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The post How to cure your chipping yips, according to a short-game expert appeared first on Golf.

Q: Dear Chef, I’m struggling with the chipping yips. Any easy remedies? —Kyle M., Wilmette, Ill

Kyle, I feel for you. The chipping yips are a huge bummer and can happen to anyone. Even Tiger Woods suffered from them for a while, back in 2015. But he bounced back, and so can you! 

Try this simple solution: Next time you’re hitting shots around the practice green, add a toe tap with your lead foot before you swing through to impact. You can do this in a variety of ways, even pausing your swing at the halfway point. The goal is to make sure you’re getting that toe tap in before you start your through swing to impact. 

Not only does thinking about the toe tap help you get out of your head and ease the anxiety of the impending strike, it also encourages you to have your weight properly positioned throughout the swing.

You’ll find much more of McLachlin’s advice at ShortGameChef.com, which provides golfers with a comprehensive resource to improve their short games. Through personalized tips, drills and expert insights, McLachlin helps players of all levels gain more confidence and a deeper understanding of their short game to lower their scores. You can browse membership options here.

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The post Why the Masters — and Augusta National — beguiles us so endlessly appeared first on Golf.

The post Why the Masters — and Augusta National — beguiles us so endlessly appeared first on Golf.

Every April we have the ritual joy of diving into the game’s most storied event, yet every season it manages to surprise us. How does one tournament — and one place, Augusta National — beguile us so endlessly? Michael Bamberger has some thoughts. Actually, a history’s worth of them.

The Masters at AugustaNational our annual marker of fresh starts, is the great American golf tournament because it is so uniquely … American.

It mixes speeds: big and brawny here, small and intimate there. The Masters (inseparable from its host club) is both the sprawling wonder of the Grand Canyon and the majesty of a lone bald eagle cruising at altitude. We pause here to take in Augusta’s Par 3 Course and the little annual event on it, particularly in the years when Arnold, Jack and Gary were roaming its tiny greens, thousands watching, shoulder to shoulder. So intimate. As for brawny, consider the tee shots on 1, 2, 5, 8, etc. The play is smashed driver right down Broadway. (Easier said than done.) Your first putt will thank you.

You’re always building at the Masters, shot to shot, hole to hole, round to round, April to April. Player, TV viewer, fan on a rope line, member, broadcaster, caddie, course worker — the experience is available to all. Augusta National is the most private of clubs and the Masters the most inviting of tournaments. Some years ago, the club’s leadership — the chairman and his green-coated lieutenants, plus more recruited executives than you would likely imagine — decided to build a new tournament driving range in the vicinity of the club’s famous driveway, Magnolia Lane. They built the most spectacular driving range ever conceived, and seemingly overnight. The club’s preferred contractors dug up a dusty parking lot and anything else in their way to create this temple of practice, with a Taj Mahal press building at its far end. But the club’s leaders would never even think about altering Golden Bell, the short-iron par-3 12th hole, typically played through a fickle wind, over a creek and to a slippery green. The golf shot as haiku.

The Masters became the Masters — the tourney as we know it today — in the 1950s, when baseball was still the dominant American sport. Each April, big-pen sports columnists, done with spring training and Opening Day, descended upon Augusta, ate pie and canonized the tournament, the course, the players upon it. The fit was easy for the scribes. (This was in the era of baggy trousers and a bar in the press building, to ease the pain of deadline typing.) The Masters, among all golf tournaments, is the most like baseball, with the pastime’s capacity for redemption. The guy who boots a ground ball in the eighth, giving the visitors a one-run lead, singles in the winning run one inning later. And so it is at the Masters, redemption baked into its storytelling in ways it’s not at other tournaments. This quality is a gift of the course. Augusta gives more than she takes.

Consider last year. On Sunday, on 13, Rory McIlroy dunked his little third shot into the creek. Ghastly. The groan heard ’round the world. Maybe you thought the Irishman had duffed the tournament away. If you did, you weren’t alone.

And here we turn to Elvis, as he channeled another son of the South, Jimmy Reed, and Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” a gritty three-minute stompfest that could double as a real-world Masters theme song:

We’re going up, we’re going down
We’re going up, down, down, up
Any way you wanna let roll it
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Rory was down — he doubled the hole winners typically birdie – but not out. He still had five guaranteed holes to try to redeem himself. In the end, he needed six, with his birdie in extra innings, rolling in a playoff putt to win from 40 inches. And now he’s in the Tuesday Night Supper Club forever, about as up as a golfer can get. For the longest time, it was impossible to unsee the dead-pull tee shot McIlroy hit on 10 in 2011, when he was (it seemed) all set to cruise on into a waiting coat. Now that shot doesn’t loom so large. After all his many chances, Rory’s finally in.

Who among us doesn’t like a mulligan? Another chance, a third one, a fourth. Ken Venturi, Tom Weiskopf and Greg Norman were experts in this area, always waiting for next year at Augusta until they ran out of next years. That threesome is as significant to the tournament’s history as Art Wall (the 1959 winner) and Tommy Aaron (’73) and Charl Schwartzel (2011), even if Venturi & Bros. never sniffed the second-floor champions locker room. Greg Norman, when his scoreboard totals were inked for good, was 0-for-23 at Augusta. Rory won on his 18th try. In victory, he fell to the green for part of a half minute. You remember.

In victory, Hideki Matsuyama’s caddie bowed to the course. That was in 2021. You remember. Maybe not the year but surely the image. Likewise, these snaps: the caddie Carl Jackson consoling Ben Crenshaw in victory (1995); Nick Faldo, the winner, embracing Greg Norman, leader by six earlier in the day (1996); Jack and Jackie walking off arm in arm (1986); Tiger falling into the arms of his father (1997). We know these images regardless of our age. We know these images because we care. Millions of us, around the world, care.

Of course, we weren’t born caring about the Masters and who wins it and how. Yet here we are, agitating for the next one. It’s as if the club and the tournament were born under an astral plane, Jupiter aligned with Mars, something like that. The course and Bobby Jones’ — and Alister MacKenzie’s! — role in it; the relative isolation of Augusta, making the tournament the only show in town, local schools closed for the week; the standing April date and all that flowering pink; the engaging personalities of various winners and near-winners; the coverage of the tournament in newspapers and magazines and on various networks, CBS most especially.

The first Masters was played in 1934. Gene Sarazen’s “shot heard ’round the world,” en route to a victory after a 36-hole playoff, came a year later. Ben Hogan won his first Masters in 1951 and a few weeks later a Hollywood movie about him, Follow the Sun, came out. Hogan won again in 1953, two months after Dwight Eisenhower (war hero, golf nut, Augusta National member) became president. And then the tournament went from stage to screen, on TV for the first time in 1956. The broadcasting network that year was CBS and the tournament has been on CBS ever since, with limited commercial interruption. Arnold Palmer won his first Masters in 1958, then won three more, in ’60, ’62 and ’64. Jack Nicklaus won his third green jacket in ’66, when the CBS telecast was in color for the first time and Grammy Hall, stuck in still-thawing Chippewa Falls, Wisc., could finally see those blooming azaleas in their bathing-beauty majesty. Nicklaus won his record sixth Masters, his namesake son on his bag, 20 years later. When Tiger won his fifth coat in 2019, people immediately began to wonder: Can he catch Jack? Woods was 19 when he played in his first Masters. Now he’s 50. Year to year and decade to decade, one player to the next and one generation to the next, the Masters is always building on its past. But all the while the club puts a laser focus (no distracting cellphones) on its present, on the here and now. It’s all familiar. It’s all brand-new.

“Whatever product any company is trying to sell, toothpaste or anything else, it could never do what the Masters does, because people want to feel something, and the Masters gives people something they can feel,” Jim Nantz said recently. The CBS broadcaster worked his first Masters in 1986 with millions of people sweating out the Golden Bear’s win over Seve Ballesteros and Greg Norman. (Nicklaus was 46 — ancient, then.) On the course, the rooting was decidedly partisan. “The Masters doesn’t have to sell anything because the tournament has been handed down through the years. When I talk about the Masters, I always go back to this word, and you have to: tradition. Tradition is in short supply in the world. But not at the Masters.”

A week of fixed tradition. The Monday night Amateur Dinner. The Tuesday night Champions Dinner. The Wednesday afternoon Par 3 Contest, after the chairman’s annual State of the Masters press conference, a line of green-coated members holding up the back wall. The honorary starters early Thursday morn. The Act I curtain coming down Friday night after the 36-hole cut is made. Then Act II on Saturday, the protagonists jockeying for position. Followed by the tense wonder of Sunday’s Act III, concluding with a standing ovation for the winner you know and some kid (the low amateur) you likely don’t. Late on Sunday and before 60 Minutes, the two of them, plus the defending champion, descend a set of steps and enter the eerie quiet of the Butler Cabin basement. And there, waiting on ’em, is the chairman in a green blazer, Jim Nantz in a blue one. It’s always the same and it’s never the same.

A decade ago, Bryson DeChambeau was the tournament’s low am. He almost stumbled on his way to his assigned Butler Cabin high-backed chair, then took care not to seat himself before the winner, Danny Willett, did. There’s something about Augusta: Your manners improve upon arrival. DeChambeau and Willett, along with Jordan Spieth (the defending champion) were still wearing their white golf shoes, early on a lovely spring night. (Augusta enjoys the gift of a late mid-April sunset, close to 8 p.m.) Jim Nantz and Billy Payne, then the club chairman, faced the three players. DeChambeau was a pack of jangly nerves his red sweater could not conceal. “Never in a million years did I think I’d be the low amateur here,” he told Nantz. Really? He earned his way to the Masters as the U.S. Amateur champion. But at the Masters, and at Augusta National, gentility is a way of life. Gentility, modesty, charm. You pass through the gate and put on your best Bobby Jones.

That 2016 Masters was Billy Payne’s last as the club chairman. (Billapane, in the local patois.) Augusta National has had seven chairmen, starting with Clifford Roberts, cofounder of the club with Bob Jones, who was made the president in perpetuity while he was still alive. (Kinda weird, no?) All the chairmen have been czars, some more heavy-handed (Hootie Johnson; Billy Payne) than others (Jack Stephens; Fred Ridley, the current chairman). They all have left imprints, large and small. Hord Hardin (1980 to 1991) didn’t like striped shirts at dinner and declined to lengthen the course, despite the arrival of metal woods. Hootie Johnson (1998 to 2006) didn’t want women as members but did want a far longer course and many more obstacle trees. Billy Payne (2006 to 2017) did want women as members (and invited the first class). He also wanted to have paying fans to have more of a Ritz Carlton-meets-Disneyland experience. Payne picked Fred Ridley as his successor. In style and manner, they’re totally different. (Payne came at you with a torrent of words; Ridley weighs every last one.) But in purpose they’re the same.

What makes the whole thing work is that the broad interests of Augusta’s chairmen and the broad interests of Augusta’s fans align exactly. The chairman, any chairman, wants the best course, the best field, the best coverage, the best Sunday. As do we.

THE MASTERS IS a wide bonding experience, whether you’re watching in your living room, in an airport lounge, on a clubhouse TV at Augusta (there’s a lot of that) or on the course. In this last category, the no-phone policy informs the whole experience. You’re sealed off from the rest of the world. If you want to know what’s going on, on campus at Augusta, there’s not much spoon-fed to you. You have to use your own eyes, ears, intuition, experience. You watch the leaderboards change. You might actually talk to the person (stranger/not a stranger) standing next to you.

What was that?

I’m thinking Scottie staked one on 12.

Conversation is part of the bonding experience at the Masters. Language is too. As Augusta National publishes (annually) a Spectator Guide, the club could also publish a Language Handbook. Patron, of course, would get an entry, for paying fan. Also, by way of first-tee player introduction, Now driving. This is the broadly accepted definition of Amen Corner: the 11th green, all of 12 (the wee par 3), the tee shot on 13. The preferred shorthand for 10 to the house is the second nine.

And then there’s the oral tradition. Here, for example, is a real-life exchange from an on-course men’s room, with a greeter at the door and a spotter deep inside it, in place to keep the line moving.

Greeter: “What you got back there?”

Spotter: “I got two open and a shaker.”

Yes, fellas being fellas. Deep in the club’s DNA and secret history there’s a lot of that. Calcutta gambling, imported entertainment, business wheeling and dealing, cloaked by all that gentility. There used to be, on the second floor of the clubhouse, a loo with wallpaper featuring urinating dogs. Beside it was the club’s library, a cozy room just big enough to accommodate the former champions at their annual dinner, all the gents at one long table, the defending champion picking up the tab, the chair- man there as a guest. (The former winners get $25,000 just for showing up.) Ben Hogan started the dinner. Byron Nelson was its MC forever. For years, Sam Snead closed the night out with a few choice jokes. None can be repeated here.

It’s strange to say, but Byron Nelson, a lifelong Texan, a two-time winner of the Masters, is an undervalued figure in the club’s lore, even though the wide, sturdy stone bridge on the 13th hole is named for him. Texas runs deeply through the Masters, and Nelson spent his whole long life (94 years) in the Lone Star State. (Nelson, Hogan, Jimmy Demaret, Ralph Guldahl, Jackie Burke, Charles Coody, Ben Crenshaw and Jordan Spieth are native Texans; Patrick Reed, Sergio García and Scottie Scheffler are Texans by choice. That’s 17 wins right there.) But Nelson had that gentleness that is so emblematic of the Masters, and through his 80s and into his 90s you’d see Lord Byron all week long, unhurried, smiling, happy to chat up anyone, his green coat draped on his arm on warm afternoons. One day, Bill Kirby, a longtime columnist at the Augusta Chronicle, was in the small Augusta National pro shop, looking to buy a gift for his father. He had his fingers on a maroon tie patterned with time-capsule Masters badges. “That’s a nice one,” came a voice from over Bill’s shoulder. Byron Nelson. Kirby bought the tie and then Nelson bought the same make and model. Kirby gave the tie to his father, along with the Nelson story, and the tie and the story came back to Kirby upon his father’s death. How intimate is all that?

Rees Jones, the golf-course architect, has been to Augusta National many times, to watch the tournament and play as a guest. He was close to Bobby Goodyear, a pitcher at Yale, an Air Force veteran, an heir to a family fortune. Goodyear was also an Augusta National member forever. Over the years, on 80 different occasions, Goodyear invited Jones to play the course and bring a pal. “If I like the guy, I’m paying,” he’d tell Rees. “If I don’t, you are.” Rees paid twice. How fun is that? You might be surprised to learn that being a good hang is an unspoken requirement for membership. You don’t have to be a Goodyear or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to be invited in. There are doctors who are members, two retired NFL quarterbacks (they’re brothers), people prominent locally and nationally. (Condi Rice: good hang!) Billy Morris, a longtime member and the longtime publisher of The Chronicle, used to have an important job at the tournament, driving the winner from Butler Cabin to the press building in an E-Z-Go golf cart for the victor’s press conference, driving cautiously to avoid the patrons and to make sure his Panama hat did not go flying. E-Z-Go (fun fact) got its start in Augusta, inspired by the three-wheeled, custom- made cart the ailing Bobby Jones drove around the course in the ’50s. E-Z-Go’s main competitor, Club Car, was founded in Augusta too. Augusta, the city and the club, is all mishmashy that way. Augusta, the city and the club, likes it that way. Robert Tyre Jones Jr. was the cofounder of Augusta National. Robert Trent Jones Sr. (Rees’ father) was the architect who designed the par-3 16th hole as we know it today. The two men are often confused and are not related. No big whoop. What makes 16, Jones (pick your Jones) said more than once, is the slope of its green. Tiger Woods will tell you the same thing. A golf course, and a golf tournament, can turn on the subtlest of things.

Paul Talledo is an Augustan in his early 60s who has been going to the Masters pretty much all his life, and he’s been taking his son Patrick to the tournament pretty much all his life. Father and son, in their early visits, observed what everybody who has been on the course has observed: The downhill 10th hole is so steep it could be a ski run; the uphill 18th hole is so steep you can see players gulping air as they make their shoulders-first march up it. Talk about big and brawny. In his mind’s eye, Paul can see Patrick, almost 20 years ago when the boy was 65 pounds of pure kid, eager to see his favorite golfer, Lucas Glover, make the walk up 18. Other spectators cleared a path for the boy and the next thing he knew he was sitting under the rope line, watching. How intimate is that?

One year, father and son were having trouble with their badges, with the this-is-me barcodes on them, as they tried to enter for the tournament. A security officer called in for assistance. A green-coated member responded. He asked the boy his name and age, gave him a little Masters pin to put on his shirt, waved them both in and said, “Y’all have a nice day.”

In they went, the father and his son, leaving behind the chaos of Washington Road and falling into a 350-acre haven of golf. All that green.

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The post Inside St. George, a beautiful and surprisingly rich golf mecca appeared first on Golf.

“Rocky” is a good name for a caddie and an excellent description for the lie where my errant drive has settled.

It’s midday, midwinter on the edge of the Mojave. The sky is cobalt blue. The grass is emerald green. And everything beyond the fairway of the short par 4 I’m playing is stone-hard and black as night.

Once it was molten. Millions of years ago, volcanoes belched magma from the belly of the earth, spilling rivers of fire across what we now call southwest Utah — flows that cooled into the black lava fields that ring the desert city of St. George today. They make for arresting scenery and an awful place to miss.

My ball has come to rest in the ebony rubble, where little but a scuffed wedge or a sprained ankle awaits. Even Rocky Price, my look-on-the-bright-side looper, sees no point in trying to advance it.

“Drop one,” he says. “You can still get up and down for par.” Or blunder on to double bogey.

On the plus side, the blemish on my scorecard is outshined by the beauty of the setting. Not just the jagged, inky lava underfoot but the multicolored canvas all around. In the near distance, ruddy Red Mountain shows its blushing face, backed by the white-dusted peaks of Snow Canyon, their sharp lines cutting the horizon.

It’s golf inside a geology textbook, and if the scenery looks familiar that’s no coincidence. You may have seen it last fall, when Black Desert Resort staged the Bank of Utah Championship, which debuted in 2024 as the first PGA Tour stop in Utah in more than 60 years. A coming-out party of sorts for Black Desert, the final golf course design completed by the late Tom Weiskopf, the event also signaled something broader: St. George’s growing presence in the game.

THE CITY WAS ALREADY on the map for other reasons. Situated near the Arizona border, a two-hour drive from Las Vegas and at the gateway to Zion National Park, St. George has long been known as a magnet for two groups: outdoor recreationists and retirees. The young and restless come for the adrenaline, the silver-haired show up to slow things down. Golf happens to appeal to both. But in a region that marks time by reading lines on ancient rocks, the sport is a relatively recent arrival.

St. George got its first course in 1965, a seven-hole layout that came into being as a roadside temptation. The idea was to get travelers to stop rather than barrel straight through toward the Strip. Dixie Red Hills soon expanded to nine holes but retained its quirky traits, etched through sandstone outcrops at a city-owned facility where the dress code today leans toward denim and the clientele skews AARP. It’s one of 14 courses within a 20-mile radius in Washington County, ranging from high-end resorts and pedigreed daily-fee layouts to modest munis, all spread across a landscape shaped by forces far greater than a dozer.

Rocky fits neatly into the region’s arc of change. Born and raised in northern Utah, one of 13 kids, he moved with his wife to St. George eight years ago, drawn by warmer weather and cleaner air. Year-round golf was part of the pull too, but Rocky didn’t get out as often as he liked. He was in his 50s and had worked more than half his life as a banker when a health scare prompted him to press refresh. That was in 2023. Fifteen months later, he left Wells Fargo. Six months after that, he started looping at Black Desert.

The transition suits him. He has lost weight, shed his wristwatch and let his hair grow, tying it back in a ponytail.

“I love my new office,” he tells me as we move to the next tee. “You can’t beat the views, and it’s so much more relaxed.”

In migrating from north to south, Rocky followed a path blazed more than 150 years earlier by travelers with very different motivations. In 1861, 309 families set off from Salt Lake City, answering a call from the religious leader Brigham Young to settle this sun-scorched corner of Utah. The Civil War had erupted and Young envisioned a cotton-growing settlement in a friendly climate — a Mormon answer to the Confederacy’s stranglehold on the textile trade. His grand plan earned St. George the nickname “Utah’s Dixie,” a moniker that hasn’t aged especially well, though a bold letter D still sits on a hillside overlooking the city, looking like a radically shortened version of the Hollywood sign.

Young had a penchant for prophecies. One was a promise that St. George would become a “city of spires.” That vision was realized in the late 1800s with the construction of a temple and tabernacle, both built from rock quarried from the same slopes that flank Dixie Red Hills today.

What Young couldn’t have foreseen was everything else. In downtown St. George, the city has designated an 11-block historic district that blends contemporary commerce with trips in the wayback machine. On and around Main Street, pioneer-era buildings share blocks with art galleries, farm-to-table bistros and boutiques selling $150 overalls. A jailhouse built in the late 1800s out of black lava rock now houses an ice cream shop. At Thomas Judd’s General Store — the oldest continuously operating business in town — you can get a throwback soda from a fountain and a grape-studded chicken salad sandwich served on a croissant.

St. George is a Mormon town, but it’s not a dry town. On a late-day stroll through the historic district, I have my pick of watering holes, their taps flowing with local craft beers, their wine lists stocked with homegrown petite sirah and cabernet sauvignon. The hills here are alive with many things. I hadn’t known that vineyards were among them.

Brigham Young’s winter home still stands downtown as well, preserved as a museum. A brochure for a self-guided walking tour refers to its original inhabitant as “St. George’s first snowbird.” It’s an apt description for a man whose seasonal retreats from Salt Lake City’s bitter cold presaged the exodus of cold-climate transplants who have since flocked here, trading ice storms for tee times. St. George has swelled to accommodate them. A population that stood at 5,000 in the 1950s now tops 100,000. What was once considered an inhospitable patch of desert — too hot, too remote, too austere — is now one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, with a real estate market to match. The key, it turned out, wasn’t cotton. It was recreation.

Of the area’s outdoor sports, golf is the biggest economic engine. Momentum behind it surged in the 1990s, when courses like Sky Mountain — with its postcard views of Zion — and Entrada arrived in quick succession. The latter, a private club originally designed by Johnny Miller and later renovated by David McLay Kidd, boosted the area’s bona fides. Coral Canyon followed, its holes flanked by arroyos and rock walls that blaze orange in afternoon light. Other headliners have taken shape more recently, including Copper Rock, now a stop on the Epson Tour and host of the 2024 and 2025 LPGA Legends Championship. But the course that first gave St. George a national golf profile was Sand Hollow, a John Fought and Andy Staples design that opened in 2008 alongside a state park of the same name. It has since become a fixture on Top 100 lists (including GOLF’s Top 100 You Can Play in the U.S.) and the star of countless photo spreads and Instagram posts.

IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY influencers love Sand Hollow. A massive red rock outcrop looms beside the pro shop and the first tee, which tumbles downhill, a gentle warm-up for what’s ahead. The front nine is the mellower half, with big, sweeping fairways and plenty of red rock scenery but also houses framing the holes. The back nine, by contrast, is entirely undeveloped, which underscores the drama of its arresting holes. Greens nestle into red rock amphitheaters. Fairways curl along sheer bluffs, dizzying drops that make me think of Wile E. Coyote crashing-landing in a cloud of dust.

Rocky’s with me for this round — not carrying my bag but playing alongside. He golfs every chance he gets. He also seems to know everyone we see: the head pro, the superintendent, the guy filling divots on the 14th tee. As we make our way up the final hole, we bump into a foursome unloading their bags. The group includes Gifford Nielsen, former quarterback for the Houston Oilers who went on to a career as a broadcaster and to a leadership role in the Church of Latter-day Saints. I don’t recognize him but Rocky does. The two embrace. Of course, they’re friends.

Like Rocky, Nielsen has roots farther north in Utah but now calls St. George home. “I’ve played a lot of desert golf around the southwest area, but this is just different,” he tells me later. “You don’t get scenery like this in Scottsdale or Palm Springs.”

There are other ways to experience the landscape: on foot, by bike, or from the basket of a hot-air balloon. You can rappel into slot canyons, kayak rivers and reservoirs, or do what any sensible person does when confronted with miles of dunes and granted access to an ATV.

“How’s this for a course to play on?” Jason Reeves asks me. It’s early morning, in teeth-chattering cold that’s typical of winter in the desert, where it takes a few hours for the sun to do its work. We’re on Sand Mountain, and Reeves is my guide with Mad Moose Tours for a two-hour tour on a vast expanse that could pass for planet Tatooine. The sand glows burnt ocher in the early light. Alien rock formations rise from the dunes.

Reeves is an off-road guy in all seasons, a ski instructor who also races ATVs. Time was when he did a lot of motorbike racing too, until a bad collision recast his relationship with speed.

“There’s a saying in off-roading,” he says, patting the roll bar of his Polaris. “With age comes a cage.”

I’m happy to have that protection on our tour, which pivots from pedal-to-the-metal runs along snaking rutted paths to slow rock-crawling climbs over terraced sandstone, up slopes I’m certain will be too steep to summit, through channels in the rock that look too narrow to pass.

It’s exhilarating. But nothing we traverse compares to what lies 30 minutes north. The entrance to Zion National Park is there, and on a clear winter afternoon I drive a scenic route into the canyon, retracing in reverse the patient work of the Virgin River, which, over epochs, carved these sheer, soaring walls and still courses along the canyon floor. Without summer’s crowds, Zion’s grandeur only grows, along with the sense of perspective it imparts. How small we are in the big picture, how silly it is to fret about our score.

It’s a thought that lingers the next morning when I tee it up at Dixie Red Hills. It’s a modest operation — $27 for nine holes — and the price is only part of its popularity. There’s also its winning personality: classic muni golf, unfussy and authentic. No bag drop, no starter, just a pro shop P.A. system to announce the next group. Tee times get snatched up as soon as they’re released.

I’m paired with a couple of old pals, Sid and Jerry, both in blue jeans, both of the Greatest Generation. Sid wears a bucket hat that reads “Been there, done that, can’t remember.” What I won’t forget is the 7-wood he smacks from 68 yards to birdie range on a par 3 that plays over a dry riverbed. I tip my own non-bucket hat in tribute.

Back at Black Desert, the landscape commands a different kind of respect. A tournament-level test that accommodates resort play with an assortment of tees, the course was built with the brute force of dynamite blasts in places but also with artful choreography. The routing works through the compass to showcase the panoramas, bringing lava fields and ridges into play in ways both scenic and strategic.

I’ve read enough about the place to pick up some facts. I’m aware, for instance, that Snow Canyon State Park, just across the road, was where portions of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were filmed. I’ve also learned that Jay Don Blake, a St. George native who spent years on the PGA Tour — remember the Sansabelts and the ’70s ’stache? — practices regularly on property. He was given a special exemption into the Utah Championship. He missed the cut but made a lot of people’s day.

Black Desert is big-time golf, and ownership has talked of adding more of it on nearby reservation land. But for now the course is all that I can handle.

It’s late afternoon as our round winds down, the sun painting the landscape in shades of rust and amber. Rocky and I are moving up the 18th fairway. He’s reflecting on his new life and the liberating feeling of being unburdened of what used to weigh him down. I realize I’m doing something of the same—not dwelling on the double at the 2nd or the three-putt on the 10th, or…why take inventory? I’m pushing forward, soaking up the splendor. Out here, where Rocky has found his reset and the landscape puts poor shots in proper context, the only reason to look back is to enjoy the view.

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The post Utilizing this backswing feel will help you hit more powerful irons appeared first on Golf.

The post Utilizing this backswing feel will help you hit more powerful irons appeared first on Golf.

You know you need to turn on your backswing. And, from my perch on the lesson tee, I can see most players do it. But, as you can imagine, some turns are simply better than others, not just for creating potential energy on the backswing, but also getting your body and club in position for a powerful, on-plane strike on your way back down to the ball.

The big error I see is the manner in which players turn their torso away from the ball. Seems natural: We have muscle fibers in our torso that run east-west, so why not just use them to turn in the backswing? In boxing terms, that gives you a couple of options, with one being a left cross (above left). It’s a solid turn but it leaves a lot of energy on the table. 

You’re better off thinking of throwing a left upppercut (middle) with your body not just rotating back but stretching your abdominals, lats and rib cage as you twist slightly up and around. Hopefully you can see the difference. 

It’s a power storage move that, even better, keeps the clubhead more in front of you, making it easier to keep it on plane as you swing down. When you cross instead of uppercut, the club will get too flat and “trapped” behind you. 

It’ll take a lot more work through impact to get it where it needs to be. But with an uppercut, you’re a knockout. 

V.J. Trolio is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher who teaches at the Performance Center at Frederica GC on St. Simons Island, Ga.

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The post Need a lift from the sand? Try this can’t-miss bunker drill appeared first on Golf.

The post Need a lift from the sand? Try this can’t-miss bunker drill appeared first on Golf.

The goal on any bunker shot is to get on the green on your first swing. The reason a lot of rec players can’t do this is because they’re too ball-focused. The goal here: Get sand-focused. Try this.

Step into a practice bunker with your preferred wedge. Using the heel of the club, draw two lines in the sand: one about six inches from where you normally play the ball in your stance and another six inches behind.

I call these lines “snakes.” We all hate snakes, so the trick here is to get rid of them. Without a ball, set up and swing with the intent of carving your wedge through both snakes, that is, taking a chunk of sand between the two as you motor into your finish.

When you get good at erasing both lines, you’ve nailed your bunker swing.

You can learn a lot more from Tom Stickney on Instagram: @tomstickneygolf.

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The post Tasmania’s splashy new design forms a trio of remote-golf musts appeared first on Golf.

The post Tasmania’s splashy new design forms a trio of remote-golf musts appeared first on Golf.

Time was when Tasmania was better known for caricatures than courses. Mention of it conjured thoughts of a cartoon devil on a far-flung island with a penal colony past.

That perception began shifting in 2004 with the opening of Barnbougle Dunes, a Tom Doak design that soon gained a sibling in Lost Farm by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. With that one-two punch, Australia’s smallest state became the antipode’s answer to Bandon, Ore., a remote-golf must.

Now there’s even more reason to make the trip.

The added incentive is 7 Mile Beach, a rumpled layout along a crescent-shaped shoreline of the same name, 20 minutes from Tasmania’s capital, Hobart. Decades in the making, the project is the brainchild of Tasmanian native and former Tour pro Mat Goggin, who brought in Mike Clayton and Mike DeVries to route holes through wild coastal dunes.

The result is a true links, with fast-running fescue fairways, wispy grasses and water views from every hole. The wind is no cartoon. It’s real, often frisky and central to a course with a vivid sense of place.

Plan your dream golf trip with 8AM Travel. Contact discovery@8amtravel.com today.

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The post Looking to add more power to your drives? Try this during the backswing appeared first on Golf.

The post Looking to add more power to your drives? Try this during the backswing appeared first on Golf.

Players like the idea of keeping their arms close to their bodies during the swing. That might work for a putt or a delicate short shot around the green, but it’s not so great when you want to create as much power as possible.

Try this: Take your normal driver setup and bring the club halfway back. Let go with your trail hand and reach out and grab the shaft. If that’s pretty easy for you to do, then you need more width. 

Set up again, and this time focus on creating more stretch with your arms and the club. Again, stop halfway back and reach for the shaft with your trail hand. If this takes more “reach” or effort, you’re officially in the speed-production business.

Make this stretch concept a part of your backswing on your real shots and when your arms get back in front of your body at impact, the ball won’t know what hit it.

Bernie Najar is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher and is the director of instruction at Caves Valley GC in Owings Mills, Md.

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The post Thinking about a dream golf trip to Northern Ireland? Better hurry appeared first on Golf.

The post Thinking about a dream golf trip to Northern Ireland? Better hurry appeared first on Golf.

Royal County Down and Royal Portrush are two of the finest golf courses on the planet. You might assume these storied links are out of reach, but, unlike many of the ultra-privates that dominate the World Top 20, both of these lauded clubs welcome visiting golfers.

Take this as your warning shot to fire up the group chat and lock in that bucket-list, cigar-story golf trip to Northern Ireland rather than putting it off for yet another year. If you’re reading this in March, you may already be behind. Many golfers underestimate just how fierce the demand is for tee times here. Bookings for 2027 open in early 2026 … and they’ll be gone on day one.

The classic travel routing is in and out of Dublin, with a perfect weeklong trip taking in three to four anchor courses, supported by a host of characterful links that will satisfy even the most obsessive itinerary builder.

Don’t sleep on former World Top 100 County Louth on your way north from the airport, and be sure to include Portstewart for a dune-scape that rivals anything on Ireland’s Atlantic coast.

After significant investment, the Valley Course at Portrush is now a must-play in its own right. Within a 30- to 45-minute drive, you’ll find outstanding “B-sides” such as Castlerock, while around County Down, the likes of Ardglass and the criminally overlooked Annesley Course are there for the taking.

The accommodation scene has also moved up a gear. Investment was long overdue, and the local hotels have responded. Add in lively pubs, whiskey distilleries and genuinely strong dining options and it’s no surprise that Northern Ireland has become the hottest trip in golf.

Don’t miss your window.

Discover Northern Ireland in 2027 and beyond with 8AM Travel. Contact discovery@8amtravel.com today.

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The post This expansive, luxe resort has ruled Scottsdale for 4 decades. It’s easy to see why appeared first on Golf.

The post This expansive, luxe resort has ruled Scottsdale for 4 decades. It’s easy to see why appeared first on Golf.

Berkeley Alvarado and Christine Lord aren’t princesses, but they are goddesses. More precisely, they are the resident Tequila Goddesses at La Hacienda, the state’s top-rated Mexican restaurant that just happens to be located inside the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess.

Each year, these certified tequila experts and bar-side storytellers visit Mexico to continue their libation education and, more importantly, to taste and select an exclusive barrel from distillery El Tequileno that’s then brought back to La Hacienda.

“I cannot wait to share the wonderful memories I made,” Alvarado says. “Specifically the love and passion that goes on behind the scenes while making tequila.”

It’s a similar passion for quality you’ll find throughout Arizona’s largest and longest-running AAA Five Diamond hotel resort. The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess is a sprawling 65-acre retreat set against the scenic backdrop of the McDowell Mountains. The expansive grounds encourage guests to wander. Spanish Colonial architecture is complemented by lush gardens and thoughtfully constructed plazas. A total of 750 guest rooms include a selection of high-end suites and villas, many of which enjoy a panoramic view of the adjacent golf course, TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium course, host of the annual WM Phoenix Open. During tournament week, resort guests even enjoy complimentary access to the 5th fairway.

The Princess offers six unique pool complexes, with options for lap swimming, zero-depth entry, a soft white sand beach, a splash pad and a pair of 200-foot waterslides. The resort’s 44,000-square-foot Well & Being spa houses a rooftop adults-only option. And while you won’t want to swim in the resort’s lagoon, you can drop a line to catch and release an assortment of bluegill, catfish, tilapia and bass.

Now let’s talk dining. The Princess boasts a total of five restaurants, three of which are anchored by renowned chefs; Bourbon Steak by Michael Mina and two Latin American options by Richard Sandoval: Toro, located in TPC Scottsdale’s clubhouse, and the aforementioned La Hacienda, where you’ll enjoy guacamole prepared tableside, house specialties like carnitas and fresh ceviche, along with a selection of 250-plus tequila and agave spirits. But it’s that exclusive barrel you’ll want a pour from.

“Amazing flavors of caramel, honey and vanilla give it just the right amount of sweetness but still allow the cooked agave to continue to shine through,” says Lord. “It is such a high-quality bottle — perfect for new tequila drinkers or tequila connoisseurs. We are so proud and cannot wait for everyone to try it.”

You heard the goddess, get out to the Princess and sip for yourself.

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The post Ludvig Åberg’s origin story: How Sweden’s minimalist superstar arrived appeared first on Golf.

The post Ludvig Åberg’s origin story: How Sweden’s minimalist superstar arrived appeared first on Golf.

This article was originally published in a 2025 issue of GOLF Magazine.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST WEAKNESS?

It’s my last question of the day for Ludvig Åberg and likely the least original. We’re sitting in the grill room in the clubhouse at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., home course of the PGA Tour and home to its most talented young star, who has recently relocated to Northeast Florida. 

I’ve spent much of the day shadowing Åberg, the 25-year-old Swede and World No. 5, watching him hit balls and take photos, first for his clothing sponsor, Adidas, and then for GOLF, while peppering him with questions in between. We’re still weeks away from Åberg winning the biggest title of his young career, a statement, come-from-behind victory at this year’s Genesis Invitational that proved his competitive fire and calm under pressure. But now that our time together is running out, it occurs to me that I’m missing a key insight into Åberg, a requirement to make any character compelling: his flaw. 

Åberg can’t think of one.

I offer suggestions. Bad temper. Sweet tooth. Trash TV habit. “I mean, I think we all have weaknesses,” he says, charitably but unconvincingly. The rest of us, maybe, I counter. Then there’s a long, drawn-out silence. 

It’s a credit to Åberg (pronounced Oh-berg) that he considers the question earnestly. He lingers so long in thought that I have time to gaze out the window, catch a glimpse of roof tile, come to the realization that this place—this red-domed, 80,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style behemoth of a clubhouse charging $800 green fees to play the island-green golf course—is the polar opposite of the minimalist golfing culture in which Åberg learned the game. But he’s adaptable. His game travels, from small-town Sweden to Lubbock to Augusta and beyond. That’s among his many strengths. As for a weakness? 

“Yeah, that’s a great question,” he says.

IF IT FEELS LIKE ÅBERG IS STILL NEW on the scene, that’s because he is. Two years ago at this time, he was still a student at Texas Tech. Let’s get specific: In May 2023, he won the NCAA Norman Regional in his penultimate college start and just three months later won the Omega European Masters in just his second DP World Tour event as a pro. The DP win doubled as audition; the very next week he was selected for the European Ryder Cup team, a bold but inspired choice by captain Luke Donald. It would mark the first time someone had suited up for a Ryder Cup before he’d competed in a major. 

“I think he’s a generational player,” Donald explained at the time. “If he wasn’t going to play this one, he was going to play the next eight Ryder Cups. That’s how good I think he is.” 

That Ryder Cup week at Marco Simone, just outside of Rome, was Åberg’s introduction to a curious golfing public. Who was this six-foot-three Swede with the athletic move and air of mystery? He hit it far. He hit it close. And he didn’t say any more than he had to. Most of the American team had never seen him play, never mind tried to beat him, but on Saturday morning he delivered a performance to remember. Åberg and Viktor Hovland were put up against the American A-squad of Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka. Less than two hours later, the Team U.S.A. stars walked off the course bewildered, having been handed a 9-and-7 beatdown, the widest margin in Ryder Cup history. 

“Ludvig’s a stud,” said Hovland. “He doesn’t miss a shot.” 

Åberg headed stateside after a victorious Ryder Cup debut and stayed hot through the end of the 2023 PGA Tour season. He finished T2 in Mississippi, T13 in Vegas and T10 in Mexico before winning the final event on the schedule, the RSM Classic, with a preposterous 61-61 weekend. It was a fitting capstone to a wild debut. “I still pinch myself in the morning when I wake up to realize that this is what I do for a job,” Åberg said at the post-tournament presser. “It’s been so much fun.” 

He started 2024 where he’d left off: top 10 at Torrey Pines, runner-up at Pebble, top 10 at the Players. By the time Åberg arrived at the Masters, a course hostile to first-timers, there were only 10 players in the field with shorter odds. By week’s end? He’d beaten everybody except Scheffler. It was the best result by a Masters rookie since 1979. And it left the golf world with two questions: Who is this guy and where did he come from? 

BACK AT SAWGRASS, Åberg says that it’s impossible to tackle the first question without answering the second. The where and the who are intertwined. He’s the product of a specific system, of a specific coach, of a specific school and school of thought—even if it seems counterintuitive that one of the best golfers in the world grew up in a cold-weather country. 

“Don’t go in the winter,” he warns, when asked to describe his native Sweden. “It’s cold. It’s dark. Nobody wants to leave their house.” 

But in the summer? Here, Åberg sounds ready to join the tourism bureau. 

“It’s a beautiful country,” he says. “It doesn’t get too hot, like certain parts of America. It’s just so nice. We have daylight ’til midnight, and everyone’s barbecuing and hanging outside. And because there’s only a few weeks a year where it’s actually nice outside, everyone takes full advantage.” 

Åberg was born on Halloween in 1999 in Eslov, a town of 20,000 in southeast Sweden, which he describes with a loving shrug—when he was a kid, it was voted the most boring city in Sweden. No matter—it had plenty of room for handball and soccer, and it was home to Eslovs Golfklubb, where his dad teed it up and eventually Ludvig did too. 

He describes Swedes as pleasant if standoffish. “They’re very nice, very kind, but they’re also very private. You wouldn’t see people just, like, randomly talking on a bus.” 

Is he that way? “Deep down I am,” he says. “But I’ve gotten a little less that way as the years pass.” 

Still, he found community in a golf culture he describes as open, accessible and rather un-American. “I think we have one private club in all of Sweden,” he says. “Golf is a lot cheaper than it is [in the U.S.], so there’s a lot more availability. You don’t necessarily have to belong to a club; you can show up with your friends and pay and still go play. There’s a culture of playing and of walking. We don’t really do carts at all. And I’d say, in general, there’s less of a drinking culture in Sweden. Over here, it’s a lot more cocktails while you play.” 

Everything in moderation. That’s a theme. 

Åberg’s father, Johan, who sells parts for construction vehicles, was the family’s resident golf nut, but his mother, Mia, a paralegal, spotted her son’s talent and drive early on. When other six- and seven-year-olds were goofing off at early clinics, Ludvig was focused on the task at hand. But, in the years that followed, no one in his life turned any one dial too far.

He played several other sports; soccer was his favorite. But he loved golf and got good at it. To their credit, he says, Sweden’s high school golf academies view multisport athletes favorably. 

“You [develop] more coordination from multiple sports,” Åberg says. “Also, there’s the team aspect. When you’re 10, being in a locker room after you’ve lost is a pretty big lesson to learn.” 

That partly explains how a tall, lanky, athletic, teenage Åberg was accepted at Filbornaskolan, a sports academy and boarding school in the coastal city of Helsingborg. And that, he says, is when everything began to change. 

THE WEEK BEFORE ÅBERG MADE his Ryder Cup debut, five other Swedes represented Team Europe at the Solheim Cup. Åberg knew the two highest-ranked players, Maja Stark and Linn Grant, well. They were in his eight-person class at Filbornaskolan. That’s right—three of the eight, future PGA and LPGA tour stars. 

How is that possible? Hans Larsson is the man to ask. He’s been coaching golf at the school for more than two decades and oversees a program that has produced more than its share of pros. The school is selective across the board; in the golf program, a typical year will feature eight total players, four male and four female, chosen from close to 100 applicants. What makes the staff ’s approach different, Larsson says, is its big-picture approach. That’s why Åberg calls Larsson a “performance coach” rather than a swing coach. And that’s why, nearly a decade after they first met, Larsson remains his close confidant. 

“We’re not just telling them, ‘This is what you should do,’ ” Larsson, phoning from Sweden, says of his students. “We’re obsessed with ‘This is why you should do it.’ I think that relates to all parts of life: nutrition, training, body movement, golf skills.” By Åberg’s recall, their program “didn’t really do high school tournaments.” That’s unthinkable to the American sporting mind; we crown national champions from age six, and the very idea of competitive junior golf conjures images of stressed-out teens grinding for life-or-death pars. But despite running an elite golf program, Larsson’s focus is rarely on cutthroat competition. 

“Our kids compete at an early age,” he says, “but we try to focus on what you can learn through competing rather than just the lowest score. The Swedish system, both at our school and on the national team, is quite focused on educating and getting the players a base of knowledge in order to perform at the next level.”

Larsson has seen enough cautionary tales to fear the alternative. Kids who specialize early do get results early, he says—but then they often burn out faster, quit earlier, get injured more frequently or hit a ceiling.

“I would never tell them to stop playing another sport they love [to focus on] only golf, because I don’t think that’s good in any way,” he says. “I think it’s good [that they] do a lot of different things to prepare their mind and body. That’s better for your system in the long run, even if you don’t get the results as early.” 

When Åberg arrived on campus at Filbornaskolan, his talent stood out. He just wasn’t particularly keen on practice. It’s not that he was anti-practice. He just didn’t really know how. But once Larsson pointed him in the correct direction, the train left the station full steam ahead. Turns out that Åberg had a superpower, and it wasn’t his swing speed. It was his ability to absorb information and commit wholeheartedly to a plan of action. 

“We did this impact drill,” Larsson recalls, “and for the next two years, every time he hit a shot he did that drill. His current backswing drill he has done for four years, every swing. The things he does he has committed to over time. A lot of kids would try something, they’d go play, they might not play well and then they’d abandon that exercise. If there’s good reason  to believe in it, Ludvig sticks to it.”

Åberg makes it sound like a natural progression. Once Larsson taught him how to practice, he implemented the regimen the way a computer might install a software update. 

“I think I’ve always been disciplined,” he says. “I just didn’t know any better. And obviously that made me quite a bit better pretty quickly.” 

ONE WORD COMES UP AGAIN AND AGAIN as Åberg explains his approach: simple. Sometimes simple is Åberg obsessing over his fundamentals: the ball position, the grip, the setup. His swing hasn’t changed much in the decade he’s worked with Larsson. But mastering the little stuff goes a long way. When something is off, it’s usually a little thing. A simple thing. 

Sometimes simple is Åberg describing things that, to mere mortals, are not simple at all. How does he go from hitting a baby fade to hitting one dead straight? “I like to keep it very simple, so it’s all just tweaks in my setup,” he says. 

Other things become simple because Åberg takes action; he simplifies things for his future self. For instance, he and his caddie, Joe Skovron, meet two hours before every tee time to go over pin locations, wind and strategy. 

“It just simplifies things,” Åberg says, “because when we do get to the golf course, it’s like, ‘No, this is what we said we were going to do.’ It takes away all these emotional decisions you make during a round.” Still sitting in the Sawgrass clubhouse, he gestures in the direction of Pete Dye’s Stadium Course. 

“I know when I get to 12, I’m going to hit driver and I’m going to go for it,” he says, “and that just makes things easier, instead of standing on the tee box like, ‘Should I hit 4-iron?’” 

In Åberg’s syntax, simple is synonymous with the clearest course of action. It makes the thinking the rest of us do look messy by comparison. Åberg’s swing looks simple too. That doesn’t mean you could easily adopt either as your own. 

“No matter what I do today, I’m going to do the same thing tomorrow,” he says. “So, no matter if I win or I don’t win today, I’m still going to go out tomorrow and do the same thing.” 

Einstein famously said that the definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple—and he’d never even seen Ludvig Åberg hit a long iron. 

THE EASY WAY OUT IS TO DISMISS ÅBERG as some kind of robotic cyborg. Some of his peers already have. But spend time with him on the range and you’ll see a creative mind at work, not a bot. He speaks with reverence about the nine-window drill he and Larsson have fine-tuned for years, a drill that requires hitting literally every kind of shot—with every club. 

“I’ve been doing it with a 7-wood lately,” he says. 

How do you even hit a low 7-wood? “Exactly,” he says, flashing his increasingly familiar, subtle grin. 

Åberg still prefers playing to practicing, but at every step of the journey he has chosen to love the process. The thing he loves most about the game?

“That’s a massive question,” he says, before delivering his most expansive answer of the day. 

“It’s so simple, but it’s so hard. It’s logical, but it’s hard. And you’re never going to be finished. You’re never going to figure it out. You can think you are, and maybe you think you’ve come a long way, but there’s so much more to learn. There’s always a better score out there, or a better shot. And trying to figure that out is what excites me. On a good day, you can come out to practice and there’s just so much you can do, y’know? It’s never, ‘Oh, I’m done with that.’ That’s what excites me.” 

Given his penchant for strategic thinking, his low-key but unmistakable romanticism about the game and last year’s runner-up finish at the Masters, it’s no surprise that, as Åberg stares down his 2025 season, Georgia is on his mind. After all, beneath its luminously green exterior, Augusta National has a throwback minimalism at its core. The place is simple done right. 

“There’s a lot of differences between Augusta and a normal tournament, but one thing is just so simple: the scoreboards,” Åberg says, referring to ANGC’s iconic, manually operated leaderboards. He remembers walking down No. 10 last year, when, in a dramatic moment in the final round, the leader- board changed, sending the gallery of patrons into a frenzy. 

“I thought that was the coolest thing,” he says. “Nobody’s on their phone [getting] updated. It’s almost like you’re traveling back in time.” 

AT LONG LAST, ÅBERG COMES UP WITH A FLAW.

“I used to be really poor at time management,” he says. “Double-booked every day, supposed to be in three places at the same time. I think I’ve gotten to practice that a lot more.”

Is it really a flaw if he’s already figured it out? Probably not, but at least it’s something. Besides, it’s a skill he’ll need to keep perfecting, like his setup or shot shapes of his 7-wood. 

The messy, complex world is only going to want more of Ludvig Åberg.

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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