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Bernhard Langer was not penalized. An update to the rules of golf covered him there. 

But he could not duck awkwardness.

“Well, the dreaded two-chip,” analyst Gary Koch said of Langer’s dreaded two-chip, caught on Golf Channel’s broadcast of Friday’s Senior Open second round. 

Of course, you’re supposed to one-chip, and that was the two-time Masters champ’s thought after hitting his third shot on Gleneagles’ par-4 9th from just off the back of the green. Then he hit the ball again, the second time as it was starting to move forward and he was beginning his follow-through. From about 60 feet from the pin, the ball kicked out to Langer’s left, and he was left with about a 40-footer for par. 

So … what happened?

“He’s trying to lob the ball over that little ridge in front and gets a little flip of the hands and the clubhead gets out there and catches the ball for a double hit,” Koch said on the broadcast. 

But, as noted above, Langer was not hit with a penalty, thanks to a rules change in 2019. Rule 10.1a now states: “If the player’s club accidentally hits the ball more than once, there has been only one stroke and there is no penalty;” previously Langer would have been penalized a stroke. 

And why was the change made? On their website, the USGA wrote: “Where a double hit occurs as part of a single stroke and was not the intention of the player, it was felt unfair and unnecessary for the player to be penalized. Just as there is no penalty if a player’s ball accidentally deflects off his or her body, equipment or caddie, there is no need for a penalty when a player accidentally strikes his or her own ball in making a stroke.”

Fitness

On the broadcast, Koch had another thought. 

“The good news is, under the rules change back a couple of years ago, no longer a penalty,” he said. “And I could see why because I’ve never seen a double hit that ended up in a better position, that’s for sure.”

From there, Langer bogeyed, but shot three-under over his final nine holes for a two-under 68 overall, and he’s three shots back of leader Darren Clarke. 

He had recovered well, though these things can scar. 

“What that does — we’re all golfers here and professional — it absolutely knocks the stuffing out of you emotionally when you do something like that,” said Paul McGinley, who joined the broadcast after his second round.  

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Welcome to our new series, golfer-to-golfer, where we try to learn from all different kinds of avid players out there, in hopes that the rest of us can take away something that might improve our own games.

I knew it was time for a change when a four foot putt was the only obstacle between me and a collegiate starting lineup. Cornell’s qualifying rounds determine the traveling squad, and players are often differentiated by a single shot. I lipped out a four-footer on the low side — the amateur side — and stayed in Ithaca instead of traveling to Princeton one Spring weekend.

Late that night, I found myself rolling putts in my dorm room with little to no consistency, and my frustration was building. 

For some reason, my putting stroke in practice did not translate into competition. When I used alignment sticks for my club path or tees for my starting line, it was only effective during the drill. I would take the aids away and the pushes and pulls crept back in.

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Then, I found something that worked for me — and I haven’t looked back since.

To say that everything changed would be a lie, but it was the first drill that continued improving my putting stroke even after I put it away. It’s called the Putting Stick, a training aid that is essentially a slightly longer yardstick with alignment marks and a sliding rubber piece at the end. Your ball rests in a small dimple on the stick, and the goal is to roll the ball, end over end, off the other side. 

Fixing the fundamentals

This simple drill brings together the components of every other putting drill or aid I’ve tried. It helps with aim, like alignment sticks; starting point, like gates; and adds one more feature unlike any other drill I’ve tried. It perfects the take away to follow through ratio — all the fundamentals present in all of golf’s great putters.

By providing immediate feedback, any stroke that isn’t perfect will roll off the side of the stick and miss by an exaggerated margin. Just like putting on a mini cup, once I found a consistent stroke with the training aid, putting without it gave me a boost of confidence. Putts I thought were pushed would still lip in, and it feels as though it’s cut my margin of error in half. I do it before every round now, and whenever I’m practicing at home. I still struggle with inconsistency at times, but that’s natural. My putting, on the whole, is in a much better place.

The Faldo Series Putting Stick Golf Training Aid

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Swing, hold the pose, thrust the driver forward, slide the club down the fingers, walk down the fairway. 

Repeat 27 times. And nearly 28. 

While we strive to deliver the most in-depth description of this Masters tournament, there’s nothing really more to type on the driving masterclass Bernhard Langer put on at Augusta National on Thursday and Friday. That’s no knock on Langer. It was remarkably efficient. It was nearly perfect. There are 28 possible fairways to hit here. And he nearly — by just a foot — hit them all. No one was better this year. 

Nor is anyone older. At 64, he is the eldest player in the field.

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“I think it’s remarkable what Bernhard Langer has done,” 72-year-old Tom Watson said Thursday after his honorary tee shot that helped open the tournament. “He had — a couple years ago he was pretty close to the lead going into the last round.

“I have to say this about Bernhard. Bernhard works harder at the game, practices harder at the game. He has a caddie that works harder than any other caddie preparing. They both prepare the best. I remember Jack [Nicklaus] saying that I won a lot of tournaments because I out-prepared everybody.

“You don’t have to play the best. That’s one of the things when I learned — I came on the Tour, I thought, I have to play perfect golf to ever have a chance to maybe even make a cut or certainly to win a tournament. I had to play my best. No. You have to play smart. That’s why I was talking about how — I watched and learned from the players in practice rounds and how they were playing the golf course.

“Bernhard is that type of person.”

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Indeed. During Thursday’s first round, Langer hit all 14 fairways. On Friday, he was down the middle on 1, down the left side on 2, down the middle on 3 and down the right side on 5. 

On the 450-yard, par-4 7th, Langer leaned to his left, trying to coax his tee shot to the right. He could not. 

It settled into the right rough by no more than 12 inches. 

On 9, he just started again. 

A look at Bernhard Langer’s second-round tee shots:

1st (445-yard, par-4): 249 yards down the middle of the fairway 
2nd (575-yard, par-5): 273 yards down the left side of the fairway 
3rd (350-yard, par-4): 214 yards down the middle of the fairway 
5th (495-yard par-4): 271 yards down the right side of the fairway 
7th: (450-yard, par-4): 289 yards into the first cut on the right 
8th (570-yard, par-5): 261 yards down the left side of the fairway 
9th (460-yard, par-4): 313 yards down the middle of the fairway 
10th (495-yard, par-4): 284 yards down the left side of the fairway 
11th (520-yard, par-4): 276 yards down the left side of the fairway
13th (510-yard, par-5): 259 yards down the left side of the fairway 
14th (440-yard, par-4): 267 yards down the middle of the fairway 
15th (550-yard, par-5): 241 yards down the right side of the fairway 
17th (440-yard, par-4): 264 yards down the right side of the fairway 
18th 465-yard, par-4: 261 yards down the left side of the fairway 

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Ed. note: Just as Augusta National is the ultimate insiders’ club, the Masters is the ultimate insiders’ tournament. Nearly nine decades after the storied venue was founded, the Augusta Experience has remained shrouded in mystery. To unlock some of its secrets, we asked those who have been part of the experience to describe one element of what makes Augusta Augusta and the Masters the Masters. The sixth installment of our “What It’s Like…” series (below) was contributed by two-time Masters winner Bernhard Langer.

Previous installments: Being a Masters rookie | Sinking green-jacket dreams at 12 | Working on the Masters grounds crew | Staying in the Crow’s Nest | Hitting a ceremonial opening tee shot

***

Being fortunate to win the green jacket on two occasions, in 1985 and 1993, I had two opportunities to pick the menu for my fellow winners. The choices I made both times said a lot about where I was in my life.

The first time, I selected sauerbraten, my favorite German dish. The key is to marinate the beef for two or three days so that it is so soft and tender you won’t even need a knife. The meal also included red cabbage and an incredibly delicious dumpling known as spaetzle. If you haven’t had spaetzle, you have really been missing something. Then I topped it off with Black Forest cake. My mom made an awesome Black Forestcake when I was a kid.

The chefs at Augusta were just as awesome. They really did their homework to make sure every part of the meal was authentic. I was thrilled when the guys told me how much they enjoyed it. Nobody turned it down.

The second time, I went with the typical Thanksgiving meal: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce — the works. I didn’t pick that meal only because I loved the food. I picked it because I wanted to give thanks to the country that had become my new home — I had lived in America for about a decade by then — and to the Lord. I had become a Christian by 1994. The food on this occasion was just as incredible.

The bill for the two meals was quite hefty, especially when you add in the drinks, but I didn’t mind one bit. I’m sure that’s how every champion feels. I remember sitting in that room the first time realizing that I was going to be part of this for the rest of my life.

With reporting by Michael Arkush

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The post Just how impressive is Bernhard Langer’s PGA Tour Champions run? ‘He’s a freak’ says one peer appeared first on Golf.

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It’s looking more and more likely that one of golf’s most incredible records could fall in the coming months: Hale Irwin’s stunning 45-win tally on the PGA Tour Champions.

Bernhard Langer, who at the spry age of 64, just notched his 43rd Champions Tour win at last week’s Chubb Classic, is now only two wins away from matching the seemingly unmatchable.

Langer has won at least once in each of his fourteen seasons on the Champions Tour. In most of them, he won twice. And in some others, he won as many as seven times (2017).

Age is simply a number for Langer, and what he’s managed to accomplish as a senior player has left many of his peers shaking their heads in admiration.

“He’s a freak,” said 1988 PGA Champion Jeff Sluman at this week’s Cologuard Classic in Tucson. “It’s unbelievable what he’s doing and it’s a shame that he’s not getting recognized more in the national and world golf press for what he’s doing. If you try and compare at our age ourselves to him, I mean, you’re going to end up on the short end of the stick all the time.”

Sluman is the same age as Langer, and has six senior tour wins himself.

Instruction

“I can still play the game a little bit, but his consistency, that’s the phenomenal part,” Sluman said of Langer. “He does it week in and week out. If I’m doing it every other week or every other month or whatever, I mean, it’s not easy to do even when you’re 50 out here let alone at his age. I don’t think we’ll ever see again at that age, how he can compete and still win. He doesn’t hit it near as far as he used to and he just, he doesn’t make mistakes. He hits it in the middle and he makes a ton of putts. It’s phenomenal to watch.”

Langer has a reputation as one of the tour’s hardest workers. And at 64, he still believes he can improve.

“I believe I can, yes,” he said at his pre-tournament press conference in Tucson. ” I know I’m not going to get longer or I’m never going to hit it 300-plus, but I can still get straighter, I can still become a better short game player. You know, if I make one more putt a week, I’m one shot better. That could be enormous over a period of, you know, 25 tournaments or something like that. If I could chip one ball closer or hit one more green with my irons, if I could get that one stroke better a week or half a stroke better, it would have tremendous outcome over the period of the whole season.

“I think golf is very much a mental game as well as it is technical, so you can work on your technique like I just mentioned, but you can also work on your mental side,” he continued. “If you’re mentally stronger and believe that you can do it and don’t get overwhelmed with the situation that we get ourselves in when you get in contention, yes. So that’s the long answer of yes, I believe that I can still get better.”

Irwin, now 76, won his 45th Champions Tour title in 2007, the year Langer joined. Will Langer climb one tournament closer with a win this week? He’s currently lurking in Tucson, four shots back, with two rounds to play.

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The post If this golf record isn’t broken soon, it will stand forever, says Jim Furyk appeared first on Golf.

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Records, they say, are made to be broken, but in men’s professional golf, at least a few marks appear insurmountable: Byron Nelson’s 11 consecutive wins; Tiger Woods’ 142 straight starts without a missed cut; and, yes, the holy grail of golf records: Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major wins. With Tiger’s superhuman powers fading, feels like you could carve all of those numbers in stone.

But there’s another less frequently cited achievement that 17-time PGA Tour winner and shrewd golf observer Jim Furyk says is also bound to go unmatched — that is, unless one player does it soon: Hale Irwin’s career win haul on the PGA Tour Champions.

From 1995 to 2007, Irwin won a staggering 45 times on the senior circuit, including a nine-win season in 1997. That averages out to nearly four wins a year over a 12-year stretch, which sounds maybe slightly gettable until you realize that Irwin was 62 at the end of that run. That’s the thing with Champions tour golf — with each passing season out there, you’re not getting any younger.

Unless, of course, you happen to be Bernhard Langer, who has aged like a fine Gruyere. In 15 seasons on the Champions tour, Langer has won with Irwinian consistency, racking up 42 wins. As recently as a couple of years ago, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Langer would eclipse Irwin’s mark. But today, not so much.

Since picking up W No. 40 at the 2019 Senior Open Championship, Langer has showed he is, in fact, human, winning “just” twice more. He’s 64 now. How many more wins does he have in the tank, especially with young’uns like Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington coming onto the scene? Three or four more victories suddenly seems like a big ask.

But back to the 51-year-old Furyk, himself a three-time winner on the Champions tour. Whoever ends up holding the win record, Furyk predicts, that player will hold the mark forever. (Third on the all-time wins list, by the way, is Lee Trevino with 29.)

“What he and Hale did, I’m going to say now, is not going to be repeated,” Furyk said on Thursday after firing a first-round 62 (on the PGA Tour) to take the lead at the Sony Open in Hawaii. “There’s no way folks are going to win that many tournaments on that tour.”

The next closest pursuers among active Champions players are Fred Couples, with 13 wins, and Tom Lehman, with 12 titles. Both players are 62, meaning neither is a threat to even sniff 45 wins. Mickelson burst onto the tour last year, winning four of six starts. Does he have 42 more victories in him? Hard to imagine the Champions tour keeping Lefty’s attention for that long.     

So, yes, Furyk’s Bernhard-or-bust theory appears to have much merit.

“I’m tired of gushing about Bernhard,” Furyk added Thursday. “It’s amazing what he’s done at 64, to stay that competitive, that fit and to actually have the want and the will and the grind to be that competitive is absolutely amazing.”

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As a three-time major champion still with plenty of pop in his swing, 50-year-old Padraig Harrington might rightfully have expected to enjoy immediate success when he played his first couple of PGA Tour Champions events late last year.  

In at least one statistical category, he did: driving distance.

In his maiden start, at the SAS Championship, in Cary, N.C., in October, Harrington — who averages north of 300 yards per poke on the PGA Tour — quickly established himself as one of the senior circuit’s biggest bashers. Harrington didn’t play enough events in 2021 for his stats to register in the PGA Tour Champions’ database, but this anecdote from the SAS, which Harrington recalled recently in a video released by the Tour, said it all: On the par-5 17th hole at Prestonwood Country Club’s Meadows course, Harrington said, most of the field was hitting 3-woods into the green, whereas all Harrington required was a 9-iron. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s roughly a 10-club differential.

Advantage, Harrington? Yes, but also … no.

“I was shocked,” Harrington said. “I’m substantially longer than the field and yet I got lapped in the first two events.” Harrington finished 18th at the SAS then a week later finished 55th at Jim Furyk’s event in Jacksonville, Fla. “I just wasn’t with it. These guys were just running by me. I played with Bernhard [Langer] and he made me look like an amateur golfer.”

Harrington, along with Phil Mickelson and a few others, is in a unique position in that he’s still long enough and good enough to compete on the PGA Tour — he tied for fourth at the PGA Championship in May — but now of an age where he also can try to rack up wins and cash on the Champions tour. It’s an enviable position to be in, but also a tricky one.

“It was a lesson for me,” Harrington said of the transition. “For me to try and stay competitive on the main tour, I’ve worked on speed, I’ve worked on length. Last year, I led on Strokes Gained in over 200 yards on the PGA Tour.”

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But booming tee shots, he realized, is not at all what he needs to climb leaderboards against the senior set. “What I thought I needed was not the case at all,” he said. “I needed to be smart like I would have been in my heyday. I’ve got to be strong mentally. I’ve got to be good with my wedges. I’ve got to be clever.

“I’ve definitely strengthened my weaknesses but I [also] weakened my strengths, and that was a big eye-opener. If I want to go out there and beat these guys, compete with these guys — just because you hit it past them ain’t gonna do it. You’ve got to [be] very good with your wedges, very good scoring. It was fascinating to me. I’m just not a good enough wedge player.”

The stats support that assessment. Harrington ranked 147th in SG: Around the Green in the 2020-21 PGA Tour season. His scrambling from 10-20 yards was particularly problematic. Harrington’s up-and-down conversion rate from that distance was just 51%, compared to the Tour average of 64%.

Drive for show and putt for dough? Sure. But the putting part becomes much easier when you’re chipping it close — no matter what tour you’re on.

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Editor’s note: If you already believe Bernhard Langer isn’t actually human, you know how this ends. If you continue to marvel at the 64-year-young, read on.

On the 9th at Phoenix Country Club, in so much pain was he in after his greenside bunker shot, that he took one step out, then had to be lifted out by caddie Terry Holt. Two holes later, so debilitated was Langer before his drive, that he bent down from both knees, placed his ball on his tee, bent back up, then hooked his drive left. Langer let his driver go on his follow-through, before gingerly grabbing first his tee, then the club. 

Throughout Thursday’s first round at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, Langer marked his ball on the greens in much the same careful fashion as he displayed when fastening ball to tee. Holt picked his boss’ ball out of cups, too. 

Fitness

“You can tell his body is just not moving the way it normally does,” analyst John Cook said on the Golf Channel broadcast, after the tee shot on 11. “That stopped right there, and that normally means that those arms and those hands kind of come from the inside and kind of flip over. Hate to see that with Bernhard. You see where the upper body stops a little bit, arms take over, ball starts to the left, he’s in the left rough.

“But he’s Bernhard.”

But he’s Bernhard. From the two-time Masters champ who, after 50, brought you 42 Champions Tour victories and five season points titles and records for oldest to win on the senior circuit and oldest to make the cut at Augusta, comes this:  

Despite being in so much lower-back pain that he considered withdrawing after the second hole, Langer birdied five times, shot a three-under 68 and is just three shots out of the lead. 

“Yeah, it was the most pain I’ve had playing golf in 30 years,” said Langer, who said he initially tweaked it during Wednesday’s pro-am. “It was pretty bad. I told Terry I probably shouldn’t even be here right now, but somehow I started praying out there that the pain would subside and I managed to make it through, but it’s not good. Not sure I can do this for four days. 

“Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

Remarkably, it would maybe be difficult to score better. The leader (again) in the season points race entering the final event of the year, Langer’s tied for 15th after round one. On the par-3 13th at Phoenix CC, he hit to within 8 feet and birdied. On the par-4 16th, he hit his approach to 5 feet and birdied. And then he was soon off for treatment. 

But if there’s an indication of the challenge ahead, it was on 16’s second shot. There, Langer awkwardly followed through with the 9-iron as he tried to maintain the proper angle. 

“What he mentioned and what I thought earlier the easiest club for him to hit is the driver. That’s not going to cause him issues,” analyst Lanny Wadkins said on the broadcast. “The problem is with the short clubs, staying in your spine angle. You have to bend over physically and then hold that position. That is the position that he is having a hard time with. He hit a couple of weak short irons because he couldn’t stay in that angle. 

“It’s going to be interesting to see how he can manage it going forward. He’s a gutty player. I don’t see him pulling out. I don’t care how bad it is. I think he’s going to give it everything he’s got.” 

As Wadkins’ fellow analyst, Cook, said:

But he’s Bernhard.    

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Bernhard Langer is like a fine wine — he only gets better with age.

The 64-year-old won his first pro tournament in 1975 and he hasn’t slowed down much since. Last month, Langer won for the 42nd(!) time on the Champions Tour and, at the age of 64, became the oldest winner in the history of the tour.

“I think it’s just encouraging to everybody that’s over 50 or 60, we can still perform at a very high level,” he said after the win. “You should never give up.”

The 49th-year pro now has as many wins on the senior tour as he did during his entire career on the European Tour and sits just three wins shy of tying Hale Irwin’s Champions Tour-record win total of 45. Hardy stuff.

Fitness

Langer is an inspiration for geriatric golfers everywhere, not only for his ability to compete at an advanced age but being able to do so effectively. Despite father time working against him, Langer doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

The key to being able to continue being competitive as he ages? It all starts with physical conditioning.

“Take care of [your] body, that’s the main thing,” Langer said at this week’s TimberTech Championship. “Things start to ache and hurt and we have pain, we don’t have the flexibility and the strength we had in our 20s and 30s. So if you can slow down the process a little bit by doing some stretches, working out a bit, maybe watching your diet, then you’re probably going to have a little more fun playing golf because your body can do the things you want it to do and it’s not hurting doing it.”

It’s a simple formula, but one that works. Take care of your body, and you can compete years beyond expectations.

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Bernhard Langer won his first professional tournament in 1975, and 46 years later, he’s still adding to his trophy case.

Langer claimed his latest title last weekend at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, besting Doug Barron in a sudden-death playoff to earn his 42nd victory on the senior circuit. The win leaves him just three titles shy of Hale Irwin’s all-time Champions Tour record.

“It’s an awesome feeling,” Langer said. “I haven’t won since Tucson last year. It’s been a while, but that’s how much sweeter it is.”

And while the win has the veteran on the heels of Irwin’s total wins record, this victory has some historical significance of its own. Langer, 64, became the oldest winner in Champions Tour history when he dispatched Barron on Sunday, besting the previous mark held by Scott Hoch who won at 63 years old in 2019.

Langer has now won on the at least once over the last 15 calendar years, dating back to 2006.

“I think it’s just encouraging to everybody that’s over 50 or 60, we can still perform at a very high level, and you should never give up,” Langer said. “And of course, physical conditioning is one thing. You’ve got to be mentally tough; you’ve got to have good technique and nerves and all of rest of it.”

Langer began the day trailing 36-hole leader Steve Flesch by two strokes but used four birdies to close with a final-round 69 to reach the top of the leaderboard. Flesch could only manage 73 and finished two strokes outside the eventual playoff.

Barron, Langer’s playoff counterpart, was searching for his third Champions Tour victory after his final-round 68 to force sudden death. However, he could not hole his six-footer for birdie on the first extra hole and watched as Langer rolled in his birdie try shortly after.

“He’s incredibly, incredibly gifted, and he’s one of my heroes and good friends,” Barron said. “If I’m going to get beat, I don’t mind getting beat by him. He’s one of those guys that you just never can pull against.”

The win extends Langer’s lead in the Charles Schwab Cup as he looks to win the season-long points race for the sixth time.

“The Schwab Cup is the next goal as it has been for a year and a half or two years now,” Langer said. “We’re a little bit closer, but it’s not over yet.”

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