Opinion & Analysis

10 reasons you must make a golf trip to St. Andrews

Published

8 years ago

Jul 10, 2016

There are literally dozens — perhaps even hundreds — of reasons to travel to Scotland and experience St. Andrews. You could write a book about them. Some people already have. So when GolfWRX asked Golfbreaks.com to come up with a few, we took a deep breath and tried to condense the Auld Grey Toon, which could be considered a country within a small town, into just 10 memorable soundbites that encapsulate what the hype is all about.

Kate, Wills and The Tingle…

St. Andrews University.

St Andrews town is a living, breathing monument. Its revered university (yes, the one where Prince William and Kate met) is the third oldest in the English-speaking world, while the striking castle and cathedral date back to medieval times. There is a tangible sense of period to St. Andrews, contrasting with the youthful and vibrant population during the academic year and summer, which provides the town with a unique feeling and atmosphere that visitors find extremely alluring.

The Old Course and Walking in the Footsteps of Legends

When the words history and St. Andrews are mentioned in the same breath, most knowledgeable students of the game don’t immediately think of those old buildings with a violent past. They conjure up thoughts of the Old Course, Tom Morris, and all of those Open Championships.

Golf’s oldest major has been played at the legendary venue on a record 29 occasions, with the likes of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros, Sam Snead, and Bobby Jones all lifting the Claret Jug on that most hallowed of turf. When playing the Old Lady, you are literally walking in the footsteps of those legends and all of those that have come since. It really is quite special.

With the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse situated behind the first tee, and Old Tom Morris’ original golf store still open for business across from the 18^th tee, you are surrounded by the origins of the game. This is where golf, as we know it to be now, was born. Why does your standard course comprise of 18 holes? That is what the Old Course has. Just imagine how long a round would take if the original 22-hole layout remained intact?

Champions, the game, memories… were, and still are, created here. Now, THAT is history worth celebrating.

That Moment… On The 1^st Tee

No. 1 at St. Andrews (Old Course).

Oh, yes, standing on the first tee waiting to begin your walk with destiny is more excruciating than preparing to enter your dream job interview, or in the minutes leading up to your wedding. The anticipation and nervous excitement is palpable, but that energy is released with a crushing drive down the gigantic fairway, beginning your stroll with the legends, the most memorable round of your life. Just to experience this moment justifies making the trip to St Andrews.

The Links Trust… and In Golf We Trust!

Eden Course, St. Andrews.

Don’t forget that there are six other fantastic courses (apart from the Old Course) in the town under the Links Trust umbrella, with the New, adjacent to the Old, being the best known of the lot. The course was designed by that bearded doyen of St. Andrews, Old Tom, in the late 19^th century, and although the name does seem a little ironic these days, The New remains a fresh and thoroughly satisfying test. It is also frequently cited as a favorite of the locals.

The Jubilee, whose 18-hole layout was remodeled only a few decades ago, is to be found next to the New and runs alongside the dunes to the edge of the West Sands beach, where a famous scene from the 1981 British movie Chariots of Fire was filmed. It’s also, if you believe him, where nine-time major champion Gary Player slept during the 1957 Open Championship.

The Eden, arguably the most testing of the Trust’s courses along with the Jubilee, can be found on the other side of the Old. Although shorter than its sibling, it’s a thrillingly enjoyable challenge and its imaginative Harry Colt-designed greens require you to have a sharp short game.

Just outside of the town, you’ll discover the modern Castle Course, an undulating and craftily envisaged layout that boasts stunning views and some crazily fun holes. It can be just a little infuriating to play with a card in your hand, though!

10 Courses in One Small Town

No. 17 at the Torrence Course.

In total, there are 10 18-hole courses within a mile of the town, none of which can be sniffed at. Outside of the seven at the Links Trust, the Kohler-owned Dukes, a heathland layout, provides the only alternative to the seaside fare on offer elsewhere. And remember not to overlook the two top-class links courses, the Torrance and Kittocks, on the town’s boundaries at the Fairmont Hotel.

In fact, staying in St Andrews is like being in a multiplex cinema that is only showing classic movies. The town breathes golf and the game has largely defined its worldwide identity. It’s a intoxicating atmosphere for any lover of the game.

Test Yourself Against the Very Best

No. 11 at St. Andrews (Old Course).

For serious golfers, the chance to experience links golf at its purest should be an absolute thrill. Demanding the ability to create shots for each situation on the course, having to judge the bounce and roll on those firm fairways, and to play for the wind, there is never a dull moment.

The key to success on a seaside layout is to ultimately accept those conditions as your friend, rather than as something to fear. There are enough individual elements to St. Andrews that are intimidating, not the least the fearsome Road Hole, which is likely the best known in the game, and certainly among the most enduringly challenging.

On the Old Course, the par-three 11^th and par-five 14^th, which features the ominous Hell Bunker, are also among the highlights. Additionally, both the ninth and 10th holes of the New Course are equally as formidable. Playing these holes well, and escaping the innumerable traps, could be considered as an achievement in itself.

Lifetime Bragging Rights

No. 9 at St. Andrews (New Course).

We all like to impress (and annoy) our golfing friends with tales of success or grandeur. We regale them with tales of the great five-iron you played to the last hole, or the 40-foot eagle putt on a par-five that is unreachable for most. Spending time in St. Andrews and playing the Old Course is just about the ultimate thing to brag about for a golfer.

Enthral (and bore) your buddies with a shot-by-shot recount of your round, that adrenaline boosted drive down the first fairway, or the extraordinary par you made on the Road Hole, before striding up the last to hole a sweeping putt for birdie… sending the on-looking, fish-and-chip munching crowd into rapturous applause. Tell them how great the beer was at the Jigger Inn, how it surprisingly didn’t rain once, and how beautiful the sunset was every evening. Although we can’t guarantee that last bit, sadly.

And finally, show them the obligatory Swilcan Bridge picture.

Get that Priceless Picture on the Swilcan Bridge

The Swilcan Bridge.

Everyone has done it. The key is trying to make that most famous image in golf as unique for you as possible. Will you go for the Nicklaus pose? Or the Arnold Palmer wave? Or perhaps something of your own. The possibilities are endless. Just keep your clothes on. Trust me.

With the most photographed skyline in the game right behind you, the centuries old bridge has been crossed by all the greats, so stopping time for that brief moment is the perfect way to close out a round on the most iconic of courses. Capturing that treasured picture is worth the trip alone.

Experience the Pubs (…and pub golf)

Once you’ve taken that iconic photo, holed the final putt, and shook hands, it’s probably time for a pint or whiskey to help loosen the tongue for a post-round discussion. The obvious haunts are the famous Jigger Inn, situated alongside the Road Hole, or the popular and welcoming Dunvegan Hotel, which is one of the most revered 19-holes to be found anywhere in the world.

If pub golf is your agenda, then other watering holes include the Keys, or even Rascals, situated next to the cinema, which younger visitors in particular will enjoy. The good news is that there are more than enough pubs to satisfy the most seasoned of drinkers…. and a full 18, if you have the stamina!

The Gateway to Great Golf and More…

No. 18 at Kingsbarns.

Situated only 50 miles from Scotland’s historic capital of Edinburgh, St. Andrews is easy to reach and an ideal base for embarking on a golfing and cultural expedition of your own. The great city is among the most picturesque in Europe, with enough attractions to satisfy a trip of its own.

From a golf perspective, Kingsbarns, the breath-taking modern classic now considered to be one of the world’s finest courses, is only a short drive from the town, while the likes of Crail and Scotscraig are also within the surrounding area.

However, it is slightly farther afield where you will discover the ultimate gems. Carnoustie, the famed Open Championship venue, is just a 40-minute drive away, while East Lothian (Scotland’s Golf Coast) is less than two hours to the south, where Muirfield, Gullane, North Berwick and Kilspindie can all be ticked off the proverbial bucket list.

If you travel a similar distance north you’ll come to the city of Aberdeen, which boasts some of the country’s best on its doorstep, including the Balgownie Links of Royal Aberdeen, Murcar, and the enchanting Cruden Bay; now a cult favourite with visitors worldwide.

St. Andrews is not only the ultimate destination, but also the perfect gateway to Scotland’s other world class golf destinations.

By now we should have convinced you that St. Andrews is a golfing mecca to which every golfer must come at least once in their lifetime. Just one trip won’t however be enough, but every golfer deserves to have at least a taste. So, if it is not already on your bucket list… then stop, pull out a pen and ink it in!

Fortunately Golfbreaks.com is at hand to make that trip a reality, and, we’ll do all the work for you as well as save you time and money! Simply send us an inquiry by contacting our Golf Vacation Specialists at usa.golfbreaks.com or by calling (+1) 855.699.5853 Toll Free. Golfbreaks.com’s UK and Irish 4-night, 4-round golf tours start from just $640 pp.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans betting preview

Published

4 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.

TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.

Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.

However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.

Past Winners at TPC Louisiana

2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)

2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks

Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)

Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.

This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.

McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.

Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)

Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.

Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.

Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)

Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.

NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 LIV Adelaide betting preview: Cam Smith ready for big week down under

Published

4 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.

For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.

The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.

The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.

*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*

Past Winners at LIV Adelaide

2023: Talor Gooch (-19)

Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami

Green in Regulation

Richard Bland
Jon Rahm
Paul Casey

Fairways Hit

Abraham Ancer
Graeme McDowell
Henrik Stenson

Driving Distance

Bryson DeChambeau
Joaquin Niemann
Dean Burmester

Putting

Cameron Smith
Louis Oosthuizen
Matt Jones

2024 LIV Adelaide Picks

Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)

When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.

At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.

The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.

Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)

Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.

In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.

For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.

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Opinion & Analysis

The Wedge Guy: What really makes a wedge work? Part 1

Published

1 week ago

Apr 18, 2024

Terry Koehler

Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.

Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.

But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.

To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.

Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.

If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.

In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.

Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.

While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.

So, what about grooves and face texture?

Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.

Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.

But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?

The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.

So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.

And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.

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