Instructions

There are plenty of fitness routines that come with the promise of tightening your abs, improving your cardiovascular health, shaving 20 pounds off your mid-section and making you feel 10 years younger. But this isn’t one of them. This one is all about the exercises that can make you a better golfer without having to

Most amateurs struggle to manufacture different shots off the tee, particularly if they go against the player’s natural shot shape. One reason is, they make it too complicated. When it comes time to hit a draw, they might alter their alignment, ball position, grip, clubface aim—you name it. The tweaks can be endless. But as

Perhaps it’s a reflection of golf’s youth movement or a new spike in the game’s popularity, but whatever the reason, we believe there are more talented golf instructors under the age of 40 than ever before. Back in 2008, when we debuted our biennial list, we identified 20 teachers in their 20s and 30s who

There are so many things golfers can learn from Collin Morikawa, which is why we’re proud to call the young star our new Golf Digest Playing Editor. The 23-year-old has been successful at every level—including an illustrious amateur career, earning his PGA Tour card in just two months after turning pro, then his incredible 22-event stretch

A common fault among average golfers is hanging back on the downswing and flipping the club at the ball. It usually results in a loss of power, poor contact and a nasty slice. Try this exercise from top trainer Tyler Campbell to groove a proper weight shift and develop more speed by learning to push

Imagine you have a big walk-in closet where you store all your golf skills. On the shelves and hangers you keep your abilities to split a tight, tree-lined fairway with your driver, hit a long iron off a tight lie, and execute a downhill pitch over water—all the shots that make most amateurs feel uneasy.

Next time you get to a par 3, compare the divots on the back tee to the ones on the closer tees. You should see two differences: Divot holes from better players start past the ball (you can usually tell where the tee was), and they point to the target. The ones from less-skilled players

Admit it. You’ve spent hours at the practice range, hitting ball after ball with your pitching wedge or 9-iron, looking for that pure contact tour players seem to achieve effortlessly. You’ve sped up your swing, slowed it down, and done all kinds of things with your hands, all in an effort to make the ball

ORLANDO — The entire golf world’s eyes seem to fixed on the swing of a pre-teen. During Thursday’s pro-am for the PNC, Charlie’s athletic and powerful swing sparked multiple comparisons to the swing of a young Tiger. Woods spoke in detail with Golf Digest about his son’s move, and how it compares to how he

If all it took was to have a multiple-major-winning father to guarantee PGA Tour stardom for a son, you’d have heard much more about the Nicklauses, Players, Floyds and Millers who aspired to play high-level professional golf. Charlie Woods isn’t going to get there on pure pedigree. But if you can draw lessons from a

We know, we know. You don’t even want to talk about the shanks for fear bringing the subject up will cause you to catch them. But like it or not, you might find yourself in a situation where you’re going to want to know a solution. Though awful, the plague of the shanks is curable.

When you think of a U.S. Open, tough-to-hit fairways and difficult conditions likely come to mind. Players this week will face an added challenge: Adjusting to some of the biggest greens in competitive golf over the course of one round, while playing a much smaller set of putting surfaces in the second. This week’s U.S.

Even the most accurate guys on the PGA Tour are missing fairways on at least 25 percent of their tee shots. That means we all have to know how to hit good approach shots out of the rough. Part of it is recognizing how the ball is going to come out based on the lie.

Give your driving distance a boost using this two-for-one exercise from New York-based trainer Kurt Ellis. This full-body move works both the adductor (hip) muscles and thoracic spine to help you create a stable center and rotate more effectively. Translation: longer drives. The first part of Ellis’ stretch improves flexibility in your adductors, which help

The pandemic caused many lapsed golfers to pick up their clubs again, but our favorite returning player might be Joseph Maguire, a high school freshman from Port Washington, N.Y. Joseph is autistic, and this past year has been especially lonely and difficult for him with less access to teachers, coaches and friends. Although Joseph didn’t

I can always tell when golfers are nervous in the sand: They make no body turn through the shot—it’s just a fast swipe with the hands. And when the hands get active, they tend to close the clubface, which makes the leading edge dig. You want to do just the opposite: Slide the clubhead through

Mackenzie Stroh When Nelly Korda won her first LPGA Tour event in 2018, she matched a feat her sister, Jessica, had already accomplished. Together, the two became one set of just three sisters who have won on the LPGA Tour, the other two being Annika and Charlotta Sorenstam and Ariya and Moriya Jutanugarn. With five

Most golfers know, when you can’t keep your driver from slicing, it’s hard to shoot a decent score. Every hole becomes a recovery mission, and that can get old fast—real fast.  You might know that an open clubface is what causes the slice, but you might not know how to fix it or, even better,

Editor’s Note: Sophia Popov wasn’t supposed to be in the field at the AIG Women’s British Open, let alone win it. Ranked 304th in the world and a member of the Symetra Tour, which is a developmental tour for the LPGA, Popov was a last-minute addition to the Open after finishing T-9 at the Marathon

You hear it all the time when you’re watching golf broadcasts on TV. A player whose ball is in a seemingly awkward spot asks to speak to a rules official about the situation and what options he or she can take. Suddenly, the player is getting relief, and viewers at home are wondering what’s going

The running joke within golf teacher circles Sunday night was that practice ranges around the country would be filled the next day with weekend hackers trying to bend their left wrists at the top of the backswing to copy the new Masters champ. It was a joke—sort of—but illustrative of one of the problems in

Recently, a few tour players have been experimenting with longer driver shafts in an attempt to increase their swing speed and distance off the tee. Dylan Frittelli, in the top five after 54 holes at the 2020 Masters, credited a longer driver for boosting his speed over the past couple of months. Everyone wants to

My iron play in 2019 wasn’t as good as I wanted, so after the surgery on my left knee at the end of the season, I worked on getting my ball-striking back to where it was a few years ago. I think a lot of golfers can relate to dealing with the ups and downs

Often times on the PGA Tour, we see players allowed to lift, clean and place the ball on the fairway when a local rule is employed during wet conditions on the PGA Tour, which means conditions are ripe for tee shots that find the fairway to leave the ball with an extra passenger of dirt,

You aren’t going to barricade yourself in your coach’s house for two months, drink multiple protein shakes a day and hit 3,000 balls in a week. But that doesn’t mean you can’t draft off of some of the DeChambeau experience to play better. Golf Digest 50 Best Teacher Chris Como works with DeChambeau and has

Tiger Woods is arguably the most accomplished champion in the history of golf, but that doesn’t mean he’s above learning from other players. Throughout his career, Woods has sought advice and information from some of the best short-game wizards of all time. Because in golf, even the best can always get better. “Learning short-game shots

For the top wedge players on tour, it’s not enough just to have precise distance control. It’s about having vastly different shots in their arsenals. For a back pin on soft greens, they need a low-trajectory punch that doesn’t spin back when it lands. But for a front pin on the firm greens they find

To have success on any hilly golf course, you have to be able to accurately estimate yardages over sloped terrain. Judging how much shorter to play a downhill shot or how much longer to play an uphill one, including how an uneven lie will affect the ball flight, is critical at a place like Augusta

With the Masters just two weeks away, Tiger Woods’ focus has shifted toward Augusta National. Part of the reason Woods has had so much success there is his ability to hit shots off uneven lies. With Augusta’s hilly terrain, players rarely have a completely flat lie. And typically speaking, the guys in contention are those

In normal times on the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods draws thousands of fans to the course every time he plays. And those fans are often delighted when Woods hits a wayward drive in their direction, because it means he’ll venture outside the ropes to hit a recovery shot. TV cameras have captured this scene many