. But it will be another step away from why any of this matters in the first place. Nobody votes to kill an identity. They just keep trading slivers of it for next year's numbers, until one day the identity is simply gone, and no one knows why it vanished. But at least you can buy a hat at the spot where the identity once lived. FUTURE OPENS The 2028 Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes will be played three weeks later than usual, on August 3-6, due to a clash with the Los Angeles Olympic Games in July. The 2027 Open at St Andrews is from July 15-18.
nock in Dublin, Ireland, waiting in the wings for its own Open bid, already being told the local infrastructure isn't ready with not enough beds, not enough roads, fans possibly ferried in by boat. The real test of how far this goes arrives next July, at St Andrews, when it hosts the 2027 Open. The Home of Golf is supposed to shatter Birkdale’s attendance record, drawing as many as 30 000 to 40 000 more fans than it did in 2022. Somewhere near 330 000 people funnelled into a town of 17 000. That's a town problem, a roads prob- lem, a can-this-place-physically-hold- this many-people problem. St Andrews is the source code. If the Old Course starts getting redrawn to answer to a gate number, there's no longer a ver- sion of the Open immune from this thinking. Everything becomes nego- tiable once the birthplace of the game is on the table. CORPORATE HOSPITALITY To be fair, the Open isn't the only one making this trade. The Masters has spent the last decade turning its hos- pitality operation into an arms race, expanding merchandise revenue and premium patron packages well be- yond what Augusta once tolerated. The USGA has followed a similar path
where there are things that we can do together that also help us operation- ally, they often make sense to do to help with the staging of the champion- ship," Darbon said of course changes he insists the members were behind. "I think it would be wrong to say that all of the changes are driven by a need to accommodate spectators." But is there a potential price for re- fusing to change? Darbon says there's no threat to those that don't, but Royal Portrush had to carve out two new holes to build a fan village in 2019. Royal Liverpool did the same in 2023. And there are the current predica- ments of rota courses Muirfield and Turnberry. Both spent years on a kind of shadow probation over political en- tanglements – Turnberry for its ties to the Trump family, Muirfield for its no-women membership – the sort of principled stand the R&A could make and still look virtuous doing it. Now each is sidelined for other reasons. Turnberry is deemed too remote; the R&A wants new roads built to handle the traffic. Muirfield's sin is refusing to remodel itself for bigger crowds; a smaller, more intimate footprint that once read as a virtue is now treated as a disqualifier. The 2013 Open at Muir- field drew roughly 140 000 fans. The same logic applies to Portmar-
18 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
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NOTHING PUTTS LIKE A
RORY McILROY
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER
STUPID GOLF PROBLEMS
and-run, but with no cops to call. If the rest of the group is OK with it, and you all agree on a reasonable spot, simply drop where you believe it was and play your next shot with no penalty. This is assuming you aren’t playing in an official event, of course. If it’s a casual round, yes it sucks to lose an expensive ball when you clearly hit it in play, but if you never saw who did it, there’s not much you can do. If you’re playing for money and someone wants to give you a hard time about it actu- ally being a “lost ball” by the definition of the Rules, then that’s their preroga- tive. With people like that, you have to be a Rules stickler right back to them when the time comes and see how they like it (they won't). In bucket B — you can see someone stealing your ball from miles away — I’m a huge proponent of screaming at the top of your lungs to deter them. It could be a “HEY,” it could be a “DON’T TOUCH IT” a la Alan from “The Hang- over,” or it could be a “THAT’S NOT YOUR BALL” for all I care. People need to know it’s not OK to be scooping balls that could be in play for someone else, even if it’s a fairway or two over. A good rule is to just assume it’s always someone else’s ball who is in the middle of a round. You have your own ball, go play that. If shouting doesn’t work, I fully endorse driving or walking over to the person and calmly confronting them. Most people will sheepishly admit they did take it and give it back. The ones that don’t and deny what you saw with your own eyes don’t deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. But they are the ones who have to look in the mirror at a fraud every morning. If you need a free ball that badly, you can go dumpster diving in the woods or a dried-up hazard that's full of them. You don't need to be taking any that are a few metres off the fairway. Let’s all just stop picking up balls in bounds that aren’t ours and making sure you’re watching your own ball at all times and having a good line on it. If we all do that, lost balls will still happen, but they’ll be much easier to live with.
How do you handle the “stolen ball” phenomenon
but we all understand the feeling of not being able to resist a free Pro V1x. Especially one with a cool number on it. Like 64 or 81. Ooo! We got a custom job here boys! That said, any time I’ve ever done it, I immediately feel the bad karma. And those are the moments I swear off EVER touching a ball that’s pos- sibly in play for someone else, even if it’s someone I can’t currently see from 300-plus metres away. It’s the classic “do unto others as you would have them do to you” situation. I hit the ball wildly off-line sometimes, too, and I want to always have a chance to still find it as long as it's in bounds. When those moments inevitably happen, how do you handle it? Two scenarios usually play out: A. You didn’t see your ball get stolen, or B. You did, but the person who took it is so far away that it’s (almost) impos- sible to stop. In bucket A, the most likely sce- nario is that you’ve hit a blind shot, or simply weren’t paying full attention on the drive or walk up to your ball and didn’t notice someone taking it. In this (very frustrating) case, you sort of just have to live with it. A total hit-
BY CHRISTOPHER POWERS
GOLFERS PICKING UP A ball in another fairway is a scenario where we’ve been
both the victim AND the guilty party. Anyone who says differently is lying. I, for one, have watched in agony after blocking one into another fair- way, waiting for my playing partners to tee off, and seeing someone from 250 metres away roll up in their cart, extend their arm down and inspect my golf ball. Even if they don’t steal it, I still feel violated. I’ve also seen a ball that isn't mine (or anyone's in my group) buried in rough on the hole I'm on, searched far and wide for anyone on a nearby hole whose ball it could be, and told myself it's up for grabs. I’m not proud of it,
20 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
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You’ve Never Played Like This Before. Period.
RULES
might wonder what happens when one of those golfers takes your ball, hits it back at you or throws it away. There are a few
HERE’S THE WINDUP Be sure to yell “fore” if you hit into Bill Murray’s group.
things to understand about how to pro- ceed when these things happen. The first is that the golfer is considered an outside influence by the Rules of Golf, and under Rule 9.6, if he or she hap- pens to do something to move your ball from the spot where it came to rest, you can replace it (or another ball) on that spot with no penalty. If you’re not sure where that spot is, you can estimate it based on all available evidence. Remember that it has to be known or virtually certain another golfer moved your ball. If you’re not at least 95 percent sure and you can’t find it, it’s considered lost. Take a stroke-and- distance penalty under Rule 18.2. The procedure for what to do chang- es if your ball was deliberately deflect- ed while in motion instead of being picked up after it had come to rest. For example, your ball rolls up onto a group on the green and one of them kicks it off (perhaps into a pond bordering the hole). If it’s known or virtually certain that happened, under Rule 11.2 you have to take relief. Do so by estimating the spot where you think the ball would have come to rest if it wasn’t kicked. You’re supposed to drop in a relief area if that ball would have stopped off the green, or place the ball if it would have stopped on the putting green. If your ball likely would have gone out-of- bounds, you unfortunately have to take stroke-and-distance penalty relief. To recap: If your ball at rest is moved by an outside influence, put that ball (or a replacement) on the spot where it came to rest and play on with no pen- alty. If it’s deflected while in motion, estimate where the ball would have come to rest and either drop it on that spot (off the green) or place it (on the green), then play on with no penalty. Oh, and maybe buy a round of drinks for a group you hit into if they leave your ball alone. Not the worst idea.
IT CAN’T BE EMPHASISED enough that you should never intentionally hit into the group
in front of you, but it does happen from time to time – even on the PGA Tour. John Daly famously hit into tour pro Jeff Roth’s group twice at the 1994 NEC World Series of Golf, and then got into a fight with Roth’s father after the round. Not a good look, but as you probably know, Daly’s had more than his share of wincing moments over the years. There’s hitting into a fourball on purpose and then there are these more common happenstances: Sometimes it occurs because you hit a shot longer than expected. Sometimes it happens because it’s a blind shot and you didn’t realise the course ahead wasn’t clear. If you do it, you’ll likely encounter some unhappy golfers. Apologies usually do the trick to de-escalate things, but you
Don’t Chuck it! You hit into a group and they’re not happy. What now? BY RON KASPRISKE
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MORE WITHIN REACH THAN YOU THINK. START SMALL. BUILD YOUR WAY.
THE MAJORS
South Africa’s Major Drought
ers to continue mak- ing a living in South Africa and not push themselves by going abroad. “You need to fight for your place on any international tour. And, in many cases, the fact we haven't seen a major
THRISTON LAWRENCE
has won six times on the DP World Tour
in the past five years,
but has only had one Top- 10 in 10 major appearances.
winner from South Africa in so long comes down to comfort levels at home.” Els, who won two US Opens in 1994 and 1997, plus the Open Championship in 2002 and 2012, recalls that when he was playing as a junior at Kempton Park Golf Club in the 1980s, at the back of his mind he was already competing at a major. “Gary definitely has a point when he says that our courses are set up too easy,” Els says. “When I play at home, I look around the range and facilities and I must admit that we played in tougher conditions in the early ‘90s than the guys do today. I feel the greens are way too soft, too slow, and there is no substantial rough.” The Big Easy contends that the majority of SA courses used for tourna- ments haven’t embraced the modern era in terms of length. He is of the view that we need to relook at our course set-ups going forward. Player references the fact that we had two of our most promising young golfers, Casey Jarvis (23) and Aldrich Potgieter (22), competing at the Masters this year. “When they teed off at Augus- ta National, I was sure they were going to experience something they never knew about.” Both players missed the cut. Jarvis, this year’s SA Open cham- pion, shot 77-75 and Potgieter 84-75. Jarvis to his credit though did bounce back at Royal Birkdale in the Open where he finished T-6 in only his fourth major appearance. It was the first Top-10 by a South African since Thris- ton Lawrence was fourth in the 2024 Open at Royal Troon. GolfRSA CEO Grant Hepburn be- lieves every generation is different and it’s not useful comparing past successes to our current struggles in the majors. “I don’t think the current crop of tour players are any less talented or driven,” he says. “However, what has happened
Gary Player and Ernie Els espouse reasons why South Africa is no longer producing major champions. BY GRANT SHUB
ERNIE ELS WILL BE 57 IN October, and he remains the last South African to win a
many of them. In recent seasons we have seen Luis Carrera win with 30-under over 72 holes at Irene CC, Danie van Tonder with 27-under at Pecanwood, and Mat- teo Manassero with 26-under at Glen- dower, one of our more challenging championship layouts. “Everybody has a different opin- ion on what a championship course is,” says Player. “I’ve played more of them than anybody in this country so I should know. For argument’s sake, when the Sunshine Tour play each year at the Links at Fancourt, our toughest course, they never put them off the back tees. There is no tournament I played anywhere in the world that they didn’t use the back tees.” Els admits he’s baffled that we haven’t had a new major champion since Schwartzel won the Masters in 2011. “In the broader context we have a great development programme,” he says. Els notes that getting onto the PGA Tour has become increasingly difficult and, owing to the current climate and success of the Sunshine Tour, it has become comfortable for our pro golf-
major championship. Think about that. Only three South African golfers under the age of 50 are major champions, and the youngest of them is 42-year-old Charl Schwartzel. What has happened to the genera- tion that followed in the footsteps of Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman, Louis Oosthuizen and Schwartzel? Why haven’t they stepped up, or are we expecting too much of our more recent golfing stars? After a glorious two decades from 1992 to 2012 in which six of our golfers won 12 majors, a remarkable win ratio of 15 percent, we have gone 56 majors without a solitary success since Els lifted the claret jug at Royal Lytham in 2012. Gary Player, who claimed nine majors in a 20-year span of supremacy between 1959 and 1978, and won 160 professional events on six continents, believes that a reason we haven’t had a major champion for so long is that the tournament setups in South Africa are too easy, with low scoring the norm in
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LOUIS OOSTHUIZEN
truth is that one week you’re on and the next week you’re not.” Abt has noted Player’s comments that courses must be set up to be more
over the years is you have a smaller pool of players that qualify to play on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour.” Hepburn says this is a contributing factor in South Africa’s long wait for its next major champion. “In terms of what it will take to break our major drought, I think we are getting closer. There is more than enough talent in this country so it could happen at any time.” Hepburn is positive about the future of SA golf and works closely with the Sunshine Tour. “The advantage we have that we didn’t a decade ago is that we now have a national squad at amateur level,” he says. “You are seeing the likes of Jarvis and Jayden Schaper coming through and winning on the DP World Tour. A few years ago, they were tour rookies fresh out of the squad.” Hepburn says that legends like Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Els, who dominated for long periods of time, possessed solid techniques. “Then there are players who dominate for a shorter period, Jordan Spieth for example. Being talented, they find a swing for a while, but then their tech- nique starts to let them down. We are now in an era where the very best golf- ers are dominating the majors. The Masters hasn’t had a surprise winner since Danny Willett in 2016. “When it comes to Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, you have two
was the last South African to lead a major after 54 holes, at the 2021 Open.
difficult on the Sunshine Tour. “Our past major champions played the same courses our golfers are playing now,” he says. “I don’t necessarily think the courses are a big factor and, when we host DP World Tour events, our colleagues and Sunshine Tour directors set up the courses.” Abt concurs they could be more difficult, but he questions why they would want to take that approach. “You don’t necessarily want a course which is that difficult where the golfers become embarrassed,” he says. “You want a situation where the fans admire our golfers, see them make birdies, and aspire to play like them.” Player says that golf is meant to have a pain barrier and courses should be demanding to test a player’s mental and physical limits. “You can’t fault Mr Player’s think- ing,” says Abt. “You have to listen to his opinion, but we don’t want to make our courses so difficult that players are asking themselves: Why am I even play- ing this game? Setting up courses to be more difficult is not necessarily the way to produce more winners.”
dominant players. Scottie is winning through his talent, timing, and abil- ity to keep the club through the ball in a good position. However, as his technique is unusual, we will have to see how long he can keep it up at the highest level.” Sunshine Tour commissioner Thomas Abt says major winners are cyclical. He feels it’s not anything to be concerned about as it is evolving with youngsters coming through. “Next year we may have two major winners,” Abt predicts. “Through the DP World Tour, we provide our players with a pathway to the majors. The bottom line is that we’ve got the golfers, but in sport, the
Golden 21 years South Africa enjoyed a golden era in the majors from 1992 to 2012. Up until 1992 our only major champions had been Bobby Locke and Gary Player. In those 21 years there were 12 victories by six different players. Four in the US Open, four in the Open Champion- ship, two in the Masters, and two in the US PGA. But there was a 14-year drought preceding that period, and it has now been 14 years since our last major triumph. With champions like Nick Price, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman, Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel, we not only won 12 majors but contended in many others. Between them, Els and Oosthuizen were runners-up in 12 other majors. In the two decades from 2000 to 2019 our golfers recorded 44 Top-5s in majors, and 71 Top-10s. This was truly exceptional.
As a show of comparison, in the two preceding decades from 1980 to 1999 there were 20 Top-5s and 41 Top-10s. However, in the last 17 years there have been a mea- gre 13 Top-5s, and the only players to have contended seriously for majors were Oosthuizen and Branden Grace, who had four Top-5 finishes in the 2015 and 2016 US Open and PGA. Today, only two South Africans under the age of 30 have a Top-10 in a major to their credit – Thriston Lawrence and Casey Jarvis with one apiece. Both were in the Open Championship. We haven’t had a Top-10 in an American major since Schwartzel finished T-10 in the 2022 Masters. The last South African to have had the solo lead going into the final round of a major was Oosthuizen at the 2021 Open. He finished T-3 at Royal St George’s, four shots behind champion Collin Morikawa. Oosthuizen also had a share of the third-round lead at the 2021 US Open and lost by one to Jon Rahm at Torrey Pines.
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