Tabla de contenidos para October/November 2025 en Golf Digest

CONSIDER THIS MY PUBLIC retraction for privately telling everyone “Happy Gilmore 2” would join the pantheon of unwatchable sequels and possibly go down as one of the worst movies ever made. I was on set, circumstantially, for an hour of its filming, and the prediction was extrapolated from watching one scene go through a dozen takes that felt like a hundred. It was the part where a surgically enhanced punk rock “golfer” from the rival league lunges to twist Rory McIlroy’s nipples in a pre-match staredown, and Bryson DeChambeau steps in to exhort, “Don’t twist my boy’s titties; those are my titties!” To my defense, the final cut revealed zero additional understory or relationship (romantic?) between these characters to make that line funny beyond the repetition of a naughty word.…

YOU MAY BE ONE OF THE many golfers who over the last few years have discovered a social media personality known as Yip Strickler. You just never, ever want to be discovered by Yip first. Hearing your name coming out of Yip’s mouth is tantamount to being indicted, with Yip being the judge and jury—and handicap police—when it comes to weighing in on net golf events around the country. “If you win some type of a net cham-pionship, you might want to think about spending that pro shop credit immediately before they try to snatch it back after I expose your sandbagging ways to the entire universe,” Strickler warns in an Instagram post from August. In an era of online influencers mostly trying to either entertain or make money, Strickler…

YOU MIGHT KNOW SOME golfers at your club or course who have a habit of raking putts that are not “gimmes.” They might even pick up their ball after a hole has been decided in match play, even though they still had some work to do to earn the bogey they want to put down on the card. Can you pencil in whatever number you want on a scorecard when your ball is in your pocket? If you’re playing by the offcial Rules of Handicapping, the answer is an emphatic “no.” Rule 3.3 covers what to do when a hole is started but you don’t hole out. Subject to other provisions in the handicapping rules, you must record your most likely score or net double bogey, whichever is lower, “as…

AROUND THE GREENS most short-game coaches say it’s best for amateur golfers to keep things simple. The fancy shots look great, but they can get you into real trouble if you’re not precise. (We’re looking at you, the flop-shot obsessed.) Australian Grace Kim, 24, who won the Amundi Evian Championship in July for her first major, agrees with those coaches. She is ranked in the top 20 in strokes gained/around the greens on the LPGA Tour this season and says there is one chip shot every amateur should know how to hit. It helps land the ball softly with not much roll. To use it, stand a little closer to the ball than you normally would for a chip so that your wedge’s shaft is more upright and the heel of…

Split Personality Back in the day, golfers carried a mixed bag of niblicks and mashies, each tasked to propel shots a certain way. Iron sets later became uniform, but now we’re seeing a trend where more than 70 percent of PGA Tour players use a “split set” of irons with multiple head designs. Even many average-golfer sets—without the tour-level tweaking—feature different heads to optimize launch and spin. Moral: They had it right way back when. Every club in your bag has a specific job. Worry less about how it looks and more about what it does.…

WHAT IS THIS MYSTERY IRON? At first glance, there’s nothing strange about Griffin carrying a Mizuno JPX923 3-iron. However, look closer at the sole, and you’ll see there’s no number. Why? Mizuno didn’t make a 3-iron in this model, so it’s a 4-iron bent to 3-iron loft. Mystery solved. WEARING WELL Griffin’s Scotty Cameron Concept 2 Tour prototype putter has a German stainless steel insert. The black finish shows some real battle scars. ONE OF ONE Griffin plays the Maxfli Tour X ball. His two wins on the PGA Tour in 2025 were the first with a Maxfli golf ball in two decades. PEST CONTROL These allnatural bug wipes help keep mosquitoes and other nuisances at bay during early mornings on the course. HE’S GOT THE LOOK Vision issues led…

BY 11 O’CLOCK IN THE morning, when the shuttle driver dropped me off after a 10-minute drive from Siem Reap center in northwest Cambodia, it was already sweltering hot. The air was so weighed by humidity that I felt I was swimming, rather than walking, past manicured garden boxes and restrained swaths of jungle to the driving range of the country’s flagship golf course, Angkor Golf Resort. Though better known for its temples, Cambodia is gaining a reputation in the world of golf and was recently named the Asia Pacific golf destination of the year by the International Association of Golf Tour Operators. Golf’s newfound popularity has attracted a greater investment in the sport—there are currently 12 golf courses in the country (designed by the likes of Nick Faldo and…

Sugarloaf G.C. Carrabassett Valley, Maine Set against the Appalachians, Sugarloaf (above) is a demanding Robert Trent Jones Jr. mountain course previously ranked on our America’s 100 Greatest Public list. Sugarloaf’s signature holes—the 10th and 11th—offer stunning panoramic views of the Maine wilderness and feature dramatic dropoffs from tee to green. Pack a few extra sleeves of balls, as most wayward shots end up rattling amongst the foliage. Salish Cliffs G.C. Shelton, Wash. About an hour-and-a-half from Seattle, Salish Cliffs is a must-play public course for its scenic views and strong conditioning. Towering deciduous trees frame most holes and demand quality play off the tee. The Highland Course at Primland Meadows of Dan, Va. The Highland Course at Primland—currently ranked 29th on our America’s 100 Greatest Public list—sits atop a mountain…

When Is Golf at Its Best? Four seasons, zero consensus. Our Golf Digest panel debates FALL IS HERE, AND WITH IT come the swarms of autumn apologists who defend the season as unequivocally the best to play golf. On the Golf Digest staff, we have plenty in that group, and while the mild temperatures and peak course conditions may make it tough to argue with them, our panel also offered some strong counterpoints when asked to debate the best season to play golf. Shane Ryan, contributing editor: As I ease into the start of middle age, I’m trying to show more restraint and avoid making extreme statements like “Anyone who doesn’t say fall should be thrown in jail for felony thought crime.” But even though I’m (nobly) leaving that sentiment unspoken,…

THE DP WORLD TOUR CHAMPIONSHIPis the culmination of the circuit’s 42-tournament season played across 26 countries. After the event, the season-long points winner takes the Race to Dubai title. In recent years, the final standings have become even more consequential, with the top-10 finishers who don’t already have a PGA Tour card earning membership on the American tour. The DP World Tour Championship is played each year at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, a course that the stats show rewards three important skills. Distance off the tee: Length is a must to win at Jumeirah for a few reasons. First, all of the par 5s are reachable for the longer hitters, so they can capitalize on these opportunities better than shorter players who can’t reach the green in two. Second, there…

’The golf swing has only one purpose—to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly and to achieve such impact repeatedly. Many unorthodox players achieve correct impact. As long as it’s repeatable, it’s OK. If golf were about getting into correct positions throughout the swing, then the greatest players in the world have had it wrong. The only position that matters is the club’s at impact.’ –THE LATE JOHN JACOBS, INSTRUCTOR, WORLD GOLF HALL OF FAME (see page 74 for Golf Digest’s newest list of the Best Teachers in America)…

THERE’S A LOT OF TRUST involved in golf. Instincts often make you think you have to do the opposite of what you’re supposed to do. For example, slicers often swing more away from the direction of the slice to try to reduce the curve. Actually, they should swing more toward the slice to eliminate that banana ball. You get the idea. In bunkers, the notion that you have to make a big swing for such a short shot can seem weird. But if you don’t commit to following through, the result is typically a shot that doesn’t leave the bunker. Regulating distance from greenside sand is primarily about the throughswing. You have to trust that if you make a healthy pass at the ball, it’s not going to fly 100…

WE ALL EXPERIENCE that uneasy feeling of standing in the fairway, seeing that little flag in the distance and not knowing if we can get there. What makes it worse is, we might not even know whether we should be hitting a hybrid or a fairway wood. Of course, the right answer depends more on the player than it does on the club. For instance, hybrid use on the PGA Tour is down about 80 percent from its heyday in 2010, when a typical event might have seen 140 hybrids in play. But what happens on tour shouldn’t dictate what happens in your bag. With an increasing array of hybrid options, along with the influx of high-lofted fairway woods, average golfers have more choices with their longer clubs than ever…

On the Rebound After decades of slow to no growth, golf construction in Scotland is back. Several new courses have opened or been announced in recent years, and among the most anticipated is Old Petty at Cabot Highlands in Inverness. Situated next to Castle Stuart, ranked 51st on our World’s 100 Greatest Courses, the new Tom Doak links twists and turns over delightfully rumpled fescue fields along a bay on Moray Firth, kissing both the castle and namesake 19th century church. Holes one and 18 cross one another as Scottish holes frequently did in more freewheeling times, and several others jump across a marshy estuary toward greens of suitably regal contour. Preview rounds began in September with a full opening following in Spring 2026.…

The official evacuation alert was issued from Parks Canada at 8 p.m. on July 22, 2024. By that time, Tahlon Sweenie, the Director of Golf at the revered Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course in the western Canadian Rockies, was already working with the resort’s management team to move 1,200 guests and staff off the course, out of the rooms and off the property—all in less than 80 minutes. First and secondhand reports had been hitting people’s phones, creating general awareness that lightning strikes had ignited fires in the tinder-dry Valley of the Five Lakes to the south and that dry and gusty winds were pushing the fires closer. Despite it all, Sweenie remained relatively calm. “I mean, I figured this was Jasper,” he says. “It’s a national jewel, right? There’s…

WHEN HE GETS INTERESTED in something, which happens a lot, Guy Yocom goes deep. Given the way one of golf’s all-time interviewers has been wired—abundantly by nature, sparingly by nurture, dynamically in combination—it seems he’s had little choice. Sixty years ago, when he was 9, Yocom began diving into the stacks of rejected old books his mother had brought home from her job at a community donation center. “There was every subject you could think of, but I was drawn to the unusual—UFOs, circus freaks, astrology, palmistry, unsolved crimes,” says Yocom, leaning back in a West Haven, Conn., diner, clipping his well-chosen words with a deliberate cadence. “There were some racy novels and even some Playboys. That was OK with my mom. She always said, ‘All reading is good.’” Such…

BY PRO STANDARDS, Nico Echavarria is not a bomber of the ball—but he doesn’t need to be, says his coach Hernán Rey. It’s his ability to consistently deliver the clubface square that sets him up for success. Through August on the PGA Tour, the 31-year-old Colombian ranked 137th in driving distance (296.9 yards) but was top 50 in accuracy (62.6 percent of fairways hit). “He is exceptionally precise—one of the most effcient players I’ve ever measured,” says Rey, who also coaches 2025 NCAA women’s individual champion Maria José Marin (Arkansas). “Every good player can repeat the path, but their face dispersion is much wider. Nico can hit 30 balls in a row with the face angle between 0 and 0.1 degrees left. He’s like a machine.” At one point during the…

MOST PRO GOLFERS HAVE a go-to club they lean on under pressure or when it’s important they stay out of trouble off the tee. Often, it’s not the driver. Tiger Woods won the 2006 Open Championship at Hoylake without hitting a single driver over the final 54 holes. His chosen club was a 2-iron, which was ideally suited for the dry, firm and windy conditions. When a tee shot is really important, you might be tempted to hit driver. But do you really know which long club performs best for you under pressure? Here’s how to find out: Head to the practice range and establish a “fairway” by locating two flags (or markers) about 25 yards apart. Pull out your driver and hit 10 tee shots to this imaginary fairway.…

FOR MANY AMATEUR golfers, the difference between a good and a bad round often comes down to how they play the par 4s. Data from millions of rounds collected by Arccos Golf shows that the average driving distance for amateur men is about 225 yards each year, and it’s about 178 yards for amateur women. Those numbers should tell you how important it is to put the ball in the fairway off the tee on a par 4. (On a par 5 it’s important, too, but you’ve got an extra shot to bail yourself out of trouble.) If your driver has been squirrely lately, give your swing a check-up with the following keys you can use to your advantage on four-shot holes. 1) Address: Lower your trail shoulder slightly (right…

Q: I THOUGHT ANCHOR-ING WAS BANNED, BUT I SEE LONG PUTTERS ON TOUR. SHOULD I TRY ONE? As of 2016, anchoring a putter against any part of your body is illegal, but long putters are still OK. Mike Davis, the USGA executive director at the time of the ruling, explained the difference. “We’re not going to take away your long putter,” Davis said. “All you need to do is this [hold the club away from your body], where you control the whole club with your hands. So long and belly putters are still legal, as long as you don’t anchor them.” That ruling let tour pros such as Adam Scott, Lucas Glover, Akshay Bhatia, Will Zalatoris and Bernhard Langer to keep—or start—using these clubs by holding them away from the…

WHEN MAJOR GOLF resorts like Bandon Dunes, Pinehurst and Sand Valley began opening innovative short courses a decade ago, they scratched an itch that golfers didn’t realize they had. These sporty diversions of mostly par 3s (Bandon Preserve, The Cradle and The Sandbox) were instantaneously fan favorites, serving bite-size helpings of surprisingly rich architecture that inspired a wave of new non-traditional short courses at other public and private clubs. Short courses have become a rage, immensely fun counterpoints to more substantive 18-hole rounds that are perfect for in-between downtime, twilight outings, larger groups and spirited bet-settling. Architects love designing them because there are no rules, no set number of holes and no off-limits ideas—they can do things with short courses that might be too controversial on a regulation design. As…

Every two years we take on the process of identifying the best teachers in the country, from the ones who travel the professional tours helping the world’s top players to the hidden talents at your local driving range. The unifying theme is simple: These teachers are moving the field of golf instruction forward and raising the bar of game improvement, one student at a time. Our selection methodology relies on the most knowledgeable, most qualified people: the teachers themselves. We send out voting ballots to several thousand leading instructors around the country asking them to name the top teachers in the business, then we count the votes. It’s that simple. Well, not exactly. We’re recognizing three groups of teachers here: Golf Digest’s Legends of Golf Instruction, the 50 Best Teachers…