Opinion & Analysis

Tips for playing true links golf courses in Ireland and Scotland

Published

6 years ago

Sep 8, 2018

l just returned from two weeks in the UK where I played nine of the greatest links golf courses of the world. This was my third year in a row of exploring links golf, as the two years prior I went to Bandon Dunes and Cabot Links, which are probably the two places in North America that most closely resemble links turf.

The term “links” has been widely used in our country to mean several things, which it really is not, such as “I’m hittin’ the links tomorrow.” In other words, playing golf. But the term has a more precise definition: Links land is land that links the sea to the arable land further on shore. The area where the sea was, has receded and now leaves an expanse of turf which will only support the growth of some reddish brown fescue grasses. So if the color green is what you like on a golf course, stay home.

The growth is very low, the land is very rolling and hilly, firm, and the ground is simply whatever the sea has left on its retreat. While the golf courses on this land are pretty much whatever nature left there, a human being had to come and decide where tees, greens, bunkers etc., should be placed. It is even likely that many of the bunkers on the old courses might have been naturally dug by sheep and other animals seeking shelter from the harsh winds that blow in these area. Folklore? Fact? Who knows. But I do know this, the game that is played on this land is a whole other game than what many of us have come to know. The most we get in North America are “links style” or “links like” courses, usually meaning the absence of trees. These are not links courses. Here are some notable differences in how true links courses play.

First of all, because of the wind and the tight, firm turf, the golf ball flies lower. My advice is do not try to do anything about this, it’s simply a matter of the ballistics of impact. Think about shots you have played here in the U.S. from “hard pan” — they fly lower. You do not have the one inch or so grass under the golf ball as a launching pad, so accept lower flight…on ALL shots from the turf, not just around the green.

Now this works in your favor, because much of the time, we don’t want the golf ball to fly too high with the ever-present winds blowing. Most mistakes are made by players who try to hit high shots off very tight lies. Around the greens, putt whenever you can! When I did chip, I had some success with the ball slightly back, weight forward and hands ahead but… very little wrist set on most shots around the green, regardless of club selection. This keeps the hands in front, but avoids getting too steep into the firm turf. So if you closely observe elite-level players they are hitting de-lofted, low shots with a shallow somewhat shallow attack angle. I think anyone wishing to improve their iron game should learn to play links-land golf courses. There is far more putting and chipping with hybrids and 6-irons from off the green than in the U.S.

The second thing to be aware of is the line of play. It is critical in links golf. Take for example. a bunker guarding a green on one side. If you are forced to play over that bunker for your approach, you are faced with a very difficult shot, which invariably bounces over the green and into some heather or gorse behind the green making for an impossible up and in. My advice is play away from the bunker and short of the green for a much simpler short chip or putt. Here at home we can play over bunkers when forced to (it’s not optimal) because the softer greens mostly hold shots. Not in links golf! So try and check the hole location to know what side of the fairway to play in from. Yes, I know most of you are thinking, “I just wanna hit it solid,” but these observations could help, when you CAN control your tee ball. Try your level best to come into the green from the open, unprotected side.

Another word to the wise: avoid the heather (high rough fescue) and REALLY avoid the gorse bushes (unplayable lies to be sure). These grasses often cross the fairways so, when you play there, be sure to know how far they are from you; treat them like the hazards they are. You’ll need to lay well back of them if you can. I’d advise having 180 in from the fairway over 140 in the fescue. It is that different. Of course we can’t simply control tee shots, I’m referring more to the lay up shots. A bogey is NOT a bad score. Doubles and “others” come from the gorse, deep fairway bunkers and the heavy rough.

Which brings me to my next point, the roll of the golf ball. A shot on a links course is never good until it stops rolling! I hit a few drives 300 yards (I’m 70 years old). I hit what I thought were good draws right down the middle only to find them in the left fescue. If you do have a swing from the light rough (fescue) and the grass is growing toward the green, allow for “flyers” that might run 50 yards after landing. I hit an 8-iron that ended up near 200 yards once!

Avoid the fairway pot bunkers at all costs. If you get in one, take your sand wedge and play back to the fairway. I observed a number of players trying to play at the green. This is a HUGE mistake. Forget your distance to the hole, forget the green and get back on the fairway. It will save you a lot of strokes. Bobby Jones once remarked that the toughest shot in golf is the “pitch back to the fairway.”

In the greenside bunkers, there is less of a problem, but I might offer this advice: You are likely to find wetter, heavier sand than you might in the U.S. These shots require less bounce on the sand wedge or lob wedge, so one might consider that in your club selection. If you play your regular sand wedge, you may want to open it less at address and not “fan it” as much taking it back. This will minimize the bounce, let the leading edge work a little more than we might in fine, loose sand and help you explode better on to the green.

Another distinction…actual yardage means less than it does here at home. The wind, the elevation, the roll of the golf ball, all affect your club selection much more so than the actual yardage. The best advice here is get a good caddy who knows the actual distance, but will give you the real playing yardage.

The greens are large, quite undulating amd MUCH less defined. They also roll slower than out golf courses, because they are so exposed. A green speed over 10 is unlikely. The biggest difference we encounter is the effect of the wind on putts. If you get an experienced caddie, he/she is likely to remind you FIRST of the wind factor on the putts. For those of us who play in the states, wind is not the first thought we have on the putting surface. But it needs to be on the seaside fine fescue links greens. If those greens were at the speed of some creeping bent grasses, rounds might take in excess of six hours!

If you love of the game, and it is at all possible, go play golf in Scotland and or Ireland. There is something mystical about crossing the Swilcan Bridge, or playing out of the road hole bunker that no other place in golf offers. Walking the ancient fairways of Ballybunion or St. Andrews, where it is likely that every great player who has ever lived has played, (Augusta by comparison has been played by every great since 1934; Old Tom Morris was long gone by then) is a truly memorable experience.

These countries gave us our game game as we know it, and it is their national pasttime. I do not mean to discredit Cypress Point or Pine Valley, Merion or Oakmont one bit. They are wonderful fields of play (and much more difficult in my opinion) but they go back 100 years, not perhaps 500 years or more. The hallowed grounds that comprise the old links courses have been there since time began, and the idea of hitting a ball in a hole with a stick started there, and these things are palpable when you play there. But be prepared, it is a different game to be sure. And be sure to pack for every weather situation you can imagine. Even in the same day! I asked my caddie at the Old Course what the weather forecast was. He replied, “I can give you a 3-hole forecast at best.” And right he was. There were at least six weather changes that day. Anyway, I hope these tips help you if you ever get across the pond.

PS: Be prepared for five-plus hour rounds. Most of these courses are “bucket list” destinations and tourists take their time!

Your Reaction?

LIKE47
LEGIT7
WOW1
LOL1
IDHT1
FLOP0
OB1
SHANK5

19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans betting preview

Published

22 hours 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.

Your Reaction?

LIKE6
LEGIT2
WOW1
LOL0
IDHT0
FLOP2
OB1
SHANK1

19th Hole

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

Published

22 hours 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.

Your Reaction?

LIKE10
LEGIT3
WOW0
LOL1
IDHT0
FLOP1
OB1
SHANK1

Opinion & Analysis

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

Published

5 days 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.

Your Reaction?