The post 5 travel hacks to keep your golf clubs safe (and intact) in transit appeared first on Golf.

The post 5 travel hacks to keep your golf clubs safe (and intact) in transit appeared first on Golf.

Golf is a great game in that you can play it worldwide. But that can also come with some headaches. A full set of clubs is a hefty item to lug around, and getting them to your destination in one piece is not always a simple task. Travel bags do a good job of keeping your babies safe in transit, but sometimes you need to take some extra steps.

As a golf writer crisscrossing the country each year, I’ve done my fair share of travel with clubs in tow. I’ve never had a serious issue (fingers crossed) and below are some of the hacks I’ve used to keep it that way.

1. Take the head off your woods

When packing your clubs in preparation for transit, take the time to remove the heads off of your woods. Use a torque wrench (these usually come with a driver when you purchase it) to loosen the screw where the shaft meets the head and take it all the way off. Wrap your clubhead in a towel and put it in the large pocket on the side of your golf bag. This process decreases the likelihood of your clubhead snapping off in transit. Just make sure you take note of the setting your clubs were on before you remove anything!

2. Stiff arm

For an added layer of protection, throw a stiff arm in your bag when you’re flying. This device is designed to absorb the brunt of any accidental crunching at the top of your bag and can prevent a snapped driver shaft. Don’t want to invest in a stiff arm? Use a broom handle! Just make sure it’s longer than the longest club in your bag.

Srixon Z-Star golf balls

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3. Bubble wrap your irons

If you don’t want any dings and scrapes on your irons from the jostling that comes in transit, throw some bubble wrap around the heads. Or, you can kills two birds with one stone and use your socks as makeshift head covers. Whatever it takes to keep your scoring clubs blemish-free.

4. Add an Airtag

If you’re like me, waiting for your clubs to be delivered to baggage claim is an anxiety-inducing event. What if they got lost in transit? What if they got stolen! But ever since I put an Apple Airtag in my bag, my anxieties have been assuaged. Now, I can check the location of my clubs from the second I drop them with the baggage agent until they are safely back in my possession. It’s the best $30 I’ve ever spent.

5. Fill it up

Travel bags are designed to be roomy to fit even the largest of staff bags, but that extra space can come at the risk of your clubs. With so much room inside bag, the more your clubs can move around and find trouble. To alleviate this, fill that extra space with soft goods like towels, shirts and shoes. The less empty space inside the bag, the more protected your clubs will be.

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The post What’s it like playing the 100 best courses in the world? 3 of our raters share their secrets appeared first on Golf.

The post What’s it like playing the 100 best courses in the world? 3 of our raters share their secrets appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

***

Meet a trio of GOLF Magazine’s course raters who’ve played our entire Top 100 Courses in the World list — and lived to tell the late. Better yet, learn from their years of experience and tips.

Paul Rudovsky

Age: 76
Hometown: Pinehurst, N.C.
Occupation: Retired businessman

Most courses knocked off on a single trip: “27.5 in 25 days, in GB&I and continental Europe.”

Most underrated course: “Palmetto GC. It’s superb and simple, challenging, fair and great fun — those are the toughest things to do simultaneously in golf architecture.”

Hardest course to check off the list: “Ellerston, because it’s on a family estate in a foreign country [Australia], making it hard to find connections. I finally got it done in 2016 through a friend.”

Best travel tip: “Be flexible and always have a backup plan because things do go wrong.”

I never travel without my: “Fiber One cereal. I’ve bought it in something like 45 countries.”

How you keep your spouse supportive of your quest: “Simple — pick the right one.”

Joseph Andriole

Age: 68
Hometown: Orlando, Fla.
Occupation: Retired radiologist

Most underrated course: “Banff and Jasper Park in Canada. They’re Stanley Thompson designs, and he’s brilliant. They’re both scenic, well-routed, and Banff, in particular, is done in a big, rugged style that matches the mountainous environment.”

Travel

Favorite moment on the journey: “The first time I played Dornoch. My wife and I arrived after 9 p.m. I was so taken by the look that I decided to play it then and there. I finished sometime after midnight, with the rabbits running around. That was pretty unique.”

I never travel without my: “I never travel with a watch. On that same Dornoch trip, my sleep got discombobulated. I played North Berwick, and when I finished I learned it was 5:25 in the morning. I had no idea.”

Keys for making friends in high places: “Send thank-you gifts and reciprocate.”

Jeffrey Lewis

Age: 58
Hometown: New York, N.Y.
Occupation: CEO, American Flag Football League

Most courses knocked off on a single trip: “I put 1,000 miles on a rental car without leaving England — Woodhall Spa, Ganton, Deal, Royal St. George’s, Rye.”

Hardest course to check off the list: “Augusta, as it’s the only course one cannot try to play — you simply have to wait for an invitation. But shuffling off for a day on my honeymoon to play Durban CC was a neat trick too!”

Best travel tip: “Don’t overdo it. You don’t want to be over-golfed when you’re experiencing the world’s best courses. Take your time and consider playing some more than once. There’s always another trip.”

I never travel without my: “Rainsuit and rain gloves. Buy the really expensive stuff — then it never rains.”

How you keep your spouse supportive of your quest: “Again: Don’t overdo it.”

Want to overhaul your bag for 2022? Find a fitting location near you at GOLF’s affiliate company True Spec Golf.

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The post Carousel or oversized baggage? Handy tips to find your golf travel bag at the airport appeared first on Golf.

The post Carousel or oversized baggage? Handy tips to find your golf travel bag at the airport appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

Every golfer who has ever traveled with their clubs has felt the stomach-turning mix of excitement and concern: you touch down at your destination, giddy for your trip but worried about the whereabouts of your golf bag.

Did it make it? And, assuming that it did, will it show up on the carousel, or at the oversized baggage drop?

You can’t be in two places at once, and you don’t want your precious sticks to sit unattended. In the grand scheme of things, this is what is known as a privileged problem. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

The Twitter account @TheParTrain recently broached this topic, and we figured it was worth checking out. Because you know what? It’s a great question.

The first thing to know is that there’s no hard-set rule. Different airports have different capacities and protocols. But at most major airports in the U.S., chances are your clubs will go to oversized baggage. At smaller, regional airports, the odds are greater that they’ll appear on the baggage carousel. Many of these facilities, like the airport in North Bend, Ore., which serves Bandon Dunes, don’t even have oversize bag drops.

Something similar is true in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where oversize drops are more the exception than the rule. Your clubs will likely come out on the standard carousel.

No matter where you’re traveling, if you have any baggage-drop doubts, ask an airport attendant where you should be waiting. We guarantee they’ve fielded this question before. They’ll have an answer.

Travel

And if you can’t find an attendant? Draw upon your keen powers of observation. Go to the baggage carousel first and see what kind of bags are coming out. Are you seeing baby strollers, surfboards and other oversize items? If not, you’re probably standing in the wrong place.

And if all of this uncertainty is too much for your frayed nerves? You might turn to technological assistance. The market is filled with affordable, mini-tracking devices, including AirTag, Tile and Chipolo, that can be attached easily to your golf bag, allowing you to track them, real-time, on your phone.

Of course, your tracking device might tell you that your sticks have gone to the wrong city. That’s when a whole new adventure begins.

The post Carousel or oversized baggage? Handy tips to find your golf travel bag at the airport appeared first on Golf.

The post This brilliant travel hack came straight from a PGA Tour pro appeared first on Golf.

The post This brilliant travel hack came straight from a PGA Tour pro appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

PGA Tour pros travel all over the world, hopping from city to city, from airport to airport. It leads to a lot of time in the air, in a tin can at 30,000 feet, in which the forms of entertainment are almost always the following: reading, thinking, or viewing. 

But sometimes that last one can be a struggle. Not every plane has digital monitors in the back of each seat. Some do, and we get used to expecting it! But some don’t, and we are left holding our phones in our hands for hours, craning our neck downward for entertainment. That’s no good for anyone, particularly Tour pros who need to get off the jet and head to the course. Luckily, Tour pro Tyler McCumber shared one of his brilliant travel hacks with GOLF.com that solves the riddle of old planes.

Lifestyle

“If you’re on an older plane, they won’t have screens,” McCumber said last week. “A lot of the planes that they’re flying right now, they haven’t had screens. So when your tray goes up, there’s a little notch. So what I do is I take my phone, and I take my case off. 

“I take the throw up bag, and you put it in your phone case, and put your case back on. So you can hold your phone up, essentially, and then you put the bag [in between the notch and the tray.] That’s how you watch TV.”

Got that? Consider the throw up bag to be your own personal TV mount, with your phone (and case) as your TV. Use the pressure of your phone’s tight-fitting case to lock that bag in, and then use the pinching nature of the food tray and notch to lock the bag in place, hanging from back of the seat. 

What Tyler could have never known was how clutch this information was. I was on a flight less than 24 hours later that had no back-of-seat entertainment center. His tip was a life-saver during a 90-minute jaunt from Palm Springs to Salt Lake City, as you can see below. 

I wanted to give him all the credit he deserved, but I remembered quickly that this was no original idea. He was just passing on the good word that someone had given him once. 

“Everyone’s like, ‘That’s genius,’” McCumber said. ”And I go, ‘I Googled top five travel hacks on airplanes.’ Because no one likes to hold their phone up for five hours. So you’re looking up and you’ve got your headphones in and pretty much your own display monitor.”

Brilliant stuff, Tyler. Check out a TikTok tutorial of the hack below.

The post This brilliant travel hack came straight from a PGA Tour pro appeared first on Golf.

The post 6 great duffel bags perfect for the traveling golfer appeared first on Golf.

The post 6 great duffel bags perfect for the traveling golfer appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

If you are a golfer that hits the road for work, or hits the road for golf, you need to pack right. That means it’s important to have the perfect gear that not only handles all the obligatory stuff but looks sharp too. One of those key items needed for every road trip is a trusty duffel bag.

Below, we rounded up six different-yet-worthy options perfect for golfers on the go, because it’s important to be prepared off the course as well as on it.

6 duffel bags perfect for the traveling golfer

Titleist Players Duffel Bag

$130

The Players Duffel is one of a handful of Titleist travel bags and comes at a good price point. The black/red colorway is as sharp as they come.

Buy now

Nicklaus Duffel Bag (Limited Edition USA Design)

$349

This limited-edition red, white and blue leather Nicklaus duffel bag from FH Wadsworth is sure to become your go-to bag, especially for Golden Bear fans.

Buy now

OGIO FUSE Duffel 35

$79.99

Lightweight and with plenty of room for storage, this duffel bag from OGIO comes in two color options.

Buy now

TaylorMade Players Duffle

$99.99

The TaylorMade Players Duffel has a comfortable strap and lots of storage. Plus, we love the charcoal/black color scheme.

Buy now

Milwaukee Boot Co. Cream City Duffel

$149

The Cream City Duffel from the Milwaukee Boot Co. is handcrafted and durable. It checks all the boxes.

Buy now

Polare Cowhide Leather Weekender Overnight

$239.99

Made from 100 percent full-grain Cowhide Leather, this durable and stylish bag is one of the top-rated duffle bags on Amazon.

Buy now

The post 6 great duffel bags perfect for the traveling golfer appeared first on Golf.

The post 3 things golfers should always travel with to keep their games sharp appeared first on Golf.

The post 3 things golfers should always travel with to keep their games sharp appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

***

Some pro golfers fly comfortably on private planes, but a vast majority of them fly like us. Sure, many might be in first class, but it’s still not easy jumping off a plane and getting loose to play golf. The same can be said for driving long distances in cars en route to rounds.

This is true not just for pros, but weekend hackers heading across the country on golf trips. Luckily, there are some smart items you can bring with you to make sure a long travel day doesn’t take a toll on your body (and scorecard).

Matt Wilson is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher and the director of instruction at Baltusrol Golf Club, in New Jersey. Before that he was the head coach of Golf Canada’s Junior Girls team, which meant he traveled about 200 days a year. If there’s anyone who knows how to travel right to keep your game dialed in, it’s Wilson.

His must-have golf items when traveling? He called out three items: (1) alignment sticks, to make sure your clubface alignment is dialed in before your round, (2) resistance band, and (3) foam roller — both of which will help you alleviate any sort of tightness after a cramped flight or car ride.

“Think about it like what’s in your dopp kit when you travel. What are the essential behaviors that keep you healthy every day?” Wilson says. “Brush my teeth, floss my teeth, those would be the two biggest ones, right? So you need to be working with your instructor or coach to figure out what would be the equivalent things for your golf game. You see a lot of players with alignment sticks — they have some form of straight edge in their bag to ensure clubface alignment. Just simple stuff that gives you feedback to make sure you are set up correctly.

“I personally travel with and encourage people to travel with some form of band and a foam roller because of postural changes,” he continued. “Your body gets so compressed when you are traveling by air or even by car. You are sitting in cramped spaces for a long time and you ultimately swing around your setup. So just making sure you get your whole front side of your body opened up and establishing good posture and making sure your rib cage isn’t too tight, your hips aren’t too tight.”

Foam rollers, and especially bands, take up little room when traveling. So they are easy to sneak in bags. They are a favorite of many golf teachers and pros (like Justin Thomas, above), as well.

So while some extra range time might benefit your game after a lengthy travel day, don’t discount how much a few simple band and foam-roller exercises can help to relieve muscle tightness and increase your joint range of motion — things that make the golf swing thrive.

Want to overhaul your bag for 2022? Find a fitting location near you at GOLF’s affiliate company True Spec Golf.

The post 3 things golfers should always travel with to keep their games sharp appeared first on Golf.

The post The 2 best cities in the world to visit as a golfer, according to a well-traveled pro appeared first on Golf.

The post The 2 best cities in the world to visit as a golfer, according to a well-traveled pro appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

***

Lucas Herbert is a well-traveled golfer. The Australian pro started playing on the European Tour in 2018, won his first tournament in 2020 (Omega Dubai Desert Classic) and his second in 2021 (Irish Open).

He earned his PGA Tour card for the first time this season and wasted no time putting it to good use, winning the Butterfield Bermuda Championship last month in what was just his third start of the year.

Instruction

The 25-year-old Aussie was last week’s guest on GOLF’s Subpar Podcast, and he spoke at length about grinding as a pro, his breakthrough PGA Tour win and what it’s been like traveling the world as a pro golfer. As one would guess, he’s seen a lot. Subpar co-host Drew Stoltz asked him to name the most fun or best spot in the world in which he’s played golf.

“The two that I love the most that are probably tied are Prague in the Czech Republic,” he said. “I think that’s a really cool city on the river. Really old as well. So like an old-town vibe where they’ll shut the streets down where you can’t drive through and all the restaurants kind of spill out on the streets. It’s amazing.

“And Queenstown in New Zealand,” he continued. “It’s kind of similar to like the Banff area in Canada, very similar to that kind of feel. Obviously we play there in the summer but through the winter it’s all the ski slopes and whatnot. So the New Zealand Open every year is in Queenstown, and every year I can play it I do and we just get a house with my family and a bunch of friends come over. Probably the best burger place in the world is in Queenstown as well, so like every night we are on the phone with them ordering like 15 burgers … It’s just a fun week.”

So there you have it, straight from a well-traveled golfer. Now you know where your next international golf trips should be. You can watch the entire Subpar interview with Herbert below.

The post The 2 best cities in the world to visit as a golfer, according to a well-traveled pro appeared first on Golf.

The post This is the best way to cure jet lag, according to LPGA Tour star Lydia Ko appeared first on Golf.

The post This is the best way to cure jet lag, according to LPGA Tour star Lydia Ko appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

***

Professional golfers are jet setters by trade. One week, they’re playing stateside and the next they’re competing on the opposite side of the globe. It’s a perk of the job getting to see so many parts of the world, but it can also take a toll on their bodies.

While modern air travel has connected the world more than ever before, it can also present some challenges for athletes trying to compete at the highest level each week. Sitting on a plane for 12+ hours is stressful on the body, and that’s before taking jet lag into consideration.

For the domestic travelers reading his, jet lag is the phenomenon that occurs when traveling across many time zones at a time. While the clocks at your destination might show that it’s the middle of the night, your body clock is still adjusted to your jumping-off point.

Fitness

This lack of synchronization between your body and the clocks might not be a huge deal when the only thing on your daily agenda is shopping and tourist attractions, but for athletes prepping to compete, it can be bothersome.

Luckily for pro athletes — golfers especially — they become somewhat experts on the best ways to combat jet lag in their years crisscrossing the globe. According to LPGA star Lydia Ko, the remedy is simple.

“Just sleep,” Ko said at last week’s Pelican Women’s Championship. “My trick is sometimes — obviously I don’t do it when I have a tournament the week after — but I will not sleep the night before so that I am very, very tired on the plane so I sleep the whole flight.”

Ko said that she’s become quite good at this technique. So good, in fact, that it will sometimes worry the flight attendants on her trans-continental flights.

Split image of lpga pro lydia ko at golf tournament and an airplane flying away”Sometimes the flight attendants ask me if I’m okay because they’re worried I’m sick because I’ve slept through a 15-hour flight,” she said. “To all the flight attendants out there, I’m the most probably low-key, hands-off, hands-free passenger on board.”

If you’ve got a flight around the world soon, take a page out of Ko’s book and pull an all-nighter beforehand. It should allow you to get some Zs on the plane and wake up refreshed and ready to go by the time the plane touches down at your destination.

The post This is the best way to cure jet lag, according to LPGA Tour star Lydia Ko appeared first on Golf.

The post 8 sure-fire tips for playing golf in the United Kingdom and Ireland, according to an expert appeared first on Golf.

The post 8 sure-fire tips for playing golf in the United Kingdom and Ireland, according to an expert appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

***

Jeff Lewis has clubs and he will travel. Check that. He will travel a lot.

A GOLF Magazine course rater, Lewis, 58, has pegged it in 26 countries and on all six continents where the game is played, making his rounds on every course that has ever appeared in our World Top 100 rankings. (Okay, due to travel restrictions during the pandemic, he has yet to visit a couple of newbies on our latest roster, but the point stands: the man gets around.)

Dozens of his excursions have been across the Atlantic to the great links of the United Kingdom and Ireland, where the golf culture is different than it is in many places. The climate, too.

Here’s an eight-point guide from Lewis to help you get the most out of your trip.

Apparel

1. Pack rain gloves. “The best accessory on earth,” Lewis says. Specifically, the ones that only work when they are wet. “You are overseas, you won’t be in that same town again for years or maybe ever and darn it, you’re going to play in a driving rain,” he says. “The only reason that’s plausible is that those rain gloves are amazing.”

2. Wear shorts under your pants. The conditions can change in a blink.

3. Feel free to play fewer courses so that you can play the better ones more than once.

4. Take a local caddie. You’ll spend a little extra but it’s hard to put a price on what you get in return. “They are often members of the club at where you are playing, and they are fantastic sources of information on the course and the community you are visiting.”

5. Prior to your trip, practice in a simulator to see how far your shots carry in both a helping and hurting 20 mile-per-hour wind. “I promise that whatever you think those numbers are, you’re wrong,” Lewis says.

6. Consider hiring a driver. Not because driving on the opposite side of the road is overly taxing, Lewis says. “It’s that one of the great pleasures of traveling and playing over there is stopping for a pint or two.”

7. Book as much as you can yourself. “All of the clubs have reservations systems or emails at this point,” Lewis says. “They are open for business, and you can save a lot of cash. Ask the clubs about the best places to stay nearby.”

8. The exception to point No. 7 is the Old Course at St. Andrews. “The best way on is to pay a tour operator,” Lewis says.

Need help unriddling the greens at your home course? Pick up a custom Green Book from 8AM Golf affiliate GolfLogix.

The post 8 sure-fire tips for playing golf in the United Kingdom and Ireland, according to an expert appeared first on Golf.

The post The 3 gadgets (and 2 extra clubs) this Tour pro always takes on the road appeared first on Golf.

The post The 3 gadgets (and 2 extra clubs) this Tour pro always takes on the road appeared first on Golf.

Welcome to Road Rules, a GOLF.com series in which we pick the brains of expert golf travelers, ranging from professional golfers and caddies to globetrotting course raters and teachers. We’ll unlock their must-have travel items, go-to airline tips and more to inform you for your next golf excursion.

***

Sam Horsfield knows how to travel. His family moved from England to Florida when he was 5 years old. He went to the University of Florida for two years and still lives in the Orlando area, although he’s now traversing the world as a European Tour member. That’s a lot of frequent-flyer miles.

News

And when Horsfield, who is 25, does travel for tournaments, he always carries two extra golf clubs. If he needs to switch or one becomes damaged or — gasp! — misplaced, he’ll have one he’s familiar with as a trusty backup.

“I haven’t changed putters in like two years, but I always carry two with me,” Horsfield says. “I feel like the putter is the most personal [club] in your bag, so I always carry two of those, and then two drivers because drivers are probably the hardest to get and find right because they aren’t the same.”

But the 16 clubs — including the backup driver and putter — aren’t the only items Horsfield never travels to tournament’s without.

“I wouldn’t make it five minutes without my phone,” he says. He also says his laptop and iPad are must-haves when traveling.

“Gotta catch up on the Netflix somehow,” he says.

We agree.

Luke Kerr-Dineen contributed to this story.

The post The 3 gadgets (and 2 extra clubs) this Tour pro always takes on the road appeared first on Golf.