At the start of every year, two giants of the driver category go head to head with their respective launches looking to capture golfers' attention before the product hits the shelves. 2022 was no different, with Callaway unveiling its Rogue ST driver early on January 4th followed by TaylorMade’s Stealth line up just a few hours later. 

Whether one performs demonstrably better than the other remains to be seen and will be player dependent but is there a case to say that one generated more excitement and anticipation than the other and why might that have been? 

Our initial verdict is that it was TaylorMade that created the biggest buzz and the most amount of interest when the Stealth driver was unveiled, perhaps unsurprising for a company known for its bold marketing. The page views on our website reflect this and the replies on our Twitter feed back this up further. 

For starters, it has a completely new name and it features an eye-catching technology - the bright red carbon fibre face. We got an early glimpse of it too with Tiger Woods putting the driver and fairway in the bag for his return to golf at the PNC Championship. He and his son nearly won the event, and so the appetite was whetted for when full details were to emerge.

The take up on tour for both drivers has been phenomenal. At the Sentry tournament of champions, admittedly a limited field event, TaylorMade staffer Collin Morikawa put Stealth in play, which is interesting given he decided not to make the switch from SIM to SIM2 last year. Other staffers like Lucas Herbert and even free agent Daniel Berger also put Stealth in the bag. Callaway’s poster boy Jon Rahm put the Rogue ST straight in the bag, as did Phil Mickelson, Xander Schaufelle, new signing Abraham Ancer, Marc Leishman and Talor Gooch. 

Callaway’s aim was to produce something more visually elegant and while it has achieved this with Rogue ST, it perhaps doesn’t have the wow factor of Stealth. I think the A.I. tech story, while absolutely valid, is a difficult one to sell to the golfer who can see and touch the new face on Stealth and leaves nothing behind closed doors. 

Rick Shiels, with his now two million YouTube followers, is a pretty good barometer of interest from the golfer and his Stealth drivers review video has had over double what his review of the Rogue ST drivers has achieved. That said, our Callaway Rogue ST review video has outperformed our Stealth drivers video thus far.

Callaway fired shots on Twitter recently by posting an image of Big Bertha C4 driver from over 20 years ago, which had a carbon face. This was clearly a pop at TaylorMade’s supposedly groundbreaking technology and while it is worth remembering this technology has been done by Callaway before, you can’t help but wonder if this low blow merely plays into TaylorMade’s hands. 

Make no mistake, both these drivers look to be up with the very best ever made, but it looks like the Stealth has got the juices of the audience flowing a little more vigorously.

eBay is the one-stop-shop for golf equipment

For all your golf-related needs, eBay has breadth and depth - in terms of choice

Today's choice has never been so abundant.

The plethora of golf equipment available on eBay and the more-than-reasonable pricing, means you don’t need to go anywhere else to kit yourself out.

Say you’re looking for a new iron set, and you remember that Callaway set you’ve been eyeing lately, but it’s a little steep and you’re not sure about making that investment right now.

Well Callaway themselves have a presence on eBay, of course they do, and because it’s on eBay it means their wares are more abundant, both in range and condition.

The choice couldn’t be easier – You don’t want to splash out on brand new irons and Callaway’s eBay store has used iron sets – in great condition and at a fraction of the price.

I don’t know about you, but is it not easier to swing a club with less inhabitation, when you know it’s already been “worn in,” so-to-speak? Even just a little?

Regardless of whether a club’s “newness” matters to you, it’s having the wider choice that really matters.

Sizing up the offers all in one place – as eBay allows you to do, is a greater service than you’re likely to find anywhere – no matter how slick a company’s website is.

Regardless of Callaway clubs (or your itch for a Scotty Cameron putter – of which there are many, especially in terms of cost and condition), the broadness of what’s available on eBay makes it a no-brainer for all levels too.

The word we’re looking for here is reasonable (a: having the faculty of reason, b: possessing sound judgement, Merriam-Webster.com).

You know within good reason that you’ll find clubs for all ages, heights, and abilities, and that you’ll find brand-new, just-as-good-as-new, and quality brands you aspire to owning and playing with.

And as you well know eBay is the place to sell them once it’s time for those upgrades.

Anyway, enough with the drivers, irons, and putters - eBay has much more to offer.

The breadth of golf equipment that exists in the world also exists on eBay.

Whether you are looking for golf shoes, balls, tees, or a 3D golf swing analyzer, there are reams of equipment and accessories – a veritable Aladdin's cave of golf-related treasure.

You lost a TaylorMade driver headcover last week at the club – the retailer you got your TaylorMades from is out, annoyingly.

You know, within reason, where to find a replacement – eBay.

The club where everyone is welcome (though no-one needs to know you’re a member) is eBay – because a Double Eagle, or an Ace, may be just a click away. 

Other eBay links to help get you closer to the perfect round:

View TaylorMade golf clubs on eBay

View Ping golf clubs on eBay

View all golf clubs on eBay

Read Golf Monthly's new playing editor Eddie Pepperell's first column

Eddie Pepperell Column: My Journey To Becoming A Professional

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first Golf Monthly column.

With time on my hands, it seemed as good a time as any to start one.

There’s not much golf to comment on at this moment in time, but hopefully we won’t come off the rails too soon.

I know it’s been a fairly odd existence for everyone of late and I’ve been trying to keep myself busy to make the time pass.

That said, it hasn’t gone as slowly as I was expecting, but walking the dogs, training, eating and sleeping is basically all I have to show for the last few weeks.

I have a putting green in one of the bedrooms, but I haven’t hit a golf shot for a couple of months now.

I took four weeks off last year because of a back injury and when I came back it was the best I’d played all year, so I’m not overly concerned.

But I do wonder at what point you cross over into the realm of too much time off.

I’m certainly looking forward to hitting some balls again when it’s safe and responsible to do so.

The time off has naturally given some time for reflection, and with this being my first column, I thought it sensible to start with my early golfing career.

My dad got me and my brother into golf when I was four or five, and I used to play on a par-3 course at Drayton Park – that place holds a lot of my early memories.

I remember getting angry once because I had played poorly or wanted to play again and my dad wouldn’t let me, so I threw all my clubs out of the bag in protest and filled it up with sand!

I clearly loved the game and spent endless hours at that place.

I was around sport, and particularly golf, all through my childhood.

I had amazing accessibility and I do think that’s a common theme in the childhoods of many professional sportspeople.

From what I understand, I was fairly good from a young age, as was my brother, Joe, who’s now head pro at Oxford Golf Club.

The notion of natural talent and a proclivity for something is an interesting subject to me.

We used to travel to tournaments together and we’d sometimes have to stop on the way so he could be sick.

When assessing what separated our playing careers, this could have been one of the factors.

I imagine it’s hard to keep going when that’s your default reaction to nerves – something we all feel.

I think my personality and character were already apparent at that point.

I was seemingly quite single-minded and fairly temperamental – not in a terrible way, but I suppose I had a bit of an edge for quite a young kid.

I won this event called the ‘Wee Wonders’ when I was 12, which was a pretty big deal at the time, and then the Reed Trophy (English U-14s).

Tom Lewis came second or third – Tom beat me in the final of the British Boys – and Tommy Fleetwood was playing, too.

Those were probably the highlights of my junior career, along with playing for England.

I once remember playing Matteo Manassero in the European Boys’ Match Play and our game decided which country progressed.

It came down to the 20th hole and I birdied to win it.

He was quite upset and launched his putter about 40 yards!

He’s such a nice guy, but it showed he also had an edge at that age.

The prospect of potentially pursuing a career as a professional didn’t come on the radar until quite late.

My amateur golf occupied my mind for a long time, until I got a bit disillusioned with it all around 2011.

I’d been around the whole system for a long time and I changed a lot around the winter of 2010/11 – I started reading books and had a lot of ideas going through my mind.

I began building my own philosophies around practice and became even more individually minded.

As great as the England set-up was, and I loved it, maybe I didn’t feel the environment was necessarily for me at that time.

There was an element of constraint and I’ve never been one to like authority very much, so I think I rebelled a little bit.

As 2011 wore on, I just felt done with all the amateur stuff and decided to turn professional, which started another chapter in my life.

Eddie's first GM column was originally printed in the July 2020 issue of Golf Monthly. He writes a column every month.

For all the latest golf news, check the Golf Monthly website and follow our social media channels @golfmonthlymagazine on Facebook and @golfmonthly on Twitter and Instagram

Read our editor-at-large Bill Elliott's latest GM column on why the European Tour can't afford the financial hit of a postponed Ryder Cup

The European Tour Cannot Afford A Postponed Ryder Cup

And so it drones on, wearying, worrying and, for some unfortunates, much worse than that.

It’s tedious not being able to play golf in the sunshine, but it’s a damn sight more tedious being dead.

By the time you cast a drooping eye over this sentence, golf courses may be open again, the old game socially distanced, the flags left in, the rakes left out, the clubhouse shuttered.

Not the same, of course, but better than nothing – much, much better.

Getting us back to playing some form of the game is more important than easing the pros back into tournaments.

It’s more important because there are more of us and clubs need some income asap.

It looks like the USA will lead the way on this.

This is partly because they have a president who owns golf clubs and partly because a significant number of impatient golfers own automatic weapons as well as three wedges.

That’s a compelling combination even if events ultimately conspire against them.

There remains a chance, however, that pro golf in the States will begin again in June, and that we will be able to watch the USPGA Championship, the US Open and The Masters between August and November.

Oh, and the Ryder Cup in September.

All of them without any fans to add noise, colour, atmosphere and, “mash potato”, occasional serious irritation.

But a Ryder Cup without fans? Really? Apparently it’s on.

Early in April Europe’s skipper Padraig Harrington joined in with Rory McIlroy to suggest “no fans, no matches”. End of. Except it wasn’t.

By the end of the month Harrington was saying “well, eh, we may have to do it”.

Related: Bill Elliott - My 50 years covering golf

Not that he wants to – no way. Padraig wants what every other captain desires – big crowds, big noise, a big, fancy dinner with his wife in her new gown and the rest of his family and friends there to join in the fun.

Win or lose, this is what they all want and they are right to seek it.

Minus the fans and the rest of the glitzy stuff, the captaincy is more a chore than an honour.

Now, however, someone has taken Harrington aside and explained the hard fact of this matter.

It is this: if the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits is moved to 2021, the next gig in Rome will be shifted to 2023 and the European Tour cannot afford to take that financial hit on top of all the other blows it is currently suffering.

This is by far its biggest earner and without it, the European Tour may well struggle to even survive.

It would certainly be a much easier target should the PGA Tour choose to move in and take over the world.

It’s why I reckon that if nothing else happens in the pro world this year, an empty Ryder Cup is the one big thing that may well occur.

We’ll all watch it, but it won’t be the same.

I saw an empty Ryder Cup once, the 1979 episode at The Greenbrier, an 11,000 acre property in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

Podcast: Bill Elliott - My life in golf  

The Ryder Cup meant next to nothing to the American public back then.

There was no TV coverage, not a lot of any kind of media and the attendance at the pre-match dinner was significantly bigger than the attendance when the golf began.

Two memorable things occurred that week:

1 - Mark James and Ken Brown behaved poorly, were almost sent home and gave us newspaper reporters the most sensational Ryder Cup story ever;

2 - The Sulphur Springs Motel we stayed in was okayish but, after a few nights sat at the same bar, three of us decided we needed a change of scene. I called for a cab and the driver asked: “Where you guys wanna go?” I suggested he take us to “the best place in town”.

He grinned, said “Yessir”, gunned the motor and took off, making a wide circle across the road to return to where we’d started.

He grinned again. “You’re at it, have fun.”

It was such a great gag that we invited him to come back in with us for a drink, and when he left three hours later we had to call for a cab to take him home.

Happy days.

Related: Bill Elliott - Why sports journalists are as important as ever

For all the latest golf news, check the Golf Monthly website and follow our social media channels @golfmonthlymagazine on Facebook and @golfmonthly on Twitter and Instagram

'When play resumes...make no mistake, the guys who live in the USA will be at a distinct advantage'

Wayne Riley: Easier For American-Based Golfers During Covid-19 Lockdown

Hello everyone, and I hope you’re doing as well as can be expected in lockdown.

It’s certainly a strange time, but just think about how good that first round of golf back is going to be, and how great your first pint in the pub will taste!

I’m in Ascot at the moment and the other day I was going for my allocated walk when a car pulled up next to me.

It was Oliver Fisher.

I asked him what he was doing and he said he was on the way back from mowing his father-in-law’s lawn.

Latest: Coronavirus and Golf

I asked if he’d been able to practice and he said no, not one bit, so I said ‘fair enough, you’ve got to make some money somehow!”

It was a funny exchange, but it did get me thinking about the difference between most PGA and European Tour players within this enforced layoff from professional golf and the differing impacts it will have on different people.

Of course, Rory McIlroy isn’t concerned about being able to pay the mortgage, but some will be.

I’m thinking about the guys who played the Challenge Tour all last season, earning very little but securing their place on the European Tour for 2020.

The same goes for those who have earned the privilege to play on this great circuit via the Q-School in Spain.

With everything grinding to a halt, the finances must be strained for some of these youngsters, and maybe some of the older players who have been on the fringes of the tour for all of their careers.

Believe me, they exist.

As of right now, the tunnel is still dark.

It must be so tough for those pros who can’t do work with their coach or go to the range and beat balls.

And even those who have practice facilities at home must sometimes struggle for motivation when there’s currently no return in sight.

For me, the motivation should come from potentially gaining a competitive edge.

With so many good players on tour these days, the little things can make a huge difference.

When play on the professional circuits resumes, there will be a lot of rust on the better players’ clubs and swings.

It won’t take them long to get back, but there could be an opportunity for some members if they’re ready and prepared to hit the ground running.

Make no mistake, though – the guys who live in the USA will be at a distinct advantage.

I reckon 90% of those on the PGA Tour live on golf courses, and very private ones at that.

I’m thinking of resorts like Lake Nona, where the likes of Stenson, Poulter and McDowell make their home, and the Bears Club down in West Palm Beach where McIlroy has settled.

Practice won’t be an issue like it may be in the UK.

Another interesting side point is equipment.

Players are always tinkering with it, but what are they going to do now they can’t visit the tour truck or go to their manufacturers’ factories?

When I played, I had grips, putting mats, shafts and all sorts of tools in my garage.

As long as I was able to keep my eye off the box of white wine in the corner, I’d be forever tinkering in there.

I know the likes of Seve, Faldo and Langer were also big into this, but I think too many youngsters nowadays rely on these vans on tour.

Sometimes, I feel, it’s a good idea to be involved with your own equipment.

Something else that’s a huge part of modern golf is fitness.

Once again, the rich players have their own gyms at home, but the journeymen and those who yoyo between the top tier and second tier most likely don’t.

What do they do to keep fit?

As with all of us in these times, imagination is important.

It’s very easy to take your foot off the gas and let lethargy take hold, but those who are able to maintain their commitment, focus and desire will benefit in the long run.

As for when this all gets going again, who knows, but I’ll tell you what: it’ll be easier for the PGA Tour than the European Tour.

They’ve got so much money over there and if most of the players are in the States already, they could potentially drive around the country to compete.

The European Tour is so international, in terms of both the fields and the host countries, that it really relies on aeroplane transport.

There’s so much up in the air still and I wouldn’t like to speculate, but as with everything else, there will be knock-on effects.

I’m glad I’m not the one having to make tough decisions, that’s for sure.

For all the latest golf news, check the Golf Monthly website and follow our social media channels @golfmonthlymagazine on Facebook and @golfmonthly on Twitter and Instagram

In this era of instant access to information and platforms like Twitter connecting players with fans, has the importance of journalists diminished? Not at all, according to our editor-at-large

Why Sports Journalists Are As Important As Ever

Read our editor-at-large Bill Elliott's column, originally printed in the May 2019 issue of Golf Monthly

To London twice in a few days. Once to a glitzy awards dinner at which a talented platoon of the country’s outstanding sportswriters and photographers were suitably rewarded for their efforts over the past year, and then 72 hours later to St Bride’s Church, which is tucked away a few yards off Fleet Street and which has been the spiritual home of the media for many years.

Fleet Street, of course, is no longer headquarters for the nation’s great newspapers. These days the one-time home of the old trade is a more mundane area, the former newspaper offices now filled with people who know about insurance and finance and other apparently important stuff.

This means the pubs are quieter, the lunchtimes shorter and the fun much harder to find.

Podcast: Bill Elliott - My Life in Golf

Those of us who spent important bits of our careers there still feel a thrill just walking down towards St Paul’s from the law courts, but it is the thrill of remembering what was, not what is.

Anyway, I was there to join many others in celebrating the life of James Lawton, who I first met when we were both on the sports desk of the Daily Express in Manchester a couple of years before The Beatles split up.

Jim matured into a brilliant observer of the sports scene, his enthusiasm for the daft games we play and his effortless eloquence in describing the participants and the surroundings lifting him into the elite of our own game. I’ll be back at St Bride’s sooner than desired to celebrate another wonderful sportswriter, Hugh McIlvanney, who died earlier this year and who leaves behind a legacy of what some of us consider genius.

What has this to do with golf? Well, as I wandered away from the church – yes, to a pub – I reflected on why sportswriters have any relevance in this age of instant news, scores, sackings or updates on what’s happening at The Masters. We may all see this stuff as we walk down any street, even watching the television pictures on our phones.

Yet while these scores and pictures tell us much, they never tell the whole story.

It’s always been important to have a journalist who tells you what you either can’t or don’t see and even more important for him or her to tell you what this or that sports star is really like.

These days, however, when players have their own Twitter accounts and the rest of the web paraphernalia, they do not need a sportswriter to get their opinions across. The big difference is the journalist is apt to ask a question they don’t expect and to elicit a reply that is not flavoured with the need to please a sponsor or dulled by the anodyne hand of a PR assistant.

While TV has immeasurably enhanced our general enjoyment of sport and especially golf, your better idea of what a supposed hero is really like will almost certainly have been offered to you by a journalist.

It’s harder than ever for the sportswriter to do this today, because so many stars are barricaded by a team of helpers and press conferences are organised in such a way that any sort of close contact is frowned upon if not physically impossible. But we try.

Before so much money poured into so many games, the players and journalists would mingle socially, get to know each other and occasionally form real friendships. Although there would be occasions when one would think the other had misquoted them or made some other error, usually we got over such rifts swiftly enough.

The fact is that while television can make a golfer a bigger star, the real history of the game is still being written by a journalist who has a way with words and a keenly observant eye. The television pictures enhance this but they do not yet replace it.

This is what the team here on Golf Monthly try to do and sometimes I believe we succeed, whether it is via an in-depth interview or a personal opinion. We are all aware of the need for accuracy as well as the desire to make it entertaining and interesting. Above all we try to tell you something you would not otherwise know.

This is what Lawton and McIlvanney and the rest of us reach for every time we rattle out a feature or offer an opinion.

It is not as easy to do as some think, but then again it is not as hard as grafting away in a monotonous job that you hate. So I’m glad to say that after a couple of fortifying pints following Jim’s memorial service, I concluded that sportswriters are as relevant today as ever we were.

Thanks for reading. That, really, is the whole, reassuring point.

Podcast: Bill Elliott - My Life in Golf

Bill Elliott is Golf Monthly’s editor-at- large and Golf Ambassador for Prostate Cancer UK

For all the latest golf news, check the Golf Monthly website and follow our social media channels @golfmonthlymagazine on Facebook and @golfmonthly on Twitter and Instagram

As Coronavirus appears set to make the greatest impact on our national health and economy since wartime, it feels appropriate to acknowledge the impact the crisis is having at every level of our sport.

A Message From Golf Monthly’s Editor

Golf was already under pressure, especially in GB&I, after a very wet winter that’s meant many courses have been closed more often than they have been open in recent months. The current situation will only exacerbate matters.

In the wider golfing world, the impact is being felt with the postponement or cancellation of events like The Masters and the USPGA and uncertainly surrounding professional and amateur tournaments at all levels.

The reality is that there will be a huge impact on golfers and golf businesses alike, with finances as well as people’s emotional health put under increasing strain.

Every golfer knows the health benefits – both physical and mental – that playing the game offers and the social interaction golf brings is equally invaluable.

At the moment, courses, if not clubhouses, seem to be open and I can only recommend getting out for knock on your own or with friends if you can do so within the boundaries of the advice being issued by the government.

One of golf’s greatest appeals is that it can be enjoyed by people of all ages and the sport has an especially strong and vibrant senior section. I’d urge the whole golf community to do what they can to support older golfers who are likely to be affected more than most, with restrictions on their movement and ability to visit clubs and play.

We know that with no live golf being broadcast and the prospect of being able to play less, and in the near future quite possibly no golf, there will be a huge gap in golfers’ lives.

To help fill that void, the Golf Monthly team is working around the clock to bring you the news, expert opinion and features you need to remain informed and entertained in the days and weeks ahead.

Content on our digital channels is being updated multiple times a day and those companies that print and distribute the magazine have contingency plans to enable them to continue to operate.

We are here to try and support the golf community, and by everyone in that community supporting one another we will get through this and be back on the course and enjoying our golf as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Harris – Editor, Golf Monthly

Should you be self-isolating and don’t want to miss the latest issue, you can subscribe here from just £22.49 or order individual back issues through our new service by clicking here.

For all the latest golf news, check the Golf Monthly website and follow our social media channels @golfmonthlymagazine on Facebook and @golfmonthly on Twitter and Instagram

The dynamic power of the young players at the LAAC has made Fergus think further on the, much reported and discussed, distance debate.

Fergus Bisset LAAC Friday: Distance learning

Over a very nice dinner last night at the Banyan Tree’s excellent Thai restaurant Saffron, discussion turned to the distance modern elite players hit the ball.

Inevitably a few names were mentioned when covering those who are vocal in their criticism of equipment advances and those who would advocate heightened regulations.

I don’t need to name those names here as any golf fan will have heard the arguments trotted out every time someone drives a par-4 or reaches a 600 yarder in two.

I’ve written quite a bit on this subject over the years and my opinion is as follows:

Equipment advances throughout the history of golf have facilitated steps forward in the level of play.

The move to the gutta-percha ball then the move to a rubber ball both meant greater distances could be achieved and, despite grumblings from the old guard, the changes pushed golf forward as a sport.

When the first steel shafts came in, they allowed players like Byron Nelson to fundamentally change their technique to produce a wider and more powerful swing.

"Iron Byron" is now viewed as a trailblazer with regards golfing technique.

Without these advancements, golfers would still be clicking wooden balls around a field with sticks and I don’t think that would generate much interest.

The regulations on equipment have not changed in recent years but manufacturers have continued to innovate to maximise performance from their products within legal parameters.

Meanwhile, players have come steadily closer to perfecting the techniques required to maximise what they can get out of that equipment.

The objective in golf is to shoot as low a score as possible and, as with any human endeavour, participants will continuously look for ways to accomplish their task more effectively.

Why would we take steps to prevent this objective?

Watching the young players at the LAAC bombing drivers and striping irons made me think about that.

It’s so patently clear that it’s their technique and athleticism that allows them to hit the ball so far.

OK, the equipment has facilitated this (as per the move to steel shafts or metal woods,) but it only functions properly in the hands of those who know how to use it.

The average punter can’t hit the ball any further than they could 15 years ago.

Almost all of the top players here in Mayakoba this week take, fundamentally, the same approach and it’s the same as that seen on the main professional tours each week.

They have a wide, athletic stance from which they make a complete, coiling turn allowing them to release at full speed, turning their entire bodies through the ball, generating maximum power.

Watch the modern swing and take the clubs and balls out of the equation and what you can say, without question, is that golfing technique has evolved and moved forward.

Much as it did when Byron Nelson got to grips with the steel shaft.

Much as it did when improved greens allowed for a more fluid, less wristy putting stroke.

Golf has progressed as a sport and so it should; all sports do.

Look at the way modern football is played compared to the punting and hacking of 50 years ago.

Or the way tennis players strike the ball and cover the court now against the relative “pat-a-cake” of the 1960s.

The modern golfer is physically fit with fast twitch muscles – Their action is dynamic and powerful and it, not their equipment, generates tremendous speed at impact.

The technique of the modern golfer may look strange to those who grew up with the small ball but it’s where golf has evolved to at this point.

As those best at this sport continue to seek ways to get the ball into the hole in fewer shots, new techniques (within the rules and regulations) will continue to appear and develop.

Limits on distance won’t and shouldn’t come from tightened rules on equipment, they will and should be governed by the limitations of the human body.

As long as players can continue to get stronger, swing wider and faster, they will continue to hit the golf ball further.

Fergus has touched down in Mexico and is looking forward to covering the sixth, and his fifth, Latin America Amateur Championship.

I’m very fortunate that this is the fifth time I’ve attended the Latin America Amateur Championship.

Since the competition began in 2015, I’ve only missed one – last year’s in the Dominican Republic.

It’s a tremendous event and one I look forward to every year.

Not only is it as slickly run as any golf tournament on the planet (what would else would you expect with The R&A, The Masters and the USGA in charge of proceedings,) but it’s also the friendliest golfing event one could hope to attend.

There’s a great atmosphere amongst players, coaches, organisers, even the usually cynical media.

That’s because everybody is aware just what a great thing for golf the LAAC is.

It’s evident from the swift growth and success of the tournament that it is having a tremendous impact in growing the game in this region.

The players have the chance to experience top-level elite golf (they’ll see no competition more impressively organised outside the Majors.)

Plus, they have the opportunity to win some amazing prizes:

The LAAC champion receives an invitation to compete in the 2020 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club and, for the first time, will automatically qualify for The 149th Open at Royal St George’s.

The winner also receives full exemptions into The Amateur Championship, U.S. Amateur Championship and any other USGA amateur championship for which he is eligible and is exempt into the final stages of qualifying for the 120th U.S. Open Championship at Winged Foot.

Runner(s)-up will be exempt into the final stages of qualifying for The 149th Open and the 120th U.S. Open Championship.

I enjoy the LAAC hugely as I get the chance to see some high-quality golf and maybe an early glimpse of some stars of the future.

Two years ago, In Santiago, I watched Joaquin Niemann win in Chile and predicted then that he would be a successful professional.

Some rare proof that I do actually have reasonable judgement; he is now on the verge of breaking into the World’s top-50.

But enough about my (not exactly earth-shattering) foresight… It was basically like seeing a young Lionel Messi running rings around his pals in the playground and saying, “that lad might be quite good when he grows up.”

This year we’re in Mayakoba, Mexico for the sixth LAAC and, from what I’ve seen so far, it’s a very nice place to be indeed.

It’s a beautiful area on the Caribbean coast near Cancun, the weather is 27 deg C and there’s a pleasant breeze.

The Greg Norman designed, El Camaleon, course looks as good in the flesh as it always has when I’ve seen it in the Mayakoba Classic and I can confirm the food in the media and players’ restaurant is top drawer.

Over the last six years, the LAAC has taken me to Buenos Aires, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Chile and now Mexico.

A feature of the trips has been the length of the journey which, for me as a relatively inexperienced traveller, always pans out to be an adventurous one.

Yesterday’s was no different.

I felt pretty comfortable that I had everything well organised and I arrived at Aberdeen airport in plenty of time.

At the check-in desk, the friendly chap looked at my passport and then said, “Great; off to Cancun and going via Miami…”

“That’s right,” I replied.

“Great. Will you be travelling on an ESTA or a visa?”

Wait a minute… This must be a mistake I thought – I’m not going to the States.

“Erm, neither,” I tentatively replied – I’m going to Mexico.”

“Yes, but you need to clear U.S. Customs to connect in Miami.”

Oh dear, what a plonker – Cue 45 minutes of frantic internet activity to secure an emergency ESTA…

I found an agency who would process in an hour, which was pretty impressive given it was 2am U.S. Eastern time and, after a lot of email refreshing, stressing and sweating, confirmation came through just in time for me to check in.

The rest of the journey would be a total breeze, or so I thought.

I made the connection at Heathrow with about three minutes to spare after some justified queue barging, brandishing an orange “Express connection” docket.

Safely on the flight to Miami, with correct paperwork, I then thought the dramas were surely over.

Still all good when I arrived at Miami with 1 hour 45 mins until the connection to Cancun.

But when another “Express” orange docket was thrust into my hand as I left the plane, I began to suspect the fun wasn’t over.

Quite a lot of people had those orange dockets and the queue at the “Express Connection” line at immigration was a smidgen short of express.

I made it through in about an hour and then had to stampede over families and old people to get back through security.

I ran through the terminal and got onto the plane seconds before they closed it.

Other than sitting still on the flights, the full remainder of the journey had been spent stressing, queuing, running, queue barging and stressing a little more.

I was, then, incredibly glad to check into the exceptionally luxurious Andaz Hotel at Mayakoba, which is really very nice indeed.

And today, feeling refreshed, I’ve come to the course to watch some of the practice and get a feel for the layout.

First impressions are that, as you would generally see from a Greg Norman track, there will be a premium placed on straight driving.

The course isn’t overly long at 7,000 yards from the backs but anything offline from the tee is dead.

Almost all the fairways are lined by impenetrable mangroves and these are marked as lateral penalty areas.

Basically, leave the mown surfaces and it’s a shot gone.

Other than that, there are further hazards provided by the canals that traverse the course and, often these will demand a strategic approach.

The 17th hole particularly caught my attention.

The tee shot is an extremely daunting one – The drive must carry a water hazard that bites into the fairway and then find a narrow landing area with more water left and penalty area right.

It had me hyperventilating just watching a couple of groups driving off.

The greens and surrounds don’t appear overly severe and I think the scoring could be decent from those able to produce a consistently straight ball.

The wind might be a factor though, particularly on the holes that come closest to the coastline.

There was quite a difference to be noted when you emerged from the mangrove to the shoreline on the attractive short 15th.

If it gets any stronger than the 15mph or so it is today, it could be tricky.

The first groups tee off tomorrow morning at 7.45am and I’m looking forward to the competition starting properly.

There’s a strong field this year with a large number of players who are either attending or have attended U.S. Colleges on the start list.

In fact, no fewer than 56 of the 108 players fall into one of those categories.

It’s an indication of the opportunities this event has afforded to young players in this region.

I remember in 2015 seeing a number of College coaches spectating and clearly scouting the talent.

It was clear then the level of talent was extensive, and this has been confirmed.

One thing’s for sure, the player who ends the week as champion, will have had to post four excellent rounds and will have the chance of a great golfing future ahead of him.

Fergus has decided a new decade is a good time to restart his blog. This week he’s been enjoying golf vicariously.

Fergus Bisset: Enjoying golf vicariously

It’s pretty incredible to me that it’s 2020 already.

The millennium seems a mere blink of an eye ago.

But I guess quite a bit has happened since then: My handicap has come down to one and gone back up to five before resting on three.

I’ve had two new sets of irons and four new drivers.

I’ve changed my putting technique and I’ve started using the AVX rather than the ProV1 – it suits my high spin rate.

Yup, quite a bit has happened and that made me think that the start of this new decade might be an opportune time to re-start writing my weekly blog on all things golf.

I didn’t have a chance to play too much over the festive break and that gave me far too much time to think about the game, and my game in particular.

This over analysis meant I was feeling a little confused when I stood on the first tee at Inverallochy this Wednesday for the first North East Alliance meeting of the year.

It was a pretty decent day for the 8th of January in Aberdeenshire and spirits were generally high after an above par bacon and egg roll in the clubhouse beforehand.

I write “above par” there as that was one of the golfing things I mused over during Christmas.

Sitting with a pal of mine in an Edinburgh pub on December 30th, I suddenly blurted out: Why on earth is something considered to be worse than standard described as, “below par?”

Not being a golfer, he didn’t quite get my drift, but I explained that I’ve spent the last 25 years of my life trying to achieve below par and have rarely succeeded.

He quickly became bored but naturally I persevered.

I think it’s basically because par is a latin word for match or standard and it doesn’t necessarily refer to golf – just below standard…

Anyway, I was still confused when I stood on the first tee at Inverallochy.

I somehow made a rudimentary pass at the ball and moved it, with the wind behind, almost to the greenside on the short par-4 1st.

Then the fun started.

I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do next – something about getting the ball into the hole was about all I could recall.

Five shots later, having gone to and fro four times, I got the hang of it again and tapped in.

Standing on the 2nd tee, dad helpfully told me a story about Scottish golfer George Will and a similar scenario.

Playing in a pro-am, his partner was enduring a spot of hockey on one of the greens when George halted proceedings and walked up to the cup before getting down on his haunches and peering determinedly into the hole.

“What are you doing George?” Sean Kerly asked.

“Just checking the bloody thing is still there,” he replied.

Thanks dad.

Well it wasn’t my day and that takes me on to the title of this blog – enjoying golf vicariously.

Sport is great in that we can take pleasure from the achievement of others.

Fans do it every week when they support their favourite team or favourite player.

But it’s even more enjoyable when you get to witness sporting excellence up close.

On Wednesday, dad and I were playing with our pal Greig Hutcheon, who happens to be a rather decent professional golfer.

He’s played more than 100 times on the European Tour and has been one of the very best players on Scotland’s domestic circuit for a number of years.

Greig had a reasonable round at Inverallochy. Actually, for reasonable, substitute extraordinary.

He started 3,2,3,3 and went out in 29.

I was hoping he could keep it steady to post something in the low 60s but he just kept going lower.

He finished 3,4,3,3,2 to come back in 28 for a ridiculous 57.

My double bogey on the final hole seemed a lot more palatable as Greig rolled home yet another putt to record such a low score.

Normally on the drive home I would have been dreading a return to the Banchory clubhouse to face giving a description of where it all went wrong for me, but on Wednesday I could relax as I knew I would be able to bask in Greig’s glory, describing where it all went right for him!

I might just play vicarious golf from now on, it’s a lot less stressful.

I'm not quite there though, as another golfing alternative is on the horizon.

This week sees the start of the second half of Banchory’s indoor winter league.

In early 2019 at Banchory, members benefited greatly from the construction and installation of a new indoor swing studio featuring an incredible Foresight GCQuad launch monitor.

The new facility really is the dog’s pyjamas and it allows the professionals at Banchory to teach and fit equipment 12 months of the year.

It also allows us members to get out of the cold and play some, incredibly realistic golf during the colder months.

In the first half of the winter league, we played the first nine holes at eight courses, including Carnoustie and Wentworth, and over the next eight weeks we’ll do the back nines.

Playing nett better ball in pairs, it’s absolutely brilliant fun and – much like playing vicariously – it’s (almost) pressure free.

It’s interesting though as that lack of pressure – no handicap on the line, no chance of a lost ball – means, for me at least, that I swing a little differently: more freely and more aggressively.

That results in a shot that I wouldn’t normally see from myself on the actual fairways – namely a draw.

And, as much as the fabulous data the launch monitor provides on angles of dangles and smash-up factors, seeing that shot shape is incredibly useful.

It confirms that tension, as much as anything I think, prevents me from creating the shots I want to on the links proper.

So, being more relaxed in 2020 and hitting the ball right to left is an objective for me.

And if that fails, I’ll just start caddying for Greig and spend the golfing year living vicariously.

Joel Tadman gives his verdict on the recent string of driver test failures on tour and explains why the players almost certainly aren't to blame

In golf, distance isn’t everything. But it isn’t far off.

The promise of extra yards from a new club is what brings us mere mortals a step closer to the tour pros, who themselves know it has been proven that hitting the ball further off the tee results in lower scores.

But in the quest for longer drives, have the manufacturers gone too far on behalf of their stable? The question comes in light of Reuters reporting that the drivers of numerous PGA Tour players failed the CT test at the Safeway Open, making them non-conforming.

It's another potential setback for the manufacturers after Xander Schauffele’s driver failed in the lead up to the start of the Open Championship earlier this year.

But whose fault is this and is it much of a fuss over nothing? You can’t blame the manufacturers for making their drivers as hot as possible. Every driver media launch I’ve been on talks about making faces thinner, more flexible, closer to legal limits etc.

Despite this constant desire to push the rules to the limit, I’d be willing to bet a hefty sum that no manufacturer, deliberately or inadvertently, lets a non-confirming driver leave the factory.

I think part of the problem does come down to what is known as creeping, where a once legal driver can become illegal through regular use. When you think about how hard a tour pro hits a ball and how often they practice, it’s only natural for the properties of the face to change very slightly over time.

Remember, we’re only talking the difference of a few milliseconds here, which is practically nothing. If a driver is one or two milliseconds over the prescribed CT limit of 257, I’d be amazed if this led to an increase in carry distance of more than a yard. So the marginal gains to be had just aren’t worth the bad PR, not that the details are revealed.

Another piece of the puzzle is the CT testing machines used by the various manufacturers, the USGA and R&A. While in theory all the same, differences in calibration can cause different readings, so what a manufacturer deemed to be a legal driver when it left the factory could be deemed illegal when tested at a tour event months later.

I do feel sorry for the players – it is not their fault. They put their faith in the manufacturers to provide them with the best equipment possible while staying within the laws of the game. The subtle variances in manufacturing tolerances means that no head is exactly the same. If their driver is deemed non-conforming, it is not as simple as changing into another ‘like-for-like’ head. It takes a lot of time and testing to fine tune the performance and be comfortable hitting drives under pressure at the highest level.

So while I’m all for greater scrutiny and welcome the greater pool of players being tested each week, I think the relationship between the governing bodies and manufacturers needs to be closer to eke out irregularities in results.

Golf Peach blogs on the beauty of ticking off some of the world's best and most famous golf courses

Blog: Collecting Golf Courses Is A Rich Man's Game

I’m not talking about collecting courses like Donald Trump collects them. Signing mega cheques to buy prime golfing real estate around the world is a very, very rich man’s game.

My version of that game is finding the money, the time and the connections to enjoy the privilege of playing some of the most famous golf courses on the planet.

Earlier this month, the West Course at Wentworth… next month, the Ailsa at Turnberry.

I have only been a golfer for five years but already I’ve teed it up on 29 of Golf Monthly’s top 100 courses in the UK and Ireland.

Look out Magnolia Lane, you are on my radar.

My appetite for the quest was sharpened by playing 18 holes on my home course recently with Jimmie James. If you are not familiar with the story of the 59-year old Texan, try to get familiar. Jimmie set himself the challenge of playing America’s top 100 in the space of twelve months and achieved it last year.

It is a feat that is staggering in its own right. The sheer exclusivity of clubs like Augusta, Cypress Point and Shinnecock Hills make them rare vintages to try to add to any cellar, but it was the way that Jimmie completed his collection that captured my imagination.

This was no conquest, no campaign. Jimmie was on a journey to make friends and share experiences in the true spirit of golf. His invitations to play the elite clubs of the USA came warmly, willingly because the members he met were charmed by the man as much as his mission.

My man and I play a lot of ‘roll up’ golf on vacations to courses on our own worldwide wish-list. We didn’t know who we were going to be sharing Harbour Town or Fancourt Links or West Cliffs with until our allotted partners turned up on the first tee.

Sometimes, we didn’t even share a common language but somehow the conversation always began with a universal ‘where else have you played?’

As participants in this global treasure hunt, we invariably collect shirts, hats or visors from the courses that have left the most indelible marks on us. We wear them proudly like badges of honour and they immediately spark debate and discussion as other golfers take the cue to tell you of their own experience of the same 18 holes carved into a piece of earth many time zones away.

Some pursue the ‘ticking off’ of golf’s most famous venues with a boastful zeal. Their world is one long ‘Top Trumps’ game of beating your best course with an even better one of their own. I don’t ‘do’ that.

Neither do I try to rate or rank the last one against the next. How do you compare a raw links lay-out to a manicured parkland landscape?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With due respect to the doyens of Golf Monthly’s judging panel, Top 100 lists are only a means to start a wonderful argument.

Every round of golf we play is different from the last one. The conditions, the climate, the company, the fickle nature of golfing form and luck can all dictate our pleasure ratings as much as the setting.

Many of us know that feeling of spoiling a £250 round on an A-list golf course by playing like a drain.

Watching the Scottish Open on television recently reminded me of my one round at Renaissance GC. It was blowing a ‘hooley’ of a kind that would have suspended play in a Tour event but not only did we soldier on regardless, I drove the 307-yard 4^th ‘down gale’ (and, yes, 3-putted!). Memories.

Time spent on any golf course is prized quality time doing something you really want to do and are really, really lucky to do. Time on a special golf course is doubly precious.

You’ve got to smell the flowers. You’ve got to take something away with you beyond your score or your selfies. New and lasting sporting soul-mates are the best prize of all. Golf is a passion shared.

At the start of this month, I celebrated my mother’s birthday with my family in St Andrews. Golfers and non-golfers alike, we played the famed Himalayas putting course and then strolled across the Old Course.

I had never realised that it is closed every Sunday because the town gives free access to dog walkers and pram pushers to tread the hallowed ground that will be hosting the world’s best players in two years. Simply unique.

The course that sits at the summit of so many bucket lists, the stately spires of the home of golf, the views across the ‘Chariots of Fire’ beach and the Firth of Forth beyond… all there for everyone to enjoy like a public park.

Last year, I was fortunate to play at Carnoustie a few days after the Open. I can’t think of another pastime in which I could tread so faithfully in such famous footsteps that created such recent sporting history. And in front of the same grandstands too.

Next month, I will be following the world’s leading women players around a track I know well at Woburn.

Collecting golf courses is not the fanatical crusade of a foodie intent on dining at every Michelin-starred restaurant in the country, it is a more complete experience that touches every sense with the same views, the same air, the same damned pot bunkers that Jack and Seve and Tiger climbed into.

Collecting golf courses is about living dreams.

Follow Golf Peach on Instagram @GolfPeach and Twitter @golf_peach

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There is a famous Jack Nicklaus quote that “golf is not and never has been a fair game.” If we wanted to play a sport in regulated conditions, we would pick up a snooker cue or a dart

The USGA Got It Right - Golf Peach On Course Setups

The men in the USGA blazers may all be in need of a good lie down. They are not used to compliments. There seems to have been nothing but praise for the way they set Pebble Beach up for the US Open.

Meanwhile, back at my local club in leafy Berkshire there were rumblings about the addition of a set of blue tees for the Ladies’ Club Championship. The new back pegs added 300 or so yards to the course and caused several senior members to withdraw.

The controversy has not yet reached the pages of Golf Monthly but watch this space.

Non-golfing friends often ask if I get bored hitting a ball round the same 18 holes over and over again. But we know different, don’t we?

A golf course rarely plays exactly the same one day to another. The subtleties of set-up are not confined to the Major Championships. If the greenkeeper that cuts the holes at dawn is in a particularly foul mood, it can add half-a-dozen shots to the standard scratch of any course. That’s why I always smile and wave to the guys on rotary mowers.

Britain is a nation where four seasons in a day is a regular occurrence, so we are conditioned to the prospect of a golf course changing character as we play it. The draw for the first two rounds of next month’s Open Championship at Royal Portrush could be critical to the outcome with featured groups setting out seven hours apart over the first two days.

The R&A will have been monitoring the weather forecasts as keenly as a chef watches a rising souffle on the Great British Bake Off. They are effectively cooking the course to run fast but fair ahead of the arrival of the world’s best players, but they know that if they get the recipe marginally wrong they could make Rory and Rosey look silly. And then they will be hearing about it.

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My other half used to be a member at Royal Liverpool. The famous Hoylake links waited nearly 40 years for a modern Open Championship and when the honour was finally returned to the club in 2006, the rains dried up and left the course looking helplessly white and bereft of protective rough. Tiger Woods prevailed but only used his driver once on one of the world’s great driving tests.

Last summer’s heatwave was a challenge to the men and women that get their hands dirty making our great courses great. Some of the finest tracks in Britain are still recovering from the baking drought. My own course, Bearwood Lakes GC, has improved immeasurably in the last month. For the first time in years, we were forced onto two temporary greens for a few weeks but the course is a picture now.

There is a famous Jack Nicklaus quote that “golf is not and never has been a fair game.” If we wanted to play a sport in regulated conditions, we would pick up a snooker cue or a dart. Everyone’s definition of ‘fair’ is different. We all play by the same rules but at different speeds, with different handicaps, equipment and shot trajectories. And that’s even before a storm moves in mid-round.

Those Ladies’ Champs of ours were played in persistent rain. Because I am one of the longer hitters at the club, I didn’t mind the thought of ducking in and out of umbrella cover in return for some of my fellow-competitors having to find an extra yard or two. We all know what works best for us. Golf is a bit of a selfish game.

I have never had the privilege of teeing it up at Pebble Beach but it looks like the kind of course it would be difficult to mess up. Some may say that the same was true of Chambers Bay and Shinnecock Hills, but preparing a course to test the skills of the powerful icons of the sport over and beyond their week-to-week tour tests is a delicate juggling act that the R&A are next on stage to try to perform. Majors should be different but how different?

Golf is different day-to-day, course-to-course, season-to-season. Practical ‘par’ at our course is maybe 5 or 6 shots different January to July. I have been so fortunate to play Old Head and Sunningdale and Arabella and Harbour Town (and there’s four different sporting disciplines for starters) and I could go on and on.

The variety that golf offers its followers is one of its greatest qualities. Neither the USGA, nor the elite players, should be looking to dilute that variety in search of a sanitised consistency. Look at the Old Course and marvel that it can still stretch the very best nearly 150 years after Tom Morris first played in the Open there. I had a birdie at the 3^rd about a year after taking up the game. Unpredictability is a given in our favourite pastime.

All that we ask when we place that tee in the ground and perch a ball on top is a few hundred yards to capture our imagination for the next 15 minutes. If the fairway is lush and manicured, if the green is flat and true, then all the better. Bring it on. If the USGA or the R&A decide to stick the flag halfway down a ski slope on the back shoulder of a bunker then they should put a windmill and a clown’s face next to it so that we know they are having a laugh.

I got the impression last week that they have stopped doing that.

You can follow Golf Peach on Twitter @golf_peach and Instagram @GolfPeach

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The new Rules of Golf are now in force, here's what blogger Golf Peach has to say...

Blog: Will The New Rules Of Golf Be A Success?

Follow Golf Peach on Twitter @golf_peach and Instagram @GolfPeach

Is there a self-appointed Rules Tsar at your golf club? Some vocal know-it-all that can recite chapter and verse if the ball should come to rest inside a discarded satsuma peel lying butted up to a debatably movable obstruction that is resting against the out of bounds post? Yes, you know exactly who I’m talking about!

Well, as from New Years’ Day, that Lord Chief Justice of the 19^th hole may now be open to challenge. 2019 is the year of the big rule changes. Changes that say you can use your club to build a palatial sand castle in a bunker and decorate it with stones, twigs and other loose impediments if you really want to. And with no penalty.

Or just perhaps I haven’t quite read them right yet.

In the name of modernisation and ready golf, this is the year when all those riveting debates surrounding pitch marks and spike marks, all those educational discussions about burrowing and non-burrowing animals, all those microscopic inspections of wind-blown ball oscillations must come to an end. What will we find to talk about during the 3 minutes that the group ahead are searching for a ball?

Now that it is no longer punishable, perhaps we could explore if there are potential benefits to perfecting a technique that masters the art of hitting the ball twice in the course of one swing. Is it a legal double hit if you flip the ball up into the air with a lob wedge and somehow volley it towards the horizon in the same sweeping loop of the club face? Over to you Bubba!

The only true certainty about new rules in any sport is that people are already at work on the challenge of using them to their advantage.

If there is no charge for your ball hitting your own equipment, what is to stop you from (accidentally) laying your bag down beyond the line of that awkward chip down a green that is protected by water over the back? If an embedded ball in deep rough comes with an entitlement to a free drop, where does it say that you can’t stand on it (accidentally) during the search?

At least the player that fires a shot against the wide trunk of a tree will be comforted to know (during that split second that she sees it rebounding towards her at twice the velocity she originally hit it) that no penalty will be incurred when it smacks her in the belly. That’s progress.

There is a very simple answer to the silly rhetorical questions I’ve asked about scope for ‘interpretation’. Golfers don’t cheat. Or if they do, they are totally ostracised to a degree that no other sport ever condemns its villains. It may be human nature to break the speed limit but there are no penalty points or speed awareness courses at your golf club. Reputations and honour are at stake. Golf cheats don’t get slapped wrists, they are sent straight to the lifers’ wing.

However much we may mumble about that crusty old rules expert in the bar, we all privately admire and take pride in the exact nature of the regulations of the game and the spirit of fair play they enshrine in such meticulous detail. Golf is an unusually well self-policed sport not least because the penalty for any transgressor goes far beyond a DQ. It’s vilification and disgrace.

When the new rules decree that a drop should now be taken from knee height, you can bet that serious golfers will drop from the bottom of the thigh, not the top of the calf. This is not a sport in which you want to leave anyone with any room for making damning moral judgments about you. If you are not sure about something, who do you ask for an opinion? An opponent, that’s who. Imagine that in football!

Such is the level of trust that golf places in its participants, the new 2019 regulations actually incorporate a ruling that legitimises a player’s ‘reasonable judgment’ even if video evidence later reveals that player to have been wrong.

Tiger Woods pushed the spirit of that ruling to its limit with his improvised scoop shot from beneath a bush in his own tournament in Bahamas recently. He was convinced that he had not struck the ball twice and I don’t doubt his version of events. Only a high definition slow motion replay of the stroke revealed his violation. By the law, he was in the clear. Why a man of his status and wealth who was out of contention for a tournament of little standing didn’t subsequently call a penalty on himself in the recorder’s hut, I will never know. It’s not worth the whispers.

I am still learning the new code but I have seen nothing that unduly troubles me and nothing that I think will change my game significantly. Common sense and golf rules don’t always go together but most of these revisions are based on logical, practical thinking.

There is still licence for a local committee to go beyond the rule book and make allowances for winter or drought golf conditions. For instance, it is now possible to avoid the long walk back to the tee for a shot that has bounced out of bounds and take a drop under penalty in the vicinity under a local rule. About time.

I can never understand why even a partially-flooded bunker is not automatically GUR. I know that sand traps are hazards but picking a ball out of a puddle at the base of a bunker then dropping it onto a sodden sandy downslope is a rotten double jeopardy. I wouldn’t mind but even the new knee-high drop penalises the taller golfer unfairly. Damn my long legs for once! 😊

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The American President polarises opinion on just about everything and golf is no different. But has his involvement been good or bad for the game?

Is Donald Trump Good For Golf?

Like it or not, Donald Trump might just be the most famous golfer on the planet.

Forget about the on-course antics of Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy, for many people when they think about golf, the American President springs to mind.

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Trump acquired his first golf course at West Palm Beach in 1999 and his family’s business now own 17 venues around the world including the UK and Ireland’s highest ranked layout, Turnberry.

The company formerly had a regular Tour venue in Trump Doral and at Bedminster in New Jersey they have hosted the 2017 US Women’s Open.

He may have handed the reigns over to his sons but given this level of involvement in the sport and the controversies that surround him, it seems fair to ask whether Trump is helping or hindering the game we love.

Is Donald Trump Good For Golf?

Yes

On the outskirts of Aberdeen, weaving its way through one of Britain’s most dramatic dunescapes is Trump International Golf Links.

Trump International Golf Links Scotland Tour:

https://www.facebook.com/GolfMonthlyMagazine/videos/1752862054734258/

When Trump received pictures of the dunes from a photographer he saw the potential for a spectacular layout and so bought the land.

Controversy followed as he clashed with landowners and the Scottish government but fast-forward to 2018 and that stretch of dunes is celebrating its sixth year as a golf course.

By employing course architect Martin Hawtree, Trump turned a patch of land used by a relatively small group of dog walkers and beach-goers into a must-see sporting destination.

And then of course, there is Turnberry.

The idea of Trump buying and then revamping one of Britain’s most treasured layouts filled many with dread.

They needn’t have worried.

Again his prowess can be seen in his hiring of Martin Ebert.

By allowing this dramatic coastline to further influence both the aesthetic and the test of the course, it is a commonly held belief that Turnberry has been elevated into something truly awe-inspiring.

Throw in the investment made at Doonbeg in Ireland and it is clear there is a lot for golf fans on this side of the Atlantic to be excited about.

Trump might just have been the only person on the planet with the vision and resources to take on these projects. The golfers who have played them cannot fail to be impressed.

No

Historically, golf has found it hard to shrug off the image of a haven for middle-aged misogynistic white men in bad trousers who revel in the status of being members of private clubs.

Golf was, and possibly still is, a marker of your social status.

For a while it looked as if Tiger Woods would open up the sport to the masses – then he drove into a fire hydrant one fateful November night and things changed.

Nowadays we have a crop of young, athletic superstars all capable of show-stopping sporting achievements.

Under their stewardship the modern game seems in good shape.

On the other hand you have the President of the United States.

A man whose comments about women, the disabled and different cultures have shocked and disgusted in equal measure.

To many, this sort of off-the-cuff, ill-informed rhetoric seems to have come straight out of the clubhouse bar.

What’s more, in 2015 Trump told Fortune magazine, “Let golf be elitist. When I say ‘aspire’, that’s a positive word. Let people work hard and aspire to some day be able to play golf. To afford to play it.”

While we all enjoy playing on empty courses at beautifully manicured venues, it is clear this attitude is not in the best interests of the game.

Verdict below

Expand WATCH: Donald Trump Posts Video Of Golf Swing

WATCH: Donald Trump Posts Video Of Golf Swing

The POTUS posted a video of his golf…

Expand The Golf Courses Donald Trump Owns Around The World

The Golf Courses Donald Trump Owns Around The World

Did you know that Donald Trump owns 17…

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Donald Trump Shoots 73 In ‘Windy And Wet’ Conditions

The POTUS's golf game is clearly still sharp

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Top 100 Golf Courses UK and Ireland 2021/22

Look at the new full list of Top…

Verdict

Golf is a sport in transition.

It is competing with other sports and hobbies when spare time is in short supply.

If the game is going to flourish, it needs to look forward towards a modern version of itself and not back towards its elitist past.

However, the truth is that Trump’s influence over the perception of our sport is intangible.

His politics and his rhetoric are divisive but are they stopping people from engaging with golf?

Maybe, maybe not.

What is for sure is that the Trump Organisation owns, invests in and consistently improves an expanding group of venues.

His vision for golf courses and ability to realise his lofty ambitions are enriching the game we love.

On balance, I can’t help but feel golf’s landscape would be poorer without him.

As always, let us know your thoughts on the Golf Monthly social channels

Even as a huge golf (and Tiger) fan, the Woods vs Mickelson match in Las Vegas next month simply doesn't inspire me...

Opinion: Why I Won't Be Buying The Woods Vs Mickelson Match

Tiger Woods takes on Phil Mickelson in their winner-takes-all $9m match next month and I, like most people reading this I'd imagine, will not be purchasing the pay-per-view on TV.

We don't know how much it is going to cost but, quite frankly, any fee is too much.

The fact that the two richest active golfers, and two of the wealthiest players of all time, are lining their pockets even more at the expense of golf fans is wrong.

(Woods' 2016 net worth: $740m, Mickelson's 2016 net worth $375m - Forbes)

To be fair, the match initially sounded fairly interesting.

Two of golf's all-time greats battling it out in a one-on-one game for $9m, and the idea of them staking up their own money added needle and would have given the match some edge.

However, after it was announced that Warner Media had acquired the broadcast rights and it would be pay-per-view, it became fairly clear that this wasn't a grudge match, rather a mere money-making exercise.

The $9m they are playing for, plus extra 'bits' for longest drive and nearest the pins, will be raised from sponsorship and the paying public, and it won't be going to their charities but will instead be going towards their yacht and private jet costs.

Initially I liked the idea because it was sort of bringing back Shell's Wonderful World of Golf, you know, that programme we enjoy occasionally at 11pm on a Tuesday night when nothing else is on?

I'm sure I'd get into the match if I stumbled across it on said Tuesday night whilst looking for something to keep the night alive.

But to watch it live and pay money for it like it matters just won't be happening I'm afraid.

Mickelson and Woods both had horrendous Ryder Cups, winning 0 points from their collective six matches, so the match has lost some of its initial anticipation.

The World Cup of Golf is on that weekend for anybody wanting to watch any proper golf that weekend.

Last time out at Royal Melbourne, Thorbjorn Olesen and Soren Kjeldsen won the trophy for Denmark in what was a brilliant spectacle.

Some may say that the event doesn't matter but I'd tend to disagree with that.

Soren Kjeldsen, a four-time European Tour winner, told us earlier this year that winning the historic Canada Cup with Olesen was the proudest moment of his career.

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Phil Mickelson Calls Le Golf National “Almost Unplayable”

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Wimbledon Park GC Agrees £65m Sale To All England Lawn Tennis Club

Wimbledon Park Golf Club members will each pocket

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How Social Media Reacted To The Woods Vs Mickelson Announcement

Many were unhappy after discovering that the Woods…

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TaylorMade P760 Irons Revealed

Full details of the new TaylorMade P760 irons…

Anyway, back to Mickelson vs Woods - PS. Check the Golf Monthly website during that week for a full preview and reaction of the World Cup of Golf.

Reports came out this week that the match wouldn't be open to fans but would instead see VIPs and sponsors walk the fairways with Mickelson and Woods.

Surely if you're paying for something you'd like to see an atmosphere?

10,000 fans following the match live would have at least added that.

Instead, it will be a quiet affair with little-to-no atmosphere. They've missed a trick there.

As a boxing fan, much of the best action is now on pay-per-view, and that is the nature of the game.

However, these pay-per-view events and the big non PPV ones too, have that extra edge due to the atmosphere created in the arena.

The thousands of fans create noise and fantastic images that make viewers at home feel like they are in the arena.

And likewise with golf, fans at the event enhance the viewer's experience.

Think Ryder Cup and Augusta roars, they send shivers down the spine.

Seeing fairways lined with thousands of people make people watching on TV feel like the event matters, which it always does in that case.

Seeing a handful of VIPs watching the Mickelson vs Woods match will make people watching on TV feel like the event doesn't matter, which is probably accurate.

Will you be purchasing the Woods vs Mickelson match PPV? Let us know on our social media channels

@GolfPeach's latest blog looks at what golf can do to modernise itself after experiencing some funny incidents at clubs recently

Golf Is Great, But It Needs To Modernise

Follow @golf_peach on Twitter and @GolfPeach on Instagram

It is less than five years since I first picked up a golf club so I can’t pretend to be an expert on anything, but there is one area of golf where I may just have more insight than many of you. I can still remember what it’s like to be a beginner.

I recently played 9 holes with ‘Mr GolfPeach’ at Dalmahoy in Edinburgh. We were sent out behind a fourball of young guys enjoying a bit of a laugh after a heavy night on the town. Not only was their limited golfing experience all too evident amid the flurry of flying divots and mulligans, but they also had no notion of the basic etiquette of inviting us to play through them. It was like being stuck behind a convoy of drunken learner drivers on a single-track road.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry (or to whistle a tee-shot over their heads by way of a hint!). For once, I watched these engaging, enthusiastic, athletic golfing novices laughing over fresh-air shots and chunked chips and I tried to see the bigger picture. If their fun day out was enough to whet even one of their sporting appetites sufficiently to give golf a serious try, then this sporting religion of ours would have a new convert.

Nearly everyone in golf is agreed that the sport needs to move with the times if it is to appeal to a broader church. It is probably a comment on the state of the golfing economy that once-exclusive Dalmahoy has now to accommodate ‘pay and play’ customers of questionable golfing pedigree. But then it’s not that long since I didn’t know a bunker from a birdie either. Even Tiger had to start somewhere.

The following day, we had the privilege of teeing it up at Carnoustie exactly two weeks on from the final round of the Open. How understanding and enlightened would I have been if ‘the Dalmahoy Boys’ had reappeared in the match ahead of us there?! If golf really is committed to a total revolution, what would be wrong with opening the Championship course to all-comers for the rest of the school holidays so that thousands of children could swarm across the famous links with plastic clubs and balls and build sand castles in the Spectacles and paddle in the Barry Burn?

Is that what I am advocating? No, no, no. Oh nooooo!

Yes, I think golf needs a good shake in the fresh air like a snug old blanket from time to time. Much as I enjoyed playing the classic links at Luffness recently, I didn’t enjoy being told I couldn’t walk to the loo through an empty dining room because I was a woman. Some of the best players in the world looked stylishly cool in crew-neck golf shirts at Carnoustie and yet they would have been invited to purchase a more suitable garment with a collar before being allowed to play certain British courses. Some cobwebbed corners of golf need a vacuum cleaner taking to them. Outdated barriers to entry send out entirely the wrong message. Yet we shouldn’t continually be pointing out what is wrong with the game but what is already right about the game!

Every time I hear of a new initiative to modernise golf, I think of all the things I have grown to love about the game in these last five years… love about the game just the way it is. As someone who did think it was a stuffy, fusty old preserve of the bored and the boring until quite recently, I actually think golf’s first challenge is to show the outside world what it already has to offer. I don’t believe golf needs reinventing.

The rules of the game are getting a welcome reworking and short form versions of golf are being trialled at professional level. Wheels are in motion to speed up and open up the sport. Even Muirfield is building a ladies’ locker room! But the biggest ally to getting me to graduate from a course of lessons on the safety of the range to the scary loneliness of the first tee was a welcoming lady captain at our club. She was the person that convinced me that everyone messes up on the 1st at some time. The sooner I did it, the sooner I would begin to understand this damned game and all of its veiled glories.

Golf is the most wonderful fellowship. Once you fall beneath its spell, the addiction can only be fed by playing it, discussing it, even dreaming about it. What a magical confession by Georgia Hall that she had stood over putt after putt on the practice green since the age of 9, whispering to herself ‘this for the Open Championship’. Who hasn’t?? And maybe, just maybe, my patience helped those crazy hackers at Dalmahoy to act out the same fantasies (when they finally got the ball onto the green!!).

I’ve got good feelings about the modern governance of the game in the hands of Martin Slumbers, Keith Pelley and co but the best leads to new business are always personal recommendations. If we as golfers can promote rather than protect the game we know and love, the message has a better chance of sticking. It may even mean the good members of Carnoustie (and every other club in the UK) do arrange an annual Open day where the rest of the local community – young and old – are welcomed in and offered an insight into what we get out of this strange old game.

Five years ago, I didn’t have a clue. Now, I’m hooked and whispering like Georgia.

Read GolfPeach's latest blog reflecting on the USPGA, Tiger Woods and why she'd choose Eddie Pepperell over the 14-time major winner

Tiger Woods Vs Eddie Pepperell - Who Wins?

You can follow @golf_peach on Twitter and @GolfPeach and Instagram 

If Tiger Woods and Eddie Pepperell had been the two main contenders for the USPGA title last Sunday, who would I have wanted to win?

Nothing at all against Brooks Koepka, who seems to be one of the ‘good guys’ of the game, but I was really rooting for Tiger at the weekend.

His charisma is alive and well and nobody else is better placed to move golf out of its niche and onto the front pages.

But if life is all about the people you’d most want to share a supper table with, I think I’d rather get a hangover with Eddie.

Pepperell has already had the most famous hangover in golf this year.

Fed up with his form on the eve of the final round of the Open, he and his coach hit the bottle a little harder than they had intended to over dinner.

After shooting 67 in the final round, Eddie was able to laugh about the headache that accompanied him to the 1st tee.

He can laugh about most things.

Tiger hasn’t even smiled since I took up golf.

I am, of course, exaggerating.

The world’s most famous public performers live in a world of exaggeration that drives a lot of them into a competitive shell.

We make value and character judgments about the likes of Tiger Woods, Andy Murray, Usain Bolt and Cristiano Ronaldo as if we know them personally.

If we ever get within ten metres of them, too many of us instinctively turn our camera phones to mirror mode and try to snatch a second of reflected fame for Instagram. It is a bubble of a life.

Eddie’s life has not quite reached that level of invasive scrutiny… yet.

As a result, he is a joy to follow on Twitter with his whimsical insights into life on tour and his escapes back home with partner Jen and faithful hound Gus.

He not only has a rascal sense of self-effacing humour but also a very readable turn of phrase in his thoughtful blogs.

His latest offering is a particularly personal peep into self-service sports psychology…

“The thought of travelling to France all of a sudden felt overwhelming. There wasn’t an ounce of me that felt ready to go and compete. I don’t like terms, but I was concerned I was depressed, or certainly experiencing an episode. So I withdrew right there and then without telling anyone. It took me an hour or so to tell Jen. I didn’t find telling her very easy. I lied to everyone else. I find lying generally despicable and soul destroying. Here’s what’s crazy about being a golfer, and a human being I presume, is that days after feeling such emotions and having darker than ideal thoughts, you can go and achieve something really great.”

Two weeks after pulling out of the French Open, Pepperell pocketed a cheque for £500,000 at the Scottish Open.

Just imagine if Tiger had written the above, though… just imagine the ‘Tiger lied’ headlines, the admission of depression, the analysis on the return of his ‘darker than ideal thoughts’.

Ok, at least half of the pain he has suffered since he was the ‘greatest of all time’ 15 years ago has been self-inflicted but that only adds to the attention on him, only adds to the fascination with him.

A recent controversial biography of Woods referred to his Las Vegas gambling trips with basketball legends Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan when one of them told him that only he could know what it was like ‘being Tiger Woods’.

The rest of us can only guess.

Koepka may have come away from St Louis on Sunday wondering whether he had actually won the USPGA title or not.

All of the attention was still on the player who finished 2nd.

Expand ‘Another Tiger Woods Win Will Knock Every Other Sport Out Of The Headlines’

‘Another Tiger Woods Win Will Knock Every Other Sport Out Of The Headlines’

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Gimmes In Golf: “A Golfer’s Policy On Concessions Is A Window Into Their Soul”

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Why Top 100 Golf Course Rankings Will Never Please All…

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Maybe it is because I am a relative newcomer to golf and had no interest in the sport when Woods was a serial champion that I found myself tuning into the USPGA app on my phone and monitoring his progress over the weekend (Sky Sports, I really missed you!).

I want to see a second coming because I can’t remember the first one.

Not everyone in golf is quite as afflicted by Tigermania.

Eddie Pepperell’s first blog of the year back in January is proving to be quite prophetic…

“Probably the biggest story of 2018 in golf will come down to one man: Tiger Woods. The fact that he is still the biggest draw in the game says so much about our world. Our obsession with image, personality and the past it seems, as opposed to substance amazes me. I say that with respect, i.e. not meaning Tiger can’t substantively impact the game moving forward (I think he can), but if he had of just won in Hawaii the way Dustin Johnson did, then the golfing world would be hyperventilating. It leads me to think that the days of awe-inspiring achievements are behind us. Instead all we are craving is a story, a comeback, controversy or even batshit crazy stuff like Conor McGregor boxing Floyd Mayweather.”

I wasn’t quite hyperventilating when Tiger hit the front with nine holes to play at Carnoustie but I did want him to win.

Interest and appeal are not always functions of success.

The Woods revival is ‘a story’ complete with far more intrigue and suspense than a commendable victory for a role model like Koepka or Francesco Molinari.

Those guys would have to do a lot of Eddie’s ‘batshit crazy stuff’ to compete with Tiger for headlines.

And they wouldn’t want his spotlight anyway.

More to the point, neither would I.

To rephrase my opening question… if Woods and Pepperell were both available to partner me in a mixed foursomes next Sunday, who would I want?

In terms of hits, likes and views on GolfPeach’s social media platforms, there is no contest.

Tiger has the aura factor. It would certainly be an experience.

But I play golf for the fellowship, for the fun, for the sport.

The Eddie Pepperell that I’ve come to know and like through his blogs and tweets sounds like he’s on my banter wavelength.

And the wine would be so much better too.

And if you’re not following Eddie on Twitter, you should be.

Blog extracts from: eddiepepperell.wordpress.com

Who would you rather partner in the foursomes - Eddie Pepperell or Tiger Woods? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels

The reality for golf is that the Mothers of Millennials may be easier to engage than their off-springs

Why Mothers of Millennials Are The Key To Getting Youngsters Into Golf

By GolfPeach - follow her @GolfPeach on Instagram and @golf_peach on Twitter

It’s time we had a conversation about women and golf. And there is no better time for that conversation than the week when the very best women in world golf are here playing on a British course and on British television (live coverage on Sky, highlights on BBC). All of the talent, prowess and style that the fairer sex bring to the grand old game will be showcased on both Sky and BBC during their coverage of the Ricoh Women’s British Open at Royal Lytham this week. But will there be a connection with potential female recruits to golf?

The dream scenario is for a new wave of impressionable millennials to see a bit of themselves in Charley Hull or Georgia Hall and to nag their parents into taking them down to the local pay-and-play in the hope that they too can drive the ball 250 yards by the end of the summer holidays. It is probably no more than a dream. Role models for millennials tend to have a best-selling album or a new movie out. The reality for golf is that the Mothers of Millennials may be easier to engage than their off-springs. And that is precisely the conversation that I want to have.

Much as I may now wish that I had found golf earlier in life, the truth is that I probably wasn’t ‘ready’ for golf until my children were sixth formers, until my business became established and until my yen for working up a sweat in the gym had started to fade. Only then did I have the combination of more hours in ‘my’ day and more money in ‘my’ account to set alongside a continuing appetite for healthy exercise and social interaction. That is the formula that unlocked the door to golf for me. That is why golfing life can still begin at 40.

This ‘conversation’ began on the 3^rd tee of my local course with our club’s Managing Director just the other day. “If you were given a pot of money to target new women members, would you reach out to millennials?” I asked Carl Rutherford of Bearwood Lakes GC. “No, the mothers of millennials would be a more productive target audience for us. Not only are they likely to have more time and disposable income, but they are also the key to introducing their children to the sport of golf.” Carl was looking to double his investment… new moneyed members now with youthful converts in the future. As always, the chicken comes before the egg.

In my case, neither of my parents were golfers, so there was no old equipment lying around the house, no Sunday lunches down at the club, no British Open on the telly, nothing in my DNA to point me in the direction of the range. Much as I would love to see the R and A’s ‘Women in Golf’ charter trigger a natural upsurge of interest among the younger generation, I think the entry points into our sport are few and far between. Golf requires more time and space than most schools can allocate on the sports curriculum, the nearest course is usually a car ride away, you do need some clubs. Family ties and parental support are the most common catalysts.

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‘Another Tiger Woods Win Will Knock Every Other Sport Out Of The Headlines’

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Expand Gimmes In Golf: “A Golfer’s Policy On Concessions Is A Window Into Their Soul”

Gimmes In Golf: “A Golfer’s Policy On Concessions Is A Window Into Their Soul”

Have a read of @GolfPeach's latest GM blog

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Why Top 100 Golf Course Rankings Will Never Please All…

@GolfPeach has her say on the controversial Top…

The R and A’s 2018 report ‘Women, Girls and Family Participation in Golf’ refers to a survey of 1,000 female golfers that found ‘9 of every 10 golfers surveyed have another member of their household participating’. It also quotes industry expert Rachael as saying, “the role of the parent is more crucial in golf than a number of other sports because golf clubs don’t tend to be in the city centre or urban outskirts, so you are reliant on your parents taking you there … also it’s about capturing the family not just for 20 minutes or mum or dad dropping them off in the car park, it’s capturing them and keeping them there.” Maybe the mothers of millennials are the most direct route to the sporting hearts of the millennials themselves.

I am just trying to be realistic. This is the blog of a privileged person and I really don’t want golf to be a privileged preserve. It is not just my maternal instincts that make me glow when I see a teenage girl bashing balls on our range under the supervision of a proud parent. There is nothing I enjoy more than teeing it up alongside my own 20-something year-old sons, but they are the first to admit that it is only my love for golf that has removed their barriers to the sport.

Most of the golf that my husband and I play is still with our own peer group. The health benefits of the game are far more relevant to a generation whose knees and lungs are tiring of the treadmill or even the tennis court. While the calorie burn may ease, the competition doesn’t. I was fortunate/crazy enough to climb some of Europe’s most famous mountains ‘before golf’ and little can compare to the sense of achievement from hauling yourself up to the summit of the Eiger. Yet, I’ve let out more shrieks of delight on sloping greens than I ever did on the slopes of the Alps. Golf brings out the Celtic competitor in me as readily as mountaineering ever did. Ask husband!

We can afford to be competitive. We can afford the family’s annual subscriptions, we can afford golfing holidays, we can even treat ourselves to the £200 green fee at Carnoustie next week in the same way that we might spoil ourselves to a special anniversary meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Golf needs to be more affordable and more accessible if it is to spread its net beyond the circle with whom we share its social trappings and like-minded fellowship. I know and accept that. This blog is not pretending to be the answer, but it may point towards a small part of it.

Our twenty five year old daughter is the one member of our family that doesn’t golf. She is a health and fitness blogger who runs marathons and is a qualified personal trainer. Hannah does not have the gaps in her diary, the working capital in her account or the vaguest motive to swap her lycra for a golf skort. I get that completely… not least because neither did I at her age. I’m not saying that she will follow in our footsteps one day but she has a better chance than I did because at least golf is part of her parents’ conversation with her. She has already given me exercises to improve my core strength… for golf.

If Hannah happened to go to Lytham next week she would soon connect with other young sportswomen striving to be the fittest and strongest they can possibly be in order to be the best they can possibly be. Golf has parallels with many other areas of human endeavour but it needs a bit of a makeover in order to reach out beyond its traditional catchment. The game’s future must be different from its past. The presence of young, confident, engaging television presenters like Sarah Stirk, Anna Whiteley, Eilidh Barbour, Di Dougherty and Henni Goya on network golf coverage is already evidence of wheels in motion.

Just don’t forget the present. Don’t get aspirational at the expense of what is achievable right now. I was not a golfer four years ago. In that time, I have contributed handsomely to the economy of the game(!) and I’d like to think that the passion and enthusiasm that created my GolfPeach persona on Instagram has helped rub off on others. I’ve certainly been welcomed into the sport’s growing social media community. Several of my non-golfing friends are suddenly tempted when they see Facebook albums of me striding along sun-baked seaside fairways. We all have a story to tell, a story that takes another twist and turn each time you walk to the 1^st tee. I’m not shy at spreading the word, at trying to awaken the sleeping golfer inside so many mid-life people looking for the same challenge and pleasure I have found in equal measure.

If golf really does want to bring more young women through its hallowed portals in the future, it may pay to first woo their mothers who have the will and the wherewithal to try it in the present. The Mothers of Millennials are golf ready.

Those on the outside often question our sanity, but it is safe to say that nothing can come close to the grand old game. They don’t know what they are missing out on...

Wayne Riley: An Ode To The Game Of Golf

Are we all stark raving mad? We spend fortunes of coin on clubs, clothes and other items just to hit a little white ball around a field in as few shots as possible.

We stand in front of the mirror checking out our swing position and we putt on the carpet while we’re watching Midsomer Murders – by the way, I wouldn’t fancy living there, it seems a particularly dangerous place!

We all think we are good at it and know a lot about it, when perhaps we don’t.

What is there to know, anyway?

That Jordan Spieth putts so well he’s like an alien; that Rory McIlroy hits it so far it makes you nauseous with envy.

By the way, I’ve got the shanks if you’re interested, and that’s genuinely true.

The amazing thing is that we all keep coming back for another crack.

“How’s my grip, Bill?” “Is my stance too shut, Cindy?” “Am I overswinging, Trevor?”

At the end of the day, no one really gives a rat’s a**e!

It’s my bat and ball and it’s a game about me, myself and I. That’s why we love it.

I have met so many people who have taken up the game late in life and they all regret not having started much earlier.

So if anyone you know hasn’t started playing yet, encourage them to come into the asylum!

They are most welcome and there’s plenty of room.

Speaking of meeting people, just think about how many friends you have made along the fairways of life. It’s astonishing, isn’t it?

Golf is my life, and the sheer number and diversity of people I’ve met is mind-blowing, from rock stars and pilots to politicians and doctors.

One of the things that makes our sport so great is the golf ball doesn’t know who is hitting it.

And what about the walks around the gardens of the world?

Beautiful pot bunkers, grass that looks like it’s been bikini waxed and clubhouses that look like Graceland.

It’s all out there. And while we’re on the subject of conditioning and presentation, I want to applaud greenkeepers – they are worth their weight in gold.

They are the unsung heroes of our game, so make sure you show your thanks next time you run into a greenkeeper filling a divot after you’ve developed a case of the duffs from seemingly nowhere.

What about the age your can play from and to?

Tiger Woods was two years old when he was on the stage with Bob Hope all those years ago, and you often hear stories of pensioners beating their handicaps.

It’s terrific.

Handicapping brings us all back together.

Husbands can play with their wives and their children make the game cool. Why?

Because this game is cool, and don’t you forget it.

It’s the greatest game of all. It’s not like tennis, football, rugby and all those other sports where the ball actually moves, but it’s arguably harder to master than all of those. That says quite a lot in my mind.

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Wayne Riley: My Favourite UK Courses

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Wayne Riley: Are We Finally Moving On From Tiger?

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Wayne Riley Q&A: Who’s Who Out On Tour

I’m happy to tell you which players are…

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Wayne Riley: Is There Too Much Money In Golf?

With another season coming to an end, players…

The ball sits still and it doesn’t have ears, so why do we speak to it?

“Bite”, “cut”, “hook”, “oh, don’t go in the hazard” – what’s it all about? It’s all part of the fun.

As is the occasional golfer wearing dodgy clothing.

Have you ever walked into the clubhouse bar after your round and wondered what the strange bloke in the corner is looking at?

It’s you, because you look like a Liquorice Allsort!

But let’s face it, it doesn’t matter what you look like or how good you are.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of a drive out the middle, an iron shot that lands next to the flag or a putt that finds the bottom of the cookie jar from 30 feet.

Disappointment far outweighs adulation in golf, so next time you come off the course, make sure you celebrate that birdie you made or that impossible up-and-down, instead of chewing your other half’s ear off about how you’re in inexorable decline!

I still love golf as much as ever, but I’d say I love it in a slightly different way these days.

I’ve played a lot of golf over the past eight weeks or so, and in spite of the shanks, it’s been brilliant.

It’s different for me now, because my livelihood isn’t tied to how I play.

If I hit a bad shot, I’m not stewing over it for ages; if I have a bad round, I don’t go to the range for two hours to try and fix whatever’s wrong.

I can fully appreciate it for what it is these days.

Yes, we are golf tragics, and we love it!

We are proud of our game, even if it isn’t fair sometimes.

But life wasn’t meant to be fair, was it?

Wayne Riley is a former member of the European Tour and two-time winner who is part of the Sky Sports Golf Team. He writes exclusively for Golf Monthly.

Professional golf is so entertaining at the moment, but I'd like to see the authorities experiment with different course set-ups to ensure the game doesn't become too one-dimensional

Lee Westwood Column: On Tiger, Rory, Course Set-ups And More

Professional golf is in a fascinating place at the moment.

Would I say it’s as strong as it’s ever been? Well, there’s certainly a great spread across the board.

You have lots of guys from my era playing well – the likes of Phil Mickelson and Henrik Stenson – Tiger is obviously back in the mix and there are lots of quality youngsters on the scene.

It’s very competitive and picking obvious winners is much harder nowadays.

Take The Masters, for example. In the past, you could probably look at the field list and select 25 players who you thought had a chance to win.

Now that number is probably more like 50.

Even though Tiger Woods winning was unlikely, he was in that group of 50.

It’s been really interesting monitoring his comeback and I think he’s been motivated to challenge himself against the young players, most of whom idolised him growing up.

Many of these guys haven’t seen him anywhere near his peak in the flesh and I think he’s keen to come out and show them just how good he is.

He loves the game so much and he’s so driven to compete.

It’s certainly been a stronger comeback than his previous attempts and he’s actually got back into it quicker than I thought he would.

People were panicking about his short game not so long ago but now it looks fantastic.

At Bay Hill, he didn’t exactly hit it straight, but he still contended – he found a way to get the ball in the hole and that’s exactly what he used to do.

He’s never been a fairway machine. If he stays fit and healthy, I see him winning tournaments again.

I don’t know if he’ll win another Major – there are just far too many variables. The key thing is that he’s fit enough to play again.

If everyone plays their best golf for a season, I think Rory McIlroy comes out on top in the rankings.

It’s certainly close, and I think there are maybe six players who are at a similar level: Rory, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, and then Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson when they are on and firing.

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They are all great players and excellent putters – you can’t be a bad putter and be at the top of the world rankings.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the distance pros are hitting it recently, but there are so many factors involved – driver and ball technology are better, players are stronger, work more on their swing and crucially know more about the results good technique can deliver, data analysis is more prevalent, course set up is different with fairways cut shorter resulting in more roll, and there are more factors still.

For me, courses play at their most difficult when greens are really firm and the rough is unpredictable – somewhere like Sun City, which has kikuyu grass, where sometimes the ball sits up, sometimes it sits right down, sometimes it flies when you don’t think it’s going to and other times it comes out dead.

I think course designers and people who set courses up need to use their imagination a little more, rather than positioning another set of tees further back.

Venues like Valderrama, Hong Kong GC and TPC River Highlands (host of the Travelers Championship) are all less than 7,000 yards and scoring is always tough.

Erin Hills was 7,800 yards, but it had 60-yard-wide fairways in places and Brooks Koepka shot 16-under!

As for my year thus far, I’ve seen good signs at times. I haven’t played many tournaments, but I shot a 62 in Malaysia and finished 11th there, and then led the following week in Australia after two days.

I’m not playing badly – I just need to go on a run of tournaments and find something to light the fire.

The way the European Tour schedule has fallen, and the fact I’m not in the top 50 so not automatically in all the Majors and WGCs, means I haven’t played much yet this year, but I look forward to getting going again very soon.

I think the golf season is pretty long and people need a break at times, players and fans alike.

All other sports have time off, but golf is virtually 12 months of the year.

I’m 45 years old now and I can’t play 30-plus tournaments a year.

The PGA Tour will finish in August in 2019, so I think the European Tour could stage some key events later in the year and attract marquee names.

But I think we almost need to be assertive and set our own schedule, not to fit in with anyone else – to do what’s right for the European Tour.

Lee is sponsored by Audemars Piguet, Bioflow, Close House, Druh Belts, Flannels, ISPS Handa, Nike, Ping, Titleist, UPS and Your Golf Travel

The double US Open champion is up to fourth in the world, is he here to stay?

Is Brooks Koepka Here To Stay?

Brooks Koepka powered home to win his second US Open in a row and is now up to a career-high fourth in the world.

The American is now higher ranked than the likes of Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Jason Day and Rickie Fowler.

Koepka finished off the tournament, just like last year, sublimely well.

His putting was excellent, and playing partner and world number one Dustin Johnson, who he is good friends with, simply couldn't match him.

Should we now be mentioning him as one of the world's truly elite players? Or was his US Open defence as good as it's going to get?

Will he become world number one and suddenly begin to pick up major after major? Perhaps not, but he looks like a player who will be disappointed with single-win seasons for the foreseeable future.

It's easy to forget that he has missed a large proportion of the season with a wrist injury and the US Open was just his fifth event back.

It was also just his third PGA Tour win, but he now has 10 wins worldwide. I think more wins will start to come thick and fast in the States.

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Koepka plyed his trade in Europe for the best part of four years after turning pro in 2012.

He came through the Challenge and European Tours, where he won five times and was named the 2014 European Tour Rookie of the Year, before making it home to become a star of the PGA Tour.

That time in Europe, playing across the continent as well as South Africa, Asia and Australia, has moulded him into a versatile player with the ability to win on different kinds of courses, as we've seen with just how contrasting the conditions were in his two US Open victories.

In his six years as a pro, he has won in Spain, Italy, Turkey, Japan, Scotland and the USA.

Those years will stand him in good stead for the next phase of his career where he will be looking to pick up more majors.

Koepka looks to have no weaknesses and when he gets the putter on song, as we've seen at the last two US Opens, he is very, very difficult to beat.

He made his Ryder Cup debut in 2016 at Hazeltine where he won three of his four games, including a 5&4 victory over Danny Willett in the singles.

He also played in the 2017 Presidents Cup and is top of the USA Ryder Cup points list for September's match at Le Golf National. He will be one of the USA's key players in Paris.

The 28-year-old said in his winning press conference that "I always feel like I’m overlooked", and when you look at his career record so far, he might just be right.

Consider the attention that Rickie Fowler gets, who is a year older than Koepka and is yet to win a major, lower down in the world rankings and has two fewer professional wins.

Is Brooks Koepka here to stay? I'd say yes.

Brooks Koepka's career wins:

2012 Challenge de Catalunya - Challenge Tour

2013 Montecchia Golf Open - Challenge Tour

2013 Challenge de Espana - Challenge Tour

2013 Scottish Hydro Challenge - Challenge Tour

2014 Turkish Airlines Open - European Tour

2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open - PGA Tour

2016 Dunlop Phoenix Tournament - Japan Tour

2017 US Open - 1st major

2017 Dunlop Phoenix Tournament - Japan Tour

2018 US Open - 2nd major

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Michael Weston takes a trip to Derbyshire to visit Kedleston Park, a beautiful parkland course gearing up to host Regional Qualifying for The Open 2018

Kedleston Park Set For 2018 Open Qualifying

Long before the world’s best golfers lock horns on the North Sea coast in July, the scramble to tee it up in golf’s oldest Major will have begun.

By the time we tune in for the opening day of the 147th Open Championship at Carnoustie on July 19, many hearts will have been broken, but one or two dreams will have been fulfilled, too, as a final field of 156 golfers battle it out for the Claret Jug.

At Kedleston Park Golf Club, the only date that matters is June 25, for this is when Derbyshire’s number one golf course will host Regional Qualifying for The Open for the very first time.

It comes on the back of some significant improvements and upgrades to the James Braid design, overseen by renowned course architect, Tom Mackenzie.

The aim was to improve the visual appeal of the holes, and to enhance the layout’s strategic and tactical demands, both of which have been achieved in some style.

Understandably the club is very proud to have been recognised for its improvements. “This announcement caps off one of the finest 12 months in our club’s history,” said Club Chairman, Ian Neal, after the club was confirmed as a host venue for Regional Qualifying.

“We are all very excited at the prospect, and look forward to welcoming some of the best amateurs and professionals in the country to our newly upgraded course in June 2018.”

However, Kedleston’s head professional will not be one of those players. “I’ll be here to help ensure it all runs smoothly,” says Ian Walley with a smile. “Maybe I’ll have a go next year when I’m a bit more relaxed and able to focus more on playing.”

It’s a shame because even a 16-handicapper can recognise his ability. Walley reels off half a dozen birdies and rarely finds himself in trouble as he treats his playing guests to a bit of an exhibition.

This is not to suggest Kedleston - which will also host the English Boys' U16 Open Amateur Stroke Play (McGregor Trophy) in July - is a walk in the park. However, that is what you get here, a beautiful stroll within the grounds of the magnificent Kedleston Hall, a grand 18th century stately home just a few miles northwest of Derby city centre.

The par-5 opener will give Open hopefuls the chance to get off to the perfects start, although the course bites back on the 2nd, a long par 4 with two bunkers well placed down the fairway for long hitters.

This is very much the story of the course: where there are chances to make gains, a stern test usually follows. The par-3 7th is one of the feature holes, playing over a lake and offering a fantastic view of Kedleston Hall from the green.

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Arguably the most picturesque hole comes at the 10th. Every club would love to be able to boast a hole reminiscent of one at Augusta, but this downhill par-4 measuring 375 yards would not be out of place in Amen Corner with it’s green well protected by two bunkers and a lake, and framed with rhododendrons.

It’s Carnoustie that will be on the minds of those who tee it up here in June, but hundreds of golfers across the country will be fighting to make it through to one of four Final Qualifying events. It’s a long, hard journey, but one worth the effort.

In 2014, Merseyside factory worker John Singleton progressed through Regional and Final Qualifying to achieve a lifetime ambition to play in The Open at Royal Liverpool.

Those starting their quest at Kedleston Park, looking to follow a similar path, would to well to persuade Walley to relinquish his duties on June 25 for a spot of caddying.

Instagrammer @GolfPeach has her say on the famous TPC Sawgrass' Stadium course and golfers' fears of water hazards

@GolfPeach: TPC Sawgrass And Golfers' Fear Of Water

Follow @GolfPeach on Instagram

The Players Championship looms and so does...DANGER! WATER!!

There are few things more satisfying for a club golfer than to hit a shot just like a pro. It may be 1 of 101 on a particularly bad day but when a bunker shot gently comes to rest right next to the hole or a soaring approach shot checks and stops pin-high, it is difficult to resist the temptation to aim a wave at an imaginary gallery.

That is why it is nearly as gratifying to see a pro mess up!

Next week at Sawgrass, some of the finest golfers on the planet will pitch their balls into the lake surrounding the famous island 17^th green. The hole measures just 135 yards and in the Florida spring sunshine most of the players will have no more than a wedge in their talented hands. But even as they walk to the tee and acknowledge the applause, they know the adoring fans have gathered in that spot like circling vultures. They have come to see reputations tumble into a watery grave.

Hitting a ball into a water hazard seems so final. Not only will you never see it again but the sad splash as it disappears sends ripples across the surface that can rock the hull of an entire round. At Sawgrass, the crestfallen victims face a walk of shame to a neighbouring drop zone where the same stretch of ‘H2O’ must be renegotiated with much the same club. Bob Tway, a Major champion in his day, took five attempts to clear the water en route to a 12 in 2005. Good job he got his balls for free.

The very mention of ‘water’ on a golf course comes complete with the sinister sound of the eerie strings that precede the scariest moment in a horror movie. “Have you played Bearwood Lakes before?” the pretty young heroine asks innocently. “Not Bearwood Laaaakes!” replies her grizzled old uncle in a haunted voice. “You do know it’s got….” – cue Psycho shower scene music – “…. water!”

Fortunately, as a Bearwood Lakes member myself, I am now used to taking on said water on a regular basis. It doesn’t frighten me! But that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally reach for an old, bruised ball from my bag before trying to clear it. And when I do clear it, a sense of relief is my overriding reaction before I look further to see exactly where on terra firma my ball has gone. Water hazards are just a little bit more intimidating than any other obstacles we encounter on a golf course.

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The story goes that it was the wife of the man that designed the Stadium Course at Sawgrass who insisted on turning the 17^th green into an island. Pete Dye originally envisaged a less demanding target but when a crater accidentally appeared during the construction of the hole, Alice Dye (also a renowned course architect) persuaded him to completely encircle the putting surface with water except for a narrow walkway for access. Another time of the month and she might have suggested the players swim across!

And so a golfing landmark was born. It is estimated that an annual swarm of well over 100,000 balls disappears into the surrounding lake. Divers are despatched four times a year to collect them.

In 2007, no fewer than 50 ‘professional’ tee shots ‘got wet’ during a single breezy round of the Players’ Championship. Even with all of the advanced club technology, scientific swing analysis and sports psychology that these athletic millionaires have at their disposal, they are sufficiently freaked by a short stretch of calm water to follow the rest of us down into Davy Jones’ locker. Karma.

I have not yet had the pleasure of a visit to Sawgrass but I have played the par 3 17^th on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estate, home of the World Championship tournament in Dubai. It is similar in design to Alice Dye’s wicked invention. You cannot see much other than water and sand from the tee and the penalties for going long are just as monstrously moist as being short. And…

… well, I hit an arcing thing of beauty off the sweet spot of my rescue club up onto the slightly raised green and held the putting surface. Did I par the hole? Did I play the rest of the course well? I don’t remember and I don’t care! I got the ball on to an island green on a top tournament course at my first attempt… and that’s more than some of the finest golfers in the world will manage next week!

Golf Monthly's Michael Weston travels to Saudi Arabia for the Grand Opening of new European Tour venue, Royal Greens Golf & Country Club

Golf Benefits From Vision 2030 In Saudi Arabia

In March, the European Tour confirmed it would be taking its first steps into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a new tournament scheduled for 2019. It was a relatively low-key announcement with most players and fans too preoccupied with Augusta to take much notice of what would be happening in ten months’ time. Besides, this year the European Tour will visit 30 countries - so what’s the significance of Saudi Arabia joining the ‘Desert Swing’?

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Three years ago, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, launched Vision 2030, an economic programme that envisages a modernised country, one not dependent on oil revenue. Key to this is the $100bn invested into King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC, pronounced "cake"), a new desert megacity. Royal Greens Golf & Country Club is one of its initial developments designed to increase national participation in sport and promote a healthy lifestyle.

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The golf bug has bitten Fahd Al Rasheed, Group CEO and MD, KAEC. “This is an opportunity to start a new sport in a country that has very little experience in golf,” he says. “I’m taking it up myself and I’m pretty bad at it. When you do what I do you have to be an optimist and I am an optimist about my game. I’ll get really good.” Conquering golf should be a walk in the park for the person charged with leading this extraordinary project. You’d back him to succeed. No question.

Keith Pelley, European Tour CEO, is impressed with what he’s seen at Royal Greens, but is also fully appreciative of the bigger picture. “Firstly, the course is absolutely spectacular,” Pelley says. “It’s in immaculate shape and the players will enjoy it. We really pride ourselves at the European Tour of leading the world in transformation of the game and to play a small role in the brilliant vision which is 2030, which is transforming this country, that is why we’re most honoured.”

Pelley stripes his drive down the 1st as Saturday’s Grand Opening gets underway. It’s a peach of a drive, quite fitting for the occasion. The European Tour supremo is right, too. The course is spectacular.

A stroll through the grandest of clubhouses whets the appetite. If it’s possible for global stars of the game to still be wowed by luxury, they will be here. Ernie Els, who’s also here to celebrate the opening, says: “The course is great, it really is. It reminds me a little of the Els Club in Dubai, with its bunkering. It’s conditioning is fantastic. You’ve got two holes near the ocean, too, it’s beautiful.”

One of those is the signature 16th, an intimidating, yet beautiful par-3 with the clear blue waters of the Red Sea to the left. Put one on the beach here and you’ll be fishing your ball away from the crabs. A short par-4 follows, before closing with a dramatic par-5 that features a large lake to the left of a narrow green. It will set up a wonderful finale to the tournament.

Perhaps the best feedback for Fahd Al Rasheed comes from another invitee, Andrew ‘Beef’ Johnston. “I’m definitely going to book an extra day when I’m here next to do some fishing,” he says, after enjoying a trip up the coast. “There are over 60 different species of shark here. With the weather and the boating experience, it’s amazing.”

It’s about more than the golf here and Beef’s words will be music to the ears of the KAEC hierarchy. Bouchaib El Jadiani, PGA Golf Professional at Dirab Golf & Country Club, tells me he’s seen more progression and change in Saudi Arabia in the last 12 months than he has in the previous 20 years. There was further evidence of this at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah where some of the biggest names in WWE were arriving  for the ‘Greatest Royal Rumble’. Not long ago it would have been inconceivable to hold an event of this nature in Saudi Arabia. That it didn’t pass without controversy proves there are still sensitive boundaries to be respected and that modernisation has its limits, for now at least.

Saudi Arabia’s golf venture is one to celebrate and it will be a joy to watch the event unfold next January. Let’s hope it has a lasting impact and plays its part, however small, in promoting a healthy and active lifestyle.

The term ‘success’ is a multi-faceted one when it comes to sport, and while you can enjoy a terrific career without Major glory, golf’s big four events ultimately define a player’s legacy

Dan Walker Column: What Is Success?

When it comes to sport what counts as success? Do you have to be a serial winner? What about all the golfers who earn a comfortable living but never have a tournament win to their name? Is that success? What about the one-off, one-time, never-seen-again-apart-from-an-exemption Major winners who managed to have one single weekend to remember?

I was having a conversation about this a few weeks ago when short-track speed skater Elise Christie was left in tears at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Christie is a multiple World and European Champion but has failed to pick up a medal of any colour at various Olympic Games despite being the overwhelming favourite. I was reading a newspaper the day after the games finished and the gist of the article was that she was a failure.

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A few days before that I’d been watching a tearful Christie weeping after another disqualification. It wasn’t long before the British skater was sat in a press conference arguing that her legacy wasn’t defined by her inability to win an Olympic medal. So, success of failure?

Earlier this year I watched a Bubba Watson press conference after he picked up his tenth PGA Tour win. He was asked if a player of his obvious ability should have won more in his career? “You have to remember… my goal was very simple: make the PGA Tour. When you get to the Tour, you want to win,” he said. “Double-digit wins? I am thrilled. Nobody thought Bubba Watson from Bagdad, Florida, could ever get to ten wins. Let’s be honest. No lessons. Head case. Hooking the ball. Slicing the ball. Can’t putt. Somehow we’re here.” He has a point.

His argument is certainly helped by the two Green Jackets. Some golfers can’t point at Major wins but can direct us towards career earnings. Lee Westwood has often been criticised for not picking up one of golf’s big ones, but he’s earned more than £40,000,000. Does that count as a successful career?

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What about recognition? I live not too far away from Nick Matthew. You could probably walk past Nick in the street and not look at him twice, but he is arguably one of the UK’s most successful sportsmen. Nick is a three-time squash world champion and three-time Commonwealth Gold Medallist. Does the fact that he’s not a household name (largely because squash has been strangely absent from the Olympics) detract from his achievements?

Not everyone reaches the top of their sport. There was an infamous moment at the World Cup in Brazil in 2014 when Thierry Henry, Clarence Seedorf and Robbie Savage were all sharing a studio. At the start of the show their trophies appeared on the screen. Henry: one Ligue 1, two Premier Leagues, three FA Cups, two La Ligas, one Champions League, one European Championship and one World Cup. Seedorf: one Dutch Cup, one Eredivisie, one La Liga, one Serie A, one Coppa Italia and four Champions Leagues. Savage: one League Cup.

There was great laughter when that was put on screen and Robbie – who took it well – received an almighty hammering on social media. In his defence, he played for over a decade in the Premier League and one could easily argue that his career was a huge success.

Personally, when measuring success, weight has to come into it. In golf, like tennis, the Majors carry so much more timber than the others. Tim Henman was wonderful to watch but never reached the final of a Grand Slam.

A few years ago I interviewed a number of pro golfers about their sporting heroes and it was the name of Roger Federer that overwhelmingly came out on top. Some of them mentioned his style of play, some the fact he was always smiling and others his grace, but all of them mentioned the fact he produces his best on the biggest stage. Federer has 20 Grand Slam titles and shows little sign of stopping.

There are many ways of judging success, and I’d argue that everyone I’ve mentioned above is successful. But if you drill down into the likes of Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson and the rest of the world’s best, they all know that once the irons have been permanently left in the garage, they will be judged against the 18 Major titles of Jack Nicklaus and the 14 of Tiger Woods.

Golf is about the big ones.

You can see Dan on BBC Breakfast Mon-Wed or every Saturday on Football Focus. You may also find him on a golf course... probably missing a four-footer

Tiger Woods has generated a tremendous amount of excitement over the last few weeks and rightly so. If he keeps going like this, Jack Nicklaus' record could be under threat...

Wayne Riley: 'Tiger Can Still Beat Jack's Record'

Well, the topic on everyone’s lips is Tiger Woods and whether he’s back. Let me tell you this, folks, the answer is absolutely yes in my book.

How could it not be yes?

It’s been an incredible couple of months. Let’s not forget that in September at the Presidents Cup, he still didn’t know if he’d be able to play professional golf again.

What’s been so impressive is the fact that he’s only played six professional events since then.

A lot of wise and knowledgeable analysts said before the start of the season that an injury-free year, with a sniff of victory in perhaps one tournament, would be considered a genuine success. Well, he’s already finished second and it seems clear that his back isn’t affecting him.

He looks in amazing shape physically, and I’ve watched him up close and personal thrash at balls from deep rough with no signs of pain. I have to say, though, that I don’t like the way he’s going at some shots – he simply doesn’t need to do it and this would be my only note of caution.

In his previous comebacks, you always sensed he wasn’t completely comfortable swinging at full tilt and was always conscious that one bad swing could send him back to the operating table.

Spinal fusion surgery seems to have allayed those fears and he’s swinging so well, not to mention with incredible speed.

I was at Riviera and keeping a close eye on him, and even though he missed the cut there, his swing was sensational. He’s keeping his height so well. He obviously no longer has a coach after he parted ways with Chris Como, but I’ve heard Notah Begay, who went to college with Tiger, is involved in some capacity. Whatever is going on, it’s clearly working.

He’s a 42-year-old man and at the Valspar Championship he recorded the fastest clubhead speed on the PGA Tour this season. His ball speed is also into the 180-miles-per-hour range, which is staggeringly fast.

Many believed his intensive workout schedule helped bring about his physical downfall. It’s interesting to note now that it’s undoubtedly helping him to be one of the longest hitters on tour again.

What’s so encouraging is that he’s showed signs – not necessarily at the same time, but signs nonetheless – that every area of his game is sharp.

At the Valspar Championship, his fairways-hit percentage was impressive after spells of inauspicious driving in his first couple of events this year. His iron play has looked imperious at times and his short game is genuinely world-class once more.

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It wasn’t long ago that he was duffing chips left, right and centre – a mark of two things: talent never disappears, it lies dormant; and hard work can get you a long way.

I know his putting let him down in the last round at the Valspar – apart from that tramliner he holed on the 71st green – but the stroke has looked very solid for the most part and he’s made a lot of putts from within ten feet.

I already think we’re at the point where his name on the leaderboard carries significant gravitas.

The intimidation factor is 100 per cent back. It’s only been a couple of months, but the strides he’s made in such a short space of time have been staggering.

And you know what, I’m going to say it, Jack’s record is back on.

I’m not making any guarantees – that would be very foolish – but he’s only 42 and he needs four more Majors to tie the Golden Bear. Given how well he’s playing and the progress he’s made, it’s definitely not out of the question, right?

The fact I’m even writing that is quite amazing given what he’s been through over the last few years.

Another player who looks poised to challenge Woods this season and beyond is a resurgent Phil Mickelson. He’s had four top-six finishes in a row, including that brilliant victory in the WGC-Mexico Championship, where he beat Justin Thomas in a playoff. And the way he’s talking suggests he’s got more in the tank.

He’s seven wins short of 50 PGA Tour titles and I’m not prepared to say he won’t get there.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if Phil finally landed the US Open in the same year that Tiger announced his return to the big time with his 15th Major title?

Okay, I’m getting carried away, but can you blame me?

Wayne Riley is a former member of the European Tour and two-time winner who is part of the Sky Sports Golf Team. He writes exclusively for Golf Monthly

Instagrammer @GolfPeach pens her latest Golf Monthly blog after a thrilling climax to the season's first major at Augusta...

@GolfPeach: "Augusta made them look almost human at times… human like me"

If looks truly can kill, a high branch on a tall tree withered and creaked and crashed to the ground in Augusta, Georgia late last night. The way Jordan Speith stared long and hard at it, the fateful bough had no chance. Its crime was to get in the way of sporting history. Coiling his young frame to fire a drive 300 yards up the 18^th fairway towards more Masters glory, Speith watched in horror as his soaring ball clipped the overhanging branch and fell vertically, pitifully to the ground in front of him. If they had ladies’ tees at Augusta, some wag would have been telling him to get his wedding tackle out.

All of us have hit that overhanging branch. For a fleeting moment, Jordan knew what it meant to be a real golfer like me.

The Masters didn’t disappoint… or it didn’t disappoint anyone other than the pack of stars left trailing in Patrick Reed’s wake with nothing but their hard luck stories to tell. Jordan, Rickie, Rory, Big Jon and the rest… I felt like I knew them all by the end of the night. Augusta made them look almost human at times… human like me. Much as I marvelled at their divine power and touch, it was their moments of angst and aggravation that endeared them to me the most.

If Phil can have a fresh air shot, if Bubba can putt into a bunker, if Sergio can… no, I can’t even bring myself to type it. Watching Sergio Garcia’s defence disappear into that pond on Thursday was like watching a lion kill in a nature programme. The tv director should have cut away after the second chip… 13 shots, and all because he can spin the ball like I’ve always dreamt of doing. And then he had to hang around all weekend and graciously fit someone else for his green jacket.

The cruel beauty of Augusta was captured perfectly by those bizarre images of Rory McIlroy up to his waist in pink and white azaleas behind the 13^th green (where else?!) His ‘moving day’ charge was halted by a flowering border of beastly beauty… his boyish face peeping through the vivid colour in search of an unlikely escape route from this heavenly-scented hell… his golfing imagination trying so desperately to keep the famous tick on his cap pointing upwards. The Nike ad men will be searching for a caption for those pictures right now.

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Patrick Reed was lucky. You don’t need to be a Major champion to work out that there is simply no other way to win a Masters. His approach shot to the 13^th defied gravity by perching on that bank above the babbling creek, his long putt at 17 was running wild until it crashed into the flag. If that had been me, it would have raced miles past! Except it couldn’t be me because I couldn’t stuff enough balls in my bag to get me round 18 holes at Augusta. I’d be happy to break 100… for the front 9!

Reed wasn’t lucky at all. He earned any luck he got and he had no more, no less than anyone else. He kept his head. When Speith was gabbling after his ball, when Rahm was howling at the moon, Reed kept quiet, kept cool. The one time I heard him shout after his ball, he even said ‘please’. Whether he is a popular or unpopular winner, he did probably the most difficult thing of all at Augusta… he won from the front. Commentators will paint him as a gutsy, driven champion but he didn’t half hit the ball well too. He may have the rotund figure of many of the guys at my club but he was lean and mean in pursuit of a great victory. So he puts lashings of ketchup on his bacon bap at the halfway hut… I felt like I knew him too.

Which brings me to my round yesterday morning…

… I played pretty miserably and felt pretty miserable about it. I’m in one of those mid-lesson phases of trying to make adjustments, so maybe I should have been on the range, not the course. The steady drizzle and the casual water didn’t make for pure ball striking and my dripping wet bag weighed a ton by the end, so maybe I should have cut myself more slack. I was pretty fed up by the time I sat down to watch sunny, SubAired millionaires’ golf from the sofa. Let’s just say, I got out a bottle of the good wine!

And, well, I’m sorry, guys… but watching the very best players in the world grimace and groan like me, watching them find sand, water and pine straw occasionally, watching a ball hit the one slender overhanging branch between them and glory… well, it kind of made me think ‘welcome… briefly… to our world’.

You can follow GolfPeach at @golf_peach or Twitter and @golfpeach on Instagram

@GolfPeach's latest blog looks at gimmes in golf... Are you a Big-hearted Jack? Or a pitiless Pettersen?

Gimmes In Golf: "A Golfer’s Policy On Concessions Is A Window Into Their Soul"

So, imagine this… it’s England 0 Belgium 0 going into the final minute of the World Cup football match in Russia this June… Harry Kane wins a penalty, places the ball calmly on the spot and takes a few deep breaths to calm his nerves. But before the referee can blow his whistle, Harry’s Spurs team-mate Jan Vertonghen picks the ball up, says to him ‘you can have that’ and shakes the England captain’s hand in congratulations. It’s not going to happen, is it?!

Only in golf.

No Welshman is ever likely to ‘give’ a kick in front of the posts to Owen Farrell just to speed up play, nobody at Wimbledon is about to concede a service game to Roger Federer so as to be polite. It’s never over ‘til it’s over, you play to the final whistle, you run to the line, refuse to lose, second is the first loser. All those sayings and slogans that define modern sports (and sell modern sportswear) are about giving nothing at all to your opponent… not even an 18-inch putt.

@GolfPeach: Golf is more dangerous than boxing or rugby?? Really??

The ‘gimme’ is a bit of a golfing oddity. On the one hand, it is a glorious example of the old-fashioned sporting values to which our sport clings delightfully… on the other, it can be a joker card to be played strategically in the poker game of a matchplay duel. Of all the many mental challenges that golf sets us, the sinister silence that falls over a putt you were expecting to be given is right up there.

Concessions aren’t just good manners. The very exacting rules of golf allow us to randomly concede a match, a hole or our opponent’s next stroke at just about any time as long as it’s matchplay. You cannot rescind a ‘gimme’. When you say ‘that’s good’, you can’t suddenly change your mind and pretend you were referring to the view. And neither can you decline one… in case you were feeling particularly bullish. Best of all, the rules say you cannot request a concession. Imagine a cricket scenario where a player shaves the hole with a putt and raises an arm to an opponent shouting ‘Owzat?’ as the ball rolls inches past. ‘Er, out, since you ask… see if you can putt it in with your next shot.’

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The best players rarely get the opportunity to invite an opponent to ‘pick it up’ because the pros spend most of their careers battling against the card in medal play. Concessions are a more regular feature of club and social golf. They help to keep the speed of play ticking over and lend an excuse for some good-natured banter as partners debate ‘the circle of friendship’ that surrounds a hole at approximately the length of a putter grip. Approximately.

The degree of concessions can define the level of competition we are choosing to engage in. If you are attempting to woo a potential business customer, then asking to ‘see’ a slippery downhill three-footer simply makes no commercial sense to the balance sheet. If you are trying to win the club knockout final, you don’t give an inch. She’s got 3 ‘for it’ from 10 feet… you let her tickle the first putt down to the hole side before striding off to the next tee with a muttered ‘ok’ under your breath. The most grudging concessions are both the best to give and receive.

We all know someone who concedes everything within half a mile of the cup. I’m never sure whether they are demonstrating what altruistic individuals they are or if they’re inviting you to join their league of cheats. ‘Give, give?’ they inquire as you move within a hundred yards of the green. A ‘gimme’ is not a gift to bestow as an act of benevolence or bribery, it is a recognition that on the balance of probability the putt under review is a formality. It’s a mark of respect. It’s personal.

@GolfPeach: Why golf isn't the most boring sport

Conceding in matchplay is on your account, but if a score is counting against the rest of a field no offence can be taken at being asked to make the ball disappear.

Tactical concessions can be made in a pairs match where one opponent may show their partner the line if you allow her to putt first. But, as with most things in golf, the smarter you think you are getting, the further the fall from grace when you mess up. There is nothing quite as uplifting as holing a putt your opponents have debated like Statler and Waldorf for five minutes, and there’s nothing quite as comical as one of them chastising the other for conceding a borderline putt to you.

The most famous concession in golfing history was made by its most famous golfer. In 1969 at Royal Birkdale, Jack Nicklaus spared Tony Jacklin a 30-inch putt on the final green in the final match of a tied Ryder Cup. Nicklaus, who had just canned a 5-footer himself, is reputed to have handed Jacklin his marker saying, “I don’t think you would have missed that putt but, in these circumstances, I would never give you the opportunity.” Awwww, bless!

‘These circumstances’ were the Americans still heading back across the Pond with the prize as holders of the trophy but Nicklaus’s captain, Sam Snead, was furious about the magnanimous gesture. He hadn’t flown four thousand miles for an honourable draw.

Slammin’ Sam was from the Suzann Pettersen school of matchplay golf. 36 years on from that concession at Birkdale, Pettersen claimed a hole when her American opponent in a Solheim Cup match routinely picked up her ball having missed a birdie putt by a whisker. It was 16 inches from the hole but the icy Norwegian had not said the magic words, ‘that’s good’.

A golfer’s policy on concessions is a window into their soul. Are you a Big-hearted Jack? Or a pitiless Pettersen? Or, like me, do you suffer mood swings on this subject? A year after Birkdale in 1970, Nicklaus watched as Doug Sanders missed a tiny putt to beat him to the Open Championship at St Andrews.

Do you think Jack would have conceded it if he could? No, me neither.

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Read GM Columnist Wayne Riley's thoughts ahead of the opening major of the season at Augusta National...

Wayne Riley: 'Augusta Can Be Like Playing Golf In A Tumble Dryer'

The Masters is almost upon us. The golfing Oscars if you will. The white clubhouse, the blooming flowers and Magnolia Lane – Augusta National is like pixie land. It really does open one’s mind and imagination. There’s so much excitement ahead of the first Major of the year for numerous reasons, partly because it’s been so long since the previous one by the time it rolls around! You folks in the UK are also extremely partial to it because it coincides with a time of the year when the sun starts to shine and the golfing season proper gets underway. Happy days!

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Is this Major my favourite? It’s great, but I’d have to say no. For me, there needs to be more players in the field. The Open Championship, US Open and USPGA Championship all have more than 150 players taking part, whereas The Masters often falls short of 100. That’s a big difference, don’t you think? One of the beauties of golf is that virtually anyone in a particular field can have the week of their life and win – see Micheel, Curtis and countless others. With such a small field, the potential for these kinds of narratives is greatly reduced. You could potentially be 51st in the world and not get an invite, while a past champion with no hope of success can play for as long as he likes.

Sergio Garcia winning last year was a joyous occasion, and no one could begrudge the Spaniard his Green Jacket. I want to ask him which Major he’d have selected to be his first if he had the choice. I bet my bottom dollar he’d say The Open. Don’t get me wrong, winning any Major is a huge accomplishment, but The Open is the best of the lot.

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The unique aspect of The Masters as compared to the others is the fact it’s played at the same golf course each year. I love this, because it means everyone watching is so familiar with the layout. We all know the formula: get through the front nine a couple under, plot you way carefully around Amen Corner and then beat the par 5s up as you run for home. It’s a course that lends itself to excitement and some box-office finishes, as we’ve seen countless times over the years.

The first of the famous finishes came in 1935, when Gene Sarazen hit ‘the shot heard around the world’ – a holed second to the 15th from 235 yards with his trusty 4-wood. Jack Nicklaus holing that putt on the 17th green in 1986 is one of golf’s most iconic images to this day, and signified the Golden Bear coming out of hibernation. Couples’ ball stopping on the bank in 1992, Mickelson out of the pine straw on the 13th in 2010, Bubba’s shot from the trees on the 10th in 2012 and countless others are all written into folklore. I guarantee you something special will also happen this year.

By this point, you all know what attributes help at Augusta: a high ball flight, an ability to shape the ball from right to left, pinpoint accuracy on approaches, length and so on. But in my opinion, an underrated skill is the ability to read the wind. The trees through which the course is carved are towering and, much like Wentworth on these shores, it can be like playing golf in a tumble dryer.

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It’s one of those courses that brings so many different types of player into the mix. As mentioned, a high ball flight is an advantage, but if it’s windy that advantage is nullified. Long hitting is also beneficial, but playing from the middle of the fairway is crucial when the greens are so firm and undulating. Bombers and short hitters can thrive at Augusta and that’s one of the reasons why the event is so compelling. Zach Johnson won in 2007 and didn’t go for a single par 5 in two, while Bubba Watson hit wedge into the 13th hole during the final round in 2014.

Something that’s curious about Augusta is its habit of throwing up first-time Major winners. Why is that? Well, the field size makes it the easiest Major to win. And to clarify, I said easiest, not easy. Look back at the list of past winners and you’ll see so many examples of players who got over the line for the first time at Augusta. Since the turn of the millennium you’ve got Weir, Mickelson, Johnson, Immelman, Schwartzel, Bubba, Scott, Spieth, Willett and Garcia.

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Could we see another first-time Major winner in 2018? Absolutely. But, as I said, The Masters is the golfing Oscars – a celebration of Hollywood’s finest. Who else could that statement be applied to? You guessed it – Rory McIlroy. I know his Holywood is spelt with one L, but don’t be pedantic! Ready that green carpet, and the Green Jacket while you’re at it…

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Four year ago, the only golfer who GolfPeach had heard of was Tiger Woods. Now, she would love to see him return to his former glories...

'Another Tiger Woods Win Will Knock Every Other Sport Out Of The Headlines'

Four year ago, the only golfer who GolfPeach had heard of was Tiger Woods. Now, she would love to see him return to his former glories...

“That fierce focus was what his opponents feared the most in his heyday. The key stage in his recovery will be the day he truly thinks he can win again because that is when the other leading players will begin to think the same and be afraid once more”.

Four years ago, Tiger Woods was just about the only golfer I’d ever really heard of. I had little interest or enthusiasm for a sport I had never played or even wanted to. I had no idea that I was about to become hooked on the game and would soon be posting and blogging about it on a weekly basis. I didn’t know anything about golf, but I did know who Tiger Woods was. And that’s why his return is so important.

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During the four years in which I have graduated from beginner to addict, Tiger has played fewer competition rounds than me. In fact, I have actually won more times than he has. His last triumph was in 2013 and since then he has experienced surgery, arrest and community service. In these same years in which I have started to learn my Rorys from my Roseys and to watch and even study the world’s finest exponents of the game, Tiger’s most famous image has been a police mug shot. Until now.

Golf has never lost faith in Tiger Woods. It cannot afford to. When, as a 21-year old, he won the first of his Majors by a whopping 12-stroke margin at Augusta in 1997, the whole economy of the professional game changed overnight. A superstar had been born… perhaps golf’s only superstar. Prize funds doubled over the next four or five years and so did the television viewing figures for golf whenever the name of ‘Woods’ appeared on a weekend leaderboard. Over a decade on from the last (or should I say the most recent) of those 14 Major triumphs, the flagging golfing economy wants, maybe needs him back among the contenders.

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Nicklaus, Player and Darren Clarke all won Majors in their 40’s… Tom Watson so nearly won one at the age of 59. Woods revived his winning ways just five years ago before injury ushered back his demons. He’s 42 now. Another Championship win at this stage of his career would knock every other sport out of the headlines. A 12th placed finish at the Honda Classic won’t shorten his Masters odds by much, but there was a consistency about his scoring and a steadiness about his play that augurs well for the latest ‘coming’. Tiger can’t ever do anything ‘under the radar’ (as he found out to the cost of his reputation and marriage eight years ago) but this was a much quieter comeback and more promising for that.

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As a relative newcomer to all this, I am fascinated to watch the body language of a man who once dominated his sport like no other in the history of golf. Can anything other than a return to the very pinnacle of the sport possibly satisfy him? And why put himself through the mental and (I guess) physical pain of trying to get back to where he was? Even with the exodus of sponsors following his infidelities in 2009, surely money cannot be a prime motivator? He topped the US money list in 2013.

There must be more. I have heard a lot about the raw will to win and the intimidating competitiveness of his prime years, and I can only assume there is a fire still burning and stoking his pride. Golf can be grateful for that… just as it can be grateful to his late father, Earl, for putting a golf club and not a baseball bat in his hands as a child. You get the feeling that Tiger would have excelled at whatever he turned his single mind to.

Related: Tiger Woods What's in the bag?

Woods' stats of late are impressive, especially his driving distance and putting - as seen here.

Of course, he needs to be swinging well to succeed but I think Tiger’s mind is the 15th club he needs to bring out of the bag. That fierce focus was what his opponents feared the most in his heyday. The key stage in his recovery will be the day he truly thinks he can win again because that is when the other leading players will begin to think the same and be afraid once more.

That feeling of invincibility is probably what suffered most from being outed as a cheating husband. He must have thought he could do anything until the fateful night he drove into that fire hydrant. I have a strange perspective because that is how I remember him, discovered and disgraced… the staged public apology, the gaudy confessions of the porn star and the cocktail waitress. I didn’t follow golf when he was on top of the world so I have no strong recollections of his glory days, only his fall from grace. That was the only Tiger I had heard of four years ago. But my sons and many of my new golfing friends remember the ‘great’ Tiger Woods in his pomp and are hoping he can climb back to that sporting peak. It’s a climb I’d love to see now that I can appreciate and enjoy it.

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The WGC-Mexico Championship was without doubt the best tournament of the year so far. Elliott Heath looks at six things we learnt from the action at Chapultepec...

6 Things We Learnt From The WGC-Mexico Championship

The WGC-Mexico Championship was without doubt the best tournament of the year so far. Elliott Heath looks at five things we learnt from the action at Chapultepec...

1) Phil Mickelson is back

Lefty had been saying for a long time that his game is simply too good at the moment not to win and he showed us that as he rolled back the years to defeat Justin Thomas in a playoff. At 47 years of age it's hard to image he'll be at this level for a great deal longer but he has tossed his name in the hat for the Masters and has put himself in a great position to complete the Career Grand Slam at this year's US Open at Shinnecock Hills. It was fantastic to see him win again, let's hope he can stay consistent in 2018.

Related: Phil Mickelson What's in the bag?

2) You don't need 7,000 + yard courses for entertainment

Ok, yes the course at Chapultepec CC measured 7,330 yards officially, but that is right off the back tees and the tournament officials were pushing them forward throughout the week. With the elevation in Mexico City, the course was playing more like 6,500-6,800 yards, much more like the courses you and I play week in week out. Mickelson's winning score of -16 matches Brooks Koepka's US Open winning score at Erin Hills last year. The yardage there? 7,800 yards +. The course at Chapultepec, with its driveable par-4s, tight, treelined holes and small, hard and fast greens made the WGC-Mexico Championship a compelling watch.

Related: Golf driving distance increase "unusual and concerning" - Distance Report 2017

3) Tyrrell Hatton is big time

The Englishman is known for his temper and that came out on the front nine but he should be known for being a big game player now. Hatton was three-under after four holes before a bogey 6 at the par-5 6th hole and then another bogey 6 at the 11th to nearly end his hopes. He followed that up with a birdie-par-birdie-eagle stretch to match Justin Thomas and Phil Mickelson at -16 before a bad bogey at the last. Not to worry though, Hatton will come again and he's currently 2nd in the Ryder Cup World Points list - he's going to be great for Thomas Bjorn's side in Paris.

Related: Ian Poulter weighs in on golf's perceived distance problem

4) Tiger Woods can win again

What a 47-year-old Mickelson showed us is that a 42-year-old Tiger Woods can compete on the biggest stages again, if his body holds up. Tiger would surely have been watching the action from Mexico and will have a fire in his belly to go and get himself in contention after seeing Mickelson take it to the youngsters. Five years younger than Mickelson, you can't help but feel that Woods still has some wins in him.

Related: Can Tiger Woods dominate golf again?

5) Golf needs more big events outside of the USA

The fans and the course at the WGC-Mexico Championship made for great drama and entertainment for TV viewers across the globe. It was a superb decision to take the year's first WGC to Mexico and I can only hope that more big events go abroad. How good would the WGC-Match Play be at Le Golf National, or Wentworth, or another great course we haven't seen before? There has been talk of the USPGA Championship going abroad for some time now and the Mexico Championship is surely evidence that if you find a great course with a great fans you'll have a successful tournament.

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6) Europe are looking good for the Ryder Cup

Tyrrell Hatton was superb and showed us just how good he'll be on the biggest stage at Le Golf National. Tommy Fleetwood has now risen to 10th in the world and if you look at the Official World Golf Ranking, Europe has eight players inside the top 15, as opposed to just five Americans. The top eight Europeans currently are: Rahm, Rose, Fleetwood, Garcia, McIlroy, Hatton, Stenson, Noren and Casey - some team eh?

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Postgraduate student Adam Stephens would like golf to be more accessible, and affordable, to people of his age who are forking out on tuition fees and living costs with future plans to get on the property ladder

Golf Needs To Be More Accessible To The Younger Generation

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

This is what well-known American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, described the sport as during the 19th Century.

Around 200 years or so later, golf faces a battle amongst the young people to prove that this is indeed not the case and prevent the steady decline that seems to be affecting the sport, which can trace it's origins all the way back to Scotland in 1457.

So why is golf facing an uphill battle to attract the younger generation to the game I hear you ask?

Well, for a start the cost of equipment is high compared to other sports like football, cycling, tennis etc.

This is not even taking into consideration membership costs to belong to an actual golf club, or green fees, as well as other potentially crucial accessories such as golf balls and the correct attire.

All these expenses may be the reason therefore that students or postgraduates are put off by this pastime as they look to save for other essentials such as paying off University tuition fees, looking for affordable places to live and there are also other living costs to consider too.

The British Universities and College Sport (BUCS) are trying to do their bit for game having introduced a tour of nine qualifying events held across the UK. The players have an added incentive of competing for places at the end of season event known as the BUCS Golf Tour Finals.

In addition, help is being provided by BUCS to Universities such as Kingston, Coventry and Sunderland to help start up and build a University team.

BUCS have been able to develop partnerships with those Universities' respective counties, Surrey, Warwickshire and Durham, to help provide low cost opportunities within the game.

Other issues to consider are the fact that the golf clubs could do more to help young people who are interested get involved within the game. Perhaps put on student discounts on specific club sets or even create affordable golf club membership deals.

Maybe holding more taster sessions or promotional events specifically targeted at the younger generation could help.

Whilst many clubs do this already, through junior coaching sessions, more of these sessions certainly wouldn't go amiss, especially those targeted at the 16-25 age range.

Then of course there is an issue of the pace that the game is played at.

Pro golfers such as Rory Mcllroy have called for a faster version of golf in a bid to attract younger players to the sport, particularly at grass roots level.

"Everything's so instant now and everyone doesn't have as much time as they used to," the four-time major winner told BBC Radio 4.

"So you maybe try some way of speeding the game up. The viewership in golf is up but the participation is down. People enjoy watching the game but gone are the days that you could spend five or six hours on a golf course."

McIlroy has a point.

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Indeed there are various rules and traditional etiquettes of the game that slow the game down further.

For example, the endless amount of practice swings that players can take in preparation for every shot as well as weighing up their putts from every possible angle comes to mind.

I suggest putting a time limit on each shot, in other words a shot clock, similar perhaps to the game of tennis when players look to serve the ball.

The European Tour featured a shot clock hole at the GolfSixes last year and have the Shot Clock Masters lined up later this year in Austria.

If this was brought in at grassroots level, it could make golf more engaging for younger players who can't necessarily afford to be spending five or six hours on the course like McIlroy said.

So is the game of golf really on the decline?

Well, recent golf data from Statista suggests that over the past eight years or so, people playing golf in England on a monthly basis has declined by about 27%.

Plus viewing figures of golf are down, following a large amount of the BBC's golf coverage to Sky. The Open was the most recent tournament to go over to Sky Sports in 2016.

And whilst Sky's coverage is fantastic, it doesn't reach the numbers that the BBC's does.

There is, however, room for optimism with the impending events such as the Ryder Cup in France on the horizon later in the year which could yet inspire more young people to get involved in the sport.

This will be aired on Sky, although the BBC should be showing highlights.

Organisations such as BUCS are also doing their bit to promote the game to the younger generation by trying tackle one of the main issues which is the cost of the equipment and golf course access.

Golf clubs around the UK, however, do need to act faster than they are currently doing by making themselves more affordable to the younger generation and more up to date with times or risk further decline to this ancient pastime than what it has already endured.

What do you think golf can do to become more accessible to the younger generation?

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@GolfPeach responds to a recent study which suggested golf is more dangerous than rugby or boxing.

Golf Is More Dangerous Than Boxing Or Rugby?? Really??

I read Golf Monthly for instruction, information and relaxation. So, imagine my dismay when I came across the headline 'Statistics show that golf is more dangerous than rugby and boxing' on my favourite sports website.

Now, I'm a girl who loves and values life, so was this the cue for me to trade in my TaylorMade M4's for a scrum cap and a punch bag, or was Disraeli right when he said, 'there are three kinds of lies... lies, damned lies and statistics'?

Golf is dangerous. Fact. As someone who has witnessed a serious eye injury caused by a rebounding golf ball, I am more respectful than most of the perils of 'taking on that tree' or even creeping in front of your partners in order to keep the pace of play moving. But, unlike rugby and boxing, most injuries in golf are avoidable. Nobody is actually trying to hit the ball at you (well, hardly anybody!).

Closer examination of the dangerous sports survey quoted in Golf Monthly revealed the most hazardous activity of all on their list was... 'general exercise'. Yes, step classes and jogging are even more hairy than sky-diving and white water-rafting. What does that tell us?!

Related: Rory McIlroy's Gym Routine Revealed

It strikes me that the hidden message here is people who engage in ‘general exercise’ aren’t taking it seriously enough to guard against the minor aches and pains that inevitably come with moving their bodies briefly out of their comfort zones. Couch potatoes turned marathon runners are on a fast track for A and E.

Read @GolfPeach's other Golf Monthly blogs:

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@GolfPeach has her say on the controversial Top…

Maybe, just maybe, the danger is not so much with the sport but with the sportsman or woman trying to play it. If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. And, let’s be honest, most club golfers fail to prepare. We try to copy the great professional players in what they wear, how they swing and even how they shout after the ball, but we tend to ignore their warm-up routines.

WATCH: Rickie Fowler's 90-minute warm-up routine

If we model ourselves on any tour pro it is Rory McIlroy at Medinah in 2012. If you recall, he got his time zones mixed up on the morning of the Ryder Cup singles and needed an Illinois State Police escort to get him to the first tee with ten minutes to spare. He duly beat Keegan Bradley 2&1. So much for the range!

For most of us, turning up on the tee with ten minutes to spare is probably about five minutes too soon. And if we dare to engage in a few prescribed pre-round stretches we know they will be greeted by a volley of sarcastic comments. The only way we would get away with a proper muscle loosening programme is to perform it, like Miguel Angel Jimenez, with a big fat cigar in our mouth.

We are about to set out on a 6-mile hike on which we will (attempt to) repeat a twisting, pivoting body movement that exerts unique physical stress on the back, knees, shoulders, hips, wrists and neck. And that’s if you’re doing it right! And yet our tried and trusted preparation for this ‘dangerous’ activity is a bacon bap and a cup of coffee. Perhaps a putt or two if there’s time.

Better still, a lot of us will then strap 25 pounds of iron to our backs for the journey. If your course is anything like ours at the moment, there are areas roped off to winter trolley traffic in order to protect approaches and aprons. It just seems easier to take a few clubs out of the bag and carry. You will never find a physiotherapist that would recommend carrying or even pulling a golf bag on wheels but we know best. And this is a sport played by a higher proportion of 60 and 70-somethings already prone to back and joint problems simply because of their age.

Conclusion… most of these golf injuries are probably self-inflicted wounds. New Year’s resolution… make a bit more time to get ready for golf.

WATCH: Rory McIlroy's 30 minute warm-up routine

So, on a recent sunshine golf break in South Africa I took the opportunity to visit the practice range before each round and even to treat myself to the services of a caddy on one occasion. While it felt good to prowl the fairways like a pro and raid his local knowledge for putting lines, I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was betting against his fellow bag carriers on my performance. I already put quite enough pressure on myself without someone else tut-tutting when I tug a short iron into a bunker. He had to go… replaced by an electric trolley.

Related: Rick Shiels' Ultimate Practice Session

I persevered with the policy of hitting a bucket of balls before each round but I came to the conclusion there is a difference between warming-up on the range and trying to give yourself a lesson on the range. Fine-tuning your swing in the minutes before you hit that dreaded first tee shot is supposed to be a confidence-giver. But if you’re duffing it on the range, it can work the other way. I am not totally convinced that I play any worse if I confine myself to a few stretches and practice swishes before teeing it up for real.

And there’s the problem. Golfers need psychologists as much as physiotherapists.

If you ask most club players ‘where it hurts’ when they are suffering during a round of golf, they will probably point to their heads! For all of the body’s creaks and groans during those 4 hours of alternating highs and lows, it is the mental scars that really burn and sting. There I was strolling unburdened down sun-kissed fairways while a hired hand carried my heavy sporting luggage… and yet my caddy’s gambling habits were totally unnerving me. A more detailed survey of golfing injuries would reveal that most of them occur between the ears.

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Golf courses are like dog breeds, chocolate bars and James Bonds. We all have our favourites. @GolfPeach has her say in her latest blog.

Why Top 100 Golf Course Rankings Will Never Please All...

The new iteration of Golf Monthly’s highly-regarded biennial list of the Top 100 Courses in UK and Ireland will be published in December, and the only certainty is that nobody in golf will agree with it. Golf courses are like dog breeds, chocolate bars and James Bonds. We all have our favourites. Comparing and ranking the great links courses on our coastlines with the magnificent heathland lay-outs in our heartlands is as impossible as it is irresistible. One man’s collection of Desert Island Discs is another man’s playlist from hell. I must admit that I tend to rate courses by how well I play them. How can I ever forget that up-and-down across the ravine in front of the last at Kingsbarns to beat my husband 1 up? Kingsbarns… great track!

Related: Golf Monthly UK&I Top 100 Course Rankings

Golf Monthly are brave enough to reveal their judging criteria and GolfPeach’s form on the day doesn’t appear to figure anywhere. A fatal oversight in my opinion. Instead, of the 100 marks on offer to the appointed reviewers, 35 are awarded for ‘the quality of test and design’, 30 for ‘condition and presentation’, 15 for ‘visual appeal’ and 10 apiece for ‘club facilities’ and ‘visitor experience’. No adjustment is built in for ‘playing the course with a hangover’ – don’t these guys ever tour?! And, worse still, no allowances are made for the state of the Head Greenkeeper’s marriage – and the fiendish pin positions he has chosen the morning after a bad domestic!

The best example of the golf ranker’s dilemma is the most famous golf course in the world. How many people do you know who have enjoyed the immense privilege of teeing it up in front of the R and A clubhouse and nervously thinning one down the widest fairway on the planet only to return 4 hours later proclaiming the Old Course to be a great experience but not a great course? It’s probably the majority view. No ‘club facilities’, a better ‘visual appeal’ available next door on the New, ‘condition and presentation’ circa 1875… yet, wait a minute, you have just been an honoured house guest at the home of golf. ‘Visitor experience’… a perfect 10. Jack Nicklaus said that if he could only play one course for the rest of his life it would be St Andrews Old. I think that is worth a 90 point bonus, don’t you?

If I could only play one course… I think I might just pack the game up and buy a racket. Tennis players only ever play one standard-sized court. It may be made of clay or grass, it could be sun-drenched or rain-soaked, it might be surrounded by Championship grandstands or sports centre walls but the lines are painted to the same dimensions. Golf’s dimensions are painted by the ocean and the desert. It is the endless (and occasionally warped) imagination of golf course designers that sets the stages for our favourite form of theatre. To play the rugged coastal magnificence of Royal Troon one day, then drive 50 miles to get an invite to enjoy the pristine beauty of Loch Lomond the next is to play two totally different sports in 24 hours. Same clubs, same rules, same swing (if you’re lucky), different menu. How can you rank a top Thai restaurant against a great Italian? Variety is golf’s spice… and the Top 100’s nightmare.

I am writing this with a view of Atlantic white horses chasing each other to crash against a dreamy beach in sunny Cape Town. Last week the dull splat of a fatted iron greeted too many of my swings as my shoulders fought with four layers of clothing to turn. Even the good shots stalled in the cold English air and my ball stopped where it landed and waited to be cleaned and placed. Today, most of my layers will be sun cream. The ball will soar and bound (I hope!), the fairways will be firm, the greens slick. Holiday golf… a world away from the game I was playing just a few days ago.

My husband will again be my opponent at Arabella, one of South Africa’s top rated venues (he recovered from his Kingsbarns defeat… after a couple of months!). He will read from the course planner… ‘the 1^st requires a high fade from the tee to carry the cluster of bunkers at 270 yards on the corner of the dogleg, setting up a low drawn approach punched low under the prevailing wind to the 8-tiered island green’ (yeah, in your dreams). No, instead he will moan about the 100 metre march back to his tee from mine and the higher ladies’ standard scratch. Any and every course plays differently depending on the colour of your tee and the strength of your game. It is one of the unique appeals of golf that I can walk the same courses that Rory and Rosey win major titles on but their judgment of the test will be totally different to my own. Their lay-up will be my sweetest strike, their blind shot will be out of my range. On the 17^th tee at the Old Course, their line is my balcony!

Handicap golf is a magical sport that can be played by all types in all places, from Princes to the Pay and Play. Its greatest glory is that it’s beyond grading or marking, and perhaps the greatest courses are the ones we can all enjoy, the beauties rather than the beasts. For me, the best links courses are the ones that stretch all the way to the shore. Give me North Berwick over Royal Lytham any time but the rankings will say different. So, good luck Golf Monthly with your annual ‘start an argument’ rankings. Maybe there should be three ‘Top 100’s’ for red, white and black plates. And if you’re looking for volunteer judges for the first of them…

What are your favourite golf courses? And do they necessarily fit with our rankings?

Let us know on the Golf Monthly social channels

Our equipment expert discusses if the modern golf ball is travelling too far, if it has been made a scapegoat for golf's wider problems and if there is even an issue at all...

Is The Golf Ball Really To Blame?

The poor golf ball is taking flack again.

A tour pro shoots a good score at a historically significant venue and suddenly it becomes the cause of all of golf’s woes – specifically the scoring being too low and players hitting it too far with no regard for the heritage of this great game.

Shocking, right? I think not.

The round in question was Ross Fisher’s 61 at St Andrews’ Old Course during the Alfred Dunhill Links, which led Gary Player to come out and say the course had been “brought to its knees”.

Or to put it another way, a very good golfer played really well on an unusually calm day with soft greens and holed a lot of putts.

On the topic of the golf ball, or generally how we can somehow reduce the distance the ball is hit, the list of points for consideration is endless – this column would need 19 pages to cover them all.

So I’ll make my take on why I think the golf ball is fine as it is as concise as possible.

Related: Golf Monthly gear reviews homepage

The basic arguments seem to be that scoring is getting easier through added distance, traditional golf courses are being made obsolete and modern courses are having to be made ludicrously long to cope.

This is utter guff, if you ask me.

The correlation between distance and scoring is an interesting one.

While the average driving distance on the PGA Tour has increased by 31 yards since 1985 (an average of less than 1% per year), the median scoring average has only gone from 71.9 in 1985 to 71 in 2016.

Additionally, longer drivers haven't necessarily earned more money.

In fact, only four of the top ten driving-distance leaders on the PGA Tour in 2016 were inside the top 30 on the money list, while four of the top ten driving-distance leaders were outside the top 50.

Perhaps more pertinently, why does the blame fall on the ball?

Yes, marginal performance improvements are regularly implemented, but this is the same across all categories.

Remember the design of a golf ball is still highly regulated in terms of size, weight and speed.

What about thinner, faster titanium faces on larger clubheads, with lighter, longer shafts propelling the ball even further?

Also, don’t forget that golf’s greatest practitioners are fitter and stronger now than ever.

Another point to consider is the length of grass on the fairways on tour.

Continues below

Expand Has Driving Distance On Tour Actually Increased?

Has Driving Distance On Tour Actually Increased?

We take a look at some stats and…

Expand How Far Do Average Golfers Actually Hit It?

How Far Do Average Golfers Actually Hit It?

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Tiger Woods: “8000-Yard Golf Course Not Too Far Away”

Woods says 8,000-yard golf courses may be coming…

They are being mown shorter and shorter thanks to improved irrigation, denser grasses and enhanced mower technology, which makes the ball run out further after it lands.

So will longer courses curb better scoring?

Brooks Koepka blew that theory out of the water when he won last year’s US Open at Erin Hills on a layout that measured over 7,700 yards with a 16-under-par total, the joint most under par total in the event’s history.

That said, winning scores at the Majors haven’t drastically improved in the last few decades.

Augusta National looks to be planning to add more distance to the 13th hole, but wouldn’t longer rough be an easier way to protect a layout on which control into the lightning-fast greens is paramount?

If you reduce a ball’s performance for everyone, it would make golf harder and pace of play would increase – a big no no.

Reducing it just for tour pros would actually help the longer hitters even more as players would need to hit more drivers.

The biggest point to be made is that, as a golf fan, I love to see the pros hit the ball miles.

It’s entertaining, we’ll see more birdies and it’s part of their skill set that makes them the world’s best.

Smarter course set-ups for tour events – narrower, slower fairways and smaller greens, or reducing the shortest par 5 to a par 4 – could be the answer, but I like this great game just the way it is.

Joel Tadman's latest gear column taken from the February issue of Golf Monthly

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Instagrammer/blogger @GolfPeach responds to the recent YouGov poll that revealed golf is the most boring sport to watch

Why Golf Isn't The Most Boring Sport

So, golf is the most boring sport on the planet? What does that say about us?!

Well, the woman golfstagrammers know as GolfPeach is decidedly miffed and indignant about the findings of the much-publicised YouGov poll that branded our beloved game one long yawn. But then the same woman of four years ago had never swung a club in anger because… well, golf seemed the most boring sport on the planet.

Golf is sporting marmite.

You either pile it on in layers or you curl your lip at the very mention of it.

Golfing converts often encounter a ‘Road to Jericho’ moment when they suddenly, maybe unexpectedly get a taste for it.

It is at that crossroads when all of the things that made golf seem boring… its slowness, its weird vocabulary, its anal attention to technical detail… are perversely the very same qualities that make it fascinating.

Rory McIlroy: I don't fear any of them. I've beaten them before"

70% of those canvassed simply haven’t found their way to that intersection yet, right?

Now let me say straight away I do kind of agree with the survey! Not the headlines, but the actual YouGov research.

The question their pollsters asked was all about ‘watching’ sports, not ‘playing’ them.

I have been fortunate enough to tee it up alongside one or two pro golfers but I am yet to develop an appetite for trooping around a tournament course to watch them.

I don’t mind tuning into late-night action from somewhere sunny to marvel at how far DJ smashes it but I’d rather be out there myself.

99% of competitive pro golf is 72-hole strokeplay. Our sport’s heroes and heroines spend most of their careers playing against the course.

There is a saying that the Masters doesn’t begin until Amen Corner on Sunday afternoon. Only then do we see the cut-and-thrust of man-against-man that is the essence of most spectator sports.

The Ryder and Solheim Cups are sporting theatre, but too many of the Majors are long processions. Like Test cricket, they are pure sport because the best player wins over 72 holes… but, like Test cricket, they are for the aficionados.

The really worrying thing is that, four years into life as a golfer, I think I’m becoming a bit of an aficionado myself.

Ping G700 irons revealed

The mental subtleties of keeping your nerve when the leaderboard says a par at the last will be enough are something you can identify with when you’ve stood on the 18^th tee with 35 points already banked in the Monthly Medal.

Golf lovers quickly become protectors of all of the finer points that shape our addictions to it. It’s like being part of a secret society. If the great unwashed say the sport is boring then it almost confirms our own refined tastes.

So, do we care if golf’s image is staid and stately? We should.

The golf economy in the USA came under attack from a cycling boom a few years ago. Nike pulled out of the golf equipment business in 2016 citing a fall in demand.

Now the same trend is emerging in the UK. England Golf recently reported that 1 in 5 of the players who held a club membership in 2004 have since packed the game in. More tee times for the rest of us?... not if your club closes as a result.

If the game wises up, this survey may just be the biggest favour that anyone has ever done golf.

The final day at Laleham Golf Club

Even the crustiest of colonels would surely raise his glass of port in the Men’s Bar to the notion that golf has to be more open to fresh ideas.

Cricket connoisseurs will say that 20/20 Big Bash slogs are ruining the game but try telling that to the fans that fill county grounds to see the shortened versions of the sport.

Last May the European Tour unveiled GolfSixes, a 6-hole matchplay knockout tournament played to the accompaniment of pop music and whooping crowds. Remember, the first tee of the Ryder Cup when Bubba Watson came to play? It was like that all weekend. There was even a clock put on the snails-pace pros at GolfSixes… well, on one hole. It’s a start.

WATCH: Police chase on golf course caught on camera

I’m not suggesting that the champion golfer should lift the Claret Jug to the sound of a Stormzy rap at Carnoustie this summer. As with Test cricket, there will always be a major place for the Major tests of the sports superstars.

But if a wider sporting public is ever going to appreciate the power and the skill that the great golfers display, their talents need to be better showcased with a 21^st century twist. So much of the fun that I have during the course of a roll-up round with the guys at our club seems to be missing from the poker-faced millionaires with their emotions hidden beneath their sponsored caps.

Maybe the cameras should come to watch us play on a Sunday morning. It’s never boring.

Do you agree with @GolfPeach's views? Let us know on the Golf Monthly social channels

Woods hasn't won in a while, but after his performance at the Hero World Challenge, he should be positive about the new year. Here's 5 reasons why Tiger Woods will win in 2018.

5 Reasons Why Tiger Woods Will Win in 2018

It's no secret that the last few years haven't been kind to Tiger Woods.

Woods' 2016 and 2017 campaigns were sorry affairs. Riddled with injury, he played only a handful of events in each and failed to finish highly in any of them.

Even more damningly, Tiger has not won a PGA Tour event since dominating the WGC-Bridgestone Championship by seven shots in 2013 and his last major victory came, depressingly, almost a decade ago.

Related: Tiger Woods announces early 2018 schedule

Nevertheless, with the 79-time PGA Tour winner looking healthy for the first time in five years at the Hero World Challenge in December, I'm backing this year to be a vintage one for the big cat.

Here's 5 reasons why Tiger Woods will return to the winner's circle in 2018:

1. He's finally physically healthy

Or at least, he looks to be. When Woods returned to competitive golf at December's Hero World Challenge, nobody, even Tiger himself, knew what to expect. We'd all heard the rumours - Brad Faxon, most notoriously, claiming that Tiger was outdriving DJ every other swing - but it took consistent driver ball speeds of over 180mph at the Hero to finally make us believe it. Woods is back, looking as strong as we've ever seen him and hitting it a country mile.

2. He's hungry

With all the iron he shifts it can be easy to forget that Tiger is now only 8 years away from playing on the Senior's Tour. As they get older many athletes start to lose focus, prioritising family and business commitments ahead of the grind on the practice range. Certainly, Woods cuts a more convincing family figure these days, but the 14-time major champion has still got an appetite for range balls and is every bit as competitive as he's ever been. Commenting on his goals for the new year, Woods said "I would like to have guys feel what some of my past guys had to go against all those years, I'd like to have them feel that same [great] play”. With Tiger up for the fight it'd be a brave man that betted against it.

Related: Golfer pays $210,000 for lesson with Tiger Woods

3. He's (potentially) sorted his duff chipping

If there's one thing that dogged Woods technically over the last couple of years it has been his short game. Woods first caught the chipping yips in his now-infamous 2015 outing in the Phoenix Waste Management Open, and they've been plaguing him pretty consistently ever since. The Hero World Challenge, however, saw an improvement in this. After chunking a couple of pitches in his first round, Woods spent the evening hitting chip shots and returned with his old razor sharp short game for the rest of the tournament. While it may be too early to say this for certain, it looks like Tiger's chipping demons are gone.

4. His next few tournaments are at courses he's dominated A LOT

Woods is set to return to the PGA Tour at Torrey Pines, a track at which he's won a record-setting eight times over the years. Granted, at 7,600 yards, the South Course at Torrey will be a stiff examination of Tiger's golf game, but if he trips up there he still has the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill which is another course which he's won eight times. And there's also, of course, the Masters at Augusta National. The 14-time major champion knows all of these layouts like the backs of his hands and he has plenty of great memories to help him to summon some form.

Related: Jack Nicklaus 'not interested at all' in watching Woods comeback

5. He's Tiger Woods

He's got 79 PGA-Tour victories, 18 WGC titles and, most notably, 14 majors. He's hit golf shots 99% of professionals can only dream of and has won the US Open playing basically with only one leg. After Jack Nicklaus, he's statistically the 2nd greatest player of all time, and many would say that's being stingy. He's Tiger Woods. For this if for no other reason, he's going to win again.

What do you think 2018 holds for Tiger?

Give us your thoughts on any of Golf Monthly's social media channels.

We look ahead to an exciting year for British golf with the Ryder Cup in Paris on the horizon

Which Brits Will Have The Best Years In 2018?

2018 promises to be an exciting year for British golf with no less than seven players from these shores inside the world's top-32 at the time of writing.

The Ryder Cup in September, at Le Golf National in Paris, means there is huge motivation for further success this year.

But first to look at who will excel in the 12 months ahead, we must look at those who starred in 2017.

Justin Rose was the standout performer last year, with a 2nd at the Masters followed by back-to-back Rolex Series wins in late October/November to rise up to 6th in the world. He also captured the Indonesian Masters just before Christmas.

Tommy Fleetwood can call himself Europe's number one after winning the Race to Dubai title in a season that yielded two trophies, a 2nd place in the WGC-Mexico Championship and a 4th place at the US Open.

Tyrrell Hatton, like Justin Rose, also won in back-to-back weeks, Matt Fitzpatrick won his fourth European Tour title, rookie Jordan Smith won his first, and a resurgent Ian Poulter rose 130 spots in the world rankings.

Ross Fisher was runner-up to Tyrrell Hatton in each of his triumphs and Fisher's season contained eight top-10s including two top-5s in WGCs.

Related: The biggest risers in the world rankings 2017

Paul Casey, at 14th in the world, had another super solid year, with a 6th at the Masters and four other top-5s in big PGA Tour events. He has rejoined the European Tour in a bid to qualify for Le Golf National.

He'll be hoping to regain that killer instinct that's seen him win 17 times as a pro, albeit he's still searching for his first trophy since the KLM Open in September 2014.

The second-ranked Brit, Rory McIlroy, has dropped down to 11th after an injury-plagued 2017 that also saw him change equipment manufacturers and get married amongst other things.

All signs point to a great year for the Ulsterman who will be looking to grab his first win since September 2016 as soon as possible.

Which Brit Will Have The Best Year In 2018?

If Justin Rose can continue his form, and there's a good chance he will, then he can really begin to cement his legacy.

The 2013 US Open champion became the first golfer to win Olympic Gold for 112 years in 2016, and he'll still be wondering how he didn't add a Green Jacket to his collection last April.

Rose has the game to win multiple majors, as most of the world's top 200 or so players do, but more importantly he has the drive, belief and mental game to do so.

I expect another big year for Rose who could push close or beyond his highest position of third in the world.

Continues below

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Without trying to put too much pressure on Rory McIlroy, most of the golfing world expect him to have a stellar year in 2018 now that he's fit and healthy.

It's easy to forget just how good he was in 2014, when he won the BMW PGA Championship in May and then the Open, WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and USPGA Championship in three successive starts.

He lifted the FedEx Cup in 2016 and despite a poor year by his standards, still managed two runner-ups and five other top-7s.

For a man who believes he's the best player in the world, he won't like being ranked 11th. Let's hope he climbs back towards the summit in 2018.

It would be great to see Paul Casey to finally lift another trophy this year, and don't bet against him.

The Englishman has finished 11th, 5th and 13th in the FedEx Cup over the last three seasons and with the potential of a first Ryder Cup appearance in 10 years on the horizon, he could have a special year ahead of him.

Matt Fitzpatrick became the youngest Englishman ever to win four European Tour titles last year with victory at the European Masters and I expect the Yorkshireman to triumph again in 2018 and seal his second Ryder Cup appearance.

Tyrrell Hatton currently sits 2nd in the Ryder Cup points list and will be hoping for another victory to confirm his place on Thomas Bjorn's team.

Jordan Smith may also have hopes of making the team, and, although it is unlikely, you cannot bet against the man who won the Order of Merits on the EuroPro and Challenge Tours in successive seasons before wrapping up his maiden European Tour title in his rookie season last year.

I can see the Englishman collecting his second European Tour crown this year.

Related: The biggest fallers in the world rankings 2017

Ross Fisher reminded us of the game he has last year and will be keen to make his first Ryder Cup appearance since 2012 and win his first European Tour title since 2014 this campaign.

Elsewhere two-time PGA Tour winner Russell Knox will be looking to make a charge back this year after dropping almost 60 spots in the world rankings in 2017, down to 77 from 18.

And wouldn't it be great to see Ian Poulter lift his first trophy since the 2012 WGC-HSBC Champions and make the Ryder Cup team after he missed out with injury in 2016.

Poults showed great signs of resurgence last year and, crucially, looks to have his hunger back.

Poulter was T14th at the Open this year, alongside GM Playing Editor Chris Wood who has struggled since his BMW PGA Championship win in 2016.

The Bristolian was suffering with a wrist injury last year but has the game to qualify for his second Ryder Cup if he stays injury-free.

Don't forget about Danny Willet either, who, despite struggling after winning the 2016 Masters, has teamed up with Justin Rose's coach Shaun Foley.

Which Brits do you expect to have the best years in 2018? Let us know on our social channels

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Sam Tremlett looks at why Tommy Fleetwood has been snubbed from the Sports Personality shortlist, and says the format needs to change.

Why Tommy Fleetwood Should Be Nominated For SPOTY

Tommy Fleetwood should be on the shortlist of nominees for Sports Personality of the year, this is a fact.

Golfers, especially Brits, do not get the respect they deserve because the vast majority of people do not view golf as a sport, and even then many don't understand how difficult the sport is.

That being said, there have been a surprising number of golf nominees over the years and golfers have claimed two victories. Considering the sport is not as popular as others, this is fairly respectable.

The problem for golfers in regards to Sports Personality, is that they pretty much need to dominate the sport or win one of the four Major Championships to just get nominated, and obviously this is extremely difficult to do.

Compare this to the 2017 nomination of Harry Kane who did not win a thing aside from the Premier league Golden Boot, and its easy to see how Fleetwood and other golfers have been snubbed in 2017, and years gone by.

Some of the golfers nominated include:

Dai Rees, winner in 1957, became a British celebrity after guiding the Ryder Cup team to its first victory over the Americans since 1933.

Nick Faldo won SPOTY in 1989, becoming just the second golfer ever to do so, after winning the Masters in a playoff against Scott Hoch.

Lee Westwood and Luke Donald had to rise up the World golf rankings to number one to get nominated in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

Danny Willett last year, Justin Rose in 2013, Darren Clarke in 2011, and Graeme McDowell in 2010, all had to win Majors to even get a look in and even then they never really came close to winning the award.

Rory McIlroy, in recent memory, has come the closest to winning the award in 2014 when he won the Open, USPGA, BMW PGA Championship, WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and helped Europe retain the Ryder Cup. The fact he didn't win after that year is astonishing.

Clearly, all of this has had an effect on the nomination, or lack of, of Englishman Tommy Fleetwood which is frustrating because he should have been nominated considering the year he has had.

Winner of the Race to Dubai, and twice winner on the European Tour at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, and the HNA Open de France, his consistency throughout the season was the main reason he was able to collect the Harry Vardon trophy for the European Order of Merit.

Additionally, he had a fourth place at the US Open and second place at the WGC-Mexico Championship. He got to world number 14, and is ranked number 18 right now. His ranking does not sound that impressive but considering how competitive men's golf is at the moment, this achievement deserves great respect.

When you look at some of the other golfers nominated it is not hard to see why Fleetwood has been snubbed, but this shouldn't be the case.

But, golfers on the whole, are not given the respect they deserve when the nomination process is taking place, which raises the question, why is there even a shortlist for nominations? Why cant we just let the people vote for whoever they want?

The winners of every Sports Personality would be the same, but the competitors in lesser sports would get votes too, thereby giving them the recognition they deserve for their achievements.

This change in format would undoubtedly lead to golfers like Fleetwood getting more votes because the public would actually be able to vote for him.

Instead of getting snubbed, the Race to Dubai winner, and the whole sport of golf would get more publicity which is only a good thing.

For more articles on golf and other sports written by Sam Tremlett, visit his blog tremlettonsport.wordpress.com

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We rank each of 2017's four major championships including Sergio Garcia's Masters victory and Jordan Spieth's Open triumph

Ranking The Major Championships Of 2017

The Masters

Winner: Sergio Garcia

2017's major championship golf got off to a flyer, with a gripping, thrilling and simply extraordinary final round that eventually saw Sergio Garcia triumph over Justin Rose in what turned out to be a head-to-head back nine tustle between two of Europe's most decorated players of their generation.

And it was all played with great sportsmanship.

Whilst Rose was playing perfect golf, finding fairways and greens and looking untouchable, Sergio Garcia was creating history with all the Spanish flare we've seen before at Augusta from his compatriots Seve and Olazabal.

His par from the bushes on 13 was exceptional, before an astonishing eagle on the par-5 15th that saw him hit the flag with his second shot before calmly rolling in an 8 footer to tie Rose at 10-under.

The Englishman would come back though with a birdie on 16 before bogeying the 17th, and both men were tied after 72 holes when Sergio missed from inside 6 feet on the last to win.

The Spaniard would seal the Green Jacket with a birdie on the first playoff hole in his 74th major championship appearance. What a start to the golfing year.

Entertainment factor: 10/10

US Open

Winner: Brooks Koepka

The US Open at new venue Erin Hills was a success, but with a winning score of -16 it did feel more like a regular PGA Tour event as oppose to one of golf's big four.

Englishman Tommy Fleetwood was well in contention with 18 to play, starting Sunday one behind leader Brian Harman.

Come the closing stages, Brooks Koepka had pulled clear with some phenomenal golf, proving just how great a player he is - although it did mean that the tournament was practically over with an hour to go. He eventually won by four in an impressive and dominant display.

Entertainment factor: 5/10

Related: Ranking the major championships of 2016

The Open

Winner: Jordan Spieth

Then came the 147th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, which saw the largest ever crowd for an English Open Championship.

The course was in stunning condition, with players, fans and media signing its praises, and the good-old British summer threw all four seasons at the players, and then some, to make for a wonderful spectacle.

Rory McIlroy, who was clearly still suffering with a rib injury, was five-over for his fist six holes, and could have been worse, but battled back to end in T4th place to remind us of just how big a star he is. We will wait for some sparkles in his 2018 season.

Branden Grace became the first man to ever shoot 62 in a major championship on the Saturday before it all came down to Jordan Spieth vs Matt Kuchar on the back nine on Sunday.

The tournament will be remembered for Spieth's controversial ruling on the 13th hole, where he eventually played a shot from the driving range after 22 minutes mulling over his options.

Little over a year after his Masters collapse, he was clearly rattled on Birkdale's 13th but somehow made an excellent bogey and then nearly aced the par-3 14th to bounce back with a birdie.

He then went eagle-birdie-birdie-par to blow Matt Kuchar away.

Kuch would argue he couldn't have done any better, and props to him for playing incredibly well. But it was Spieth who stole the show and picked up his third major title in a fantastic Open Championship.

Entertainment factor: 9/10

USPGA Championship

Winner: Justin Thomas

For us in the UK, with the BBC TV coverage behind the red button in SD prompting huge criticisms, the USPGA Championship was a rather bland affair...until it caught alight on the back nine on Sunday when Justin Thomas blitzed through to secure the Wanamaker and his first major.

Kevin Kisner went out with the lead on Sunday just ahead of playing partner Chris Stroud and the whole thing had a rather dull look about it.

In the end, Kisner finished T7th and Stroud came T9th, whilst Francesco Molinari, Patrick Reed, Louis Oosthuizen, Rickie Fowler, Hideki Matsuyama and Justin Thomas charged home late to ignite the tournament into life.

Thomas won by two, affording a meaningless bogey on the last, after he had birdied 7, 9, 10, 13 and 17 to close in on his first major just a few weeks after celebrating his close friend Jordan Spieth's Open triumph.

It was a gutsy performance from the 24-year-old, who would go on to secure two more titles in 2017 plus the FedEx Cup, the Player of the Year accolade and a career-high 3rd in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Entertainment factor: 8/10

Which was your favourite major of 2017? Let us know on the Golf Monthly social channels

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The 60-year-old German is continuing to dominate on the Champions Tour, but could he compete with the youngsters?

Could Bernhard Langer Win On The European Tour?

Bernhard Langer won again at the weekend for his second title in a row, seventh of the season and 36th Champions Tour trophy overall.

The 60-year-old is comparable to a juggernaut, and a cash point too. He's now earnt over $24.5m in Champions Tour earnings alone. Incredible.

Langer holed a long downhill putt  to beat Miguel Angel Jimenez on the second playoff hole to win the PowerShares QQQ Championship.

The two-time Masters champion leads the season-long Charles Schwab Cup points race with just a single event left. Victory in that would secure a $1m bonus.

But how would he get on if he was still playing on the European Tour?

We take a look at some stats:

Driving distance

The consensus would be that he simply doesn't hit the ball far enough...how true is that?

Langer has averaged an 280 yards off the tee this season on the Champions Tour (24th longest on the Champions Tour), which would put him in 205th spot on the European Tour Driving Distance stats, 37 yards behind Rory McIlroy at the top.

Now on the face of it that doesn't read very well for the German, however Matt Fitzpatrick only averages 285 yards and he's recently become the youngest ever Englishman to win his fourth European Tour title.

Lee Slattery averages just under 282 yards and he very nearly won the Czech Masters earlier this year, Hideto Tanihara averages 278 yards and reached the semi finals of the WGC-Match Play in March, Graeme McDowell averages 277 yards and Soren Kjeldsen averages 275.

Austin Connelly averages 277 yards as well, and he was well in contention at the Open this year and was 2nd at the recent KLM Open.

Related: How far do average golfers hit it? These statistics may come as a surprise

The only thing going against Langer here is that his averages have been taken from his golf in the US, where they do tend to play in better weather. So that may be a factor.

Langer would undoubtedly be one of the shorter hitters if he was playing on the European Tour, but not THE shortest. If he played the right course he would certainly still be long enough to compete.

Driving accuracy

The German's driving distance numbers look even more impressive when you see that he hits 78% of fairways...that would rank him 3rd on the European Tour this season.

Iron play

Langer leads the Champions Tour with an average of 78.3% Greens in Regulation.

That would lead the European Tour, ahead of Tommy Fleetwood who is #1 with an average of 77% GIRs hit.

Now you might think that's because he plays shorter courses on the Champions Tour, but that's not necessarily true.

Last week's PowerShares QQQ Championship course, Sherwood Country Club, measured 7,100 yards. That's the same length as Golf Club Milano which recently hosted the Italian Open.

Short game

The 60-year-old is pretty decent around the greens too. His scrambling stats are 70%, getting up-and-down 161 times from 230 missed greens this year.

That would put him 2nd on the European Tour, although leader Matt Ford's stat of 71.4% is only based on 12 rounds.

Putting

It's on the greens where Langer completely dominates the Champions Tour, seemingly making the important ones time and time again.

He averages 28.5 putts per round, which is 3rd on the Champions Tour and would leave him 9th on the European Tour's standings.

He leads the Champions Tour in Putts per GIR, averaging 1.684. That would be 1st on the European Tour as well, as current leader Marc Warren averages 1.713.

Golf Channel Analyst Brandel Chamblee said this weekend, "Bernhard Langer at the age of 60 is putting better than 20-year-olds in their prime, putting better than Tiger Woods ever did on the PGA Tour.

"You could argue that he's putting better than anybody ever has."

Could Bernhard Langer Win On The European Tour?

These statistics show that he definitely could. If he was on the right course and had his A game with him, he would have enough to win again.

Don't forget that he was just two strokes back after 54-holes at the 2016 Masters, although he did end in a tie for 24th.

Either way, the man is an exceptional golfer and will go down in history as one of the greats.

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Tiger Woods is back, but how will his comeback play out this time? Here are four possible scenarios

4 Possible Scenarios For Tiger Woods' Return

1) Relapses

Woods has now had four back surgeries so it would be foolish of us to simply expect him to turn up to a golf tournament and return to his former glory. Last year when he came back at the Hero World Challenge, it only took him seven competitive rounds before his body succumbed to the pressure and strain that professional golf puts on it. Will his body last longer this time around? We can only hope. Unfortunately the most likely circumstance is that Tiger's body breaks down on him yet again and we're left with just memories. That would be a tragic ending and it would be very difficult for him to ever return...this latest comeback has a real 'last chance saloon' feel to it.

Likelihood: 8.5/10

Related: Tiger Woods 2017 swing analysis

2) Comes back, has success

If, and it's a big if, Tiger can get through his first two or three events on Tour pain-free we could see a possible scenario where he actually has some form heading into the Masters. Last year after he played the Hero World Challenge he committed to playing four events in a five-week stretch - the Farmers Insurance Open, Dubai Desert Classic, Gensis Open and Honda Classic. He only made it through round one in Dubai but his schedule leading into the Masters could look similar to that yet again. And if that does happen and he can have a healthy 2018, there's surely room for a few top 10s, top 5s and perhaps even a victory. In just his second round back last year, albeit at the very generous Albany, he posted a seven-under-par 65, and that was with 15 months out.

Likelihood: 7/10

Related: Tiger Woods What's in the bag?

3) Major glory

Whilst Woods winning a 15th major is almost unthinkable, if he could get his body fit for a prolonged period of time he will win another major won't he? Yes he can't keep up with DJ but Zach Johnson has won two majors so that throws that theory out of the water. At his prime he was a level above in the head and on the greens. If he can find that mentality and form with the flat stick again then he could definitely win number 15. Whether that be at Augusta in 2019 or he maybe fancying the US Open at Pebble Beach in 2019.

Likelihood: 5/10

Related: How Tiger's swing has changed

4) Comes back, dominates

Here's the scenario: Woods' fourth back surgery solved all of his problems and in the six months rehab time he refound the perfect putting stroke, and rebuilt his body and swing to a level that he can compete, practice, travel, walk and work out to a standard that allows him to play freely. His body is no longer an issue and he's good to go right up until his late 40s and early 50s, think Mickelson, Davis Love III etc. He wins his eighth Farmers Insurance Open in January before picking up his fifth Masters by plotting his way around and putting the field to death...he's now just three majors behind Nicklaus and has another six or seven years at the top level.

Likelihood: 1/10

Related: Tiger Woods putting technique analysis

How do you see Tiger's comeback playing out? Let us know on our social channels.

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How often have you had that dream about holing a putt to win a major?

Dan Walker: Holing A Putt To Win The Masters

At Tilgate Park, a municipal course in Crawley, West Sussex, my friends and I used to jump on after school.

The 17th green is particularly unforgiving with a decidedly slippery downhill left to right putt if the hole is cut at the front.

I always used to imagine I had a nasty 12 footer to win the green jacket. I never holed it.

I have always wondered what it must be like be in a position where it all comes down to 1 shot.

I remember talking to Danny Willett about the walk from the 15th green to the 16th tee at Augusta in 2016.

Jordan Spieth had just done terrible things at the 12th and Willett was 3 holes away from golfing super-stardom.

He wrote about this in his excellent blog for the European Tour recently - about how he could hardly turn the pages of his yardage book because his hands were shaking so much.

Jonathan Smart, his caddie at the time, handed him an 8-iron and the rest is history.

I'll never be in that position but I'm pretty sure if you gave me an 8 footer for a major I'd push it about 4 feet right.

I did have an opportunity to (sort of) test that theory at the British Masters at Close House in September.

I was invited to take part in the Hero Challenge which was broadcast live on Sky Sports on the Tuesday night before the event.

The good people of the North East turned up in their thousands to watch 8 top golfers fire at a shortened 18th hole.

The host Lee Westwood was joined by Sergio Garcia, Danny Willett, Matt Fitzpatrick, Ross Fisher, Bernd Wiesberger, Martin Kaymer and Miguel Ángel Jiménez.

There were also 4 golfing goons there so demonstrate how it shouldn't be done: I was one of the chosen four alongside Stuart Broad, Robbie Fowler and, the home favourite, Gaz Beadle from Geordie Shore.

When I first arrived presenters Vernon Kay and Kirsty Gallacher were running through a technical check and they asked if I fancied having a shot.

I'll be honest with you... 125 yards is normally a three-quarter wedge but I thought an easy, lazy 9 iron might do the trick.

With a grand total of about 4 people watching I struck it perfectly.

It went straight at the flag and landed about 10 feet behind it.

Vernon gave me a big hug and I thought no need to hit another one until it matters and shuffled off to the hospitality tent.

The next time I walked to the tee it was a little different.

There were about three-and-a-half thousand punters packed into the grand stand, an army of young girls were screaming Gaz's name and there was dry ice, fireworks and a tannoy system so loud it could blow your face off.

Did I mention the floodlights?

As we stared down the 125 yards to the grandstand all you could see was the sparking green - a green that looked about 50 times smaller than it had 2 hours ago.

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"I'd rather be at the Gabba" whispered Stuart Broad as we discussed the fact that we didn't expect to be feeling this nervous.

We weren't even on telly at this point, this was the pre-event warm up.

It was our job to loosen up the crowd.

It sounds stupid but as we walked through the pyrotechnics towards the little square of astro turf I was thankful that I had parked the 9-iron and opted for an adrenaline-fuelled wedge.

All 4 of us somehow found the dance floor and I was left with a daunting 25 foot putt watched by 3,500 pairs of eyes.

My mind drifted back to the 17th at Tilgate Park and, as I lined it up, I thought... 'imagine if you HAD to make it'.

I cosied up behind the ball, fidgeting far more than I normally would, and was imagining this was a putt to seal the Ryder Cup, win the Claret Jug and get one of those funky jackets.

My hands were a little clammy as I drew the blade back and sent the little fella on his way.

Sadly no-one shouted "mashed potato" but Robbie Fowler said "it¹s got a chance lad" at the half-way stage.

I was frozen watching it roll towards the hole willing it to drop.

As it tracked, the noise from the crowd steadily built and when it rattled into the cup...they went wild!

I am fully aware it was utterly meaningless but it felt amazing.

Sadly I completely lost my head and ran around the green like an idiot high-fiving everyone in sight.

If that wasn't enough as I walked off the green some fella called Sergio Garcia said "Dan, what a birdie" and offered a fist.

When it came to the actual televised event it was only a nearest the pin competition for us mortals to save time and embarrassment.

After the birdie in rehearsal the nerves had disappeared but my left knee collapsed and I pushed my wedge about 20 feet right - still on the green and seemingly inside Robbie Fowler's effort.

Sky's Richard Boxall somehow decided that the former striker was the winner much to the disgust of my new best mate.

"You were robbed Dan" said a smiling Spaniard as the Masters champion made his way to the tee.

I may have missed out on the bottle of champagne but I had holed a putt which mattered.

That's as close as I'll ever get to sitting in a wicker chair next to Jim Nantz in the Butler Cabin.

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It's been a year of surprises in 2017, Rory didn't win a fifth major and Matsuyama didn't reach the world #1 spot

7 Things We Expected In 2017 That Didn't Happen

It's been a year of surprises in 2017, here are the things we thought would happen...

Matsuyama major or #1

Having had a six-week stretch of four wins and two seconds in late 2016, we, or I, expected the 25-year-old to push on even further this year and win a major and become world #1.

It wasn't a bad year for him by any stretch of the imagination - he came T2nd at the US Open T5th at the USPGA, reached #2 and won his second WGC at the Bridgestone with a final round 61 - but I do expect him to win a major and reach #1 sooner rather than later.

He is simply too good.

Tiger buying TaylorMade

Rumours of Tiger buying TaylorMade were circulated as soon as he rebranded his businesses to Tiger Woods Ventures and at this year's PGA Show in Orlando all signs were pointing to Tiger buying the company from adidas.

In the end, he only signed for them as a staffer and KPS Ltd bought them instead.

Nike players signing for other companies

Nike's departure from the hardware market came as a surprise and it's even more of a surprise that a lot of these players still haven't signed full equipment contracts with other brands.

Both Rory and Tiger signed with TaylorMade, but the likes of Brooks Koepka, Tommy Fleetwood, Paul Casey and Ross Fisher seem to be enjoying the freedom.

Saying that, Casey did sign a metalwoods contract with TaylorMade.

A number of these players have gone to TaylorMade woods and Mizuno irons, although Fleetwood has trusted his Nikes all season until he recently added in a Titleist 917 driver.

McIlroy winning a major

After a great end to 2016, where he won the FedEx Cup, we hoped the Ulsterman would pick up at least a fifth major in 2017.

It wasn't to be after he injured his rib pre-season thanks to some rigorous equipment testing.

One thing is for sure, if Rory can get himself fit for 2018 and can start holing some putts, he will add to his major tally.

English winner on PGA Tour

Surprisingly there was no English winner on the PGA Tour this season.

Paul Casey came close with seven top-7s and Ian Poulter was 2nd at TPC Sawgrass.

Justin Rose was of course second at the Masters too.

Who was the last Englishman to win on the PGA Tour you ask? Danny Willett.

Danny Willett to rise again

Whilst the lesser informed may put Willett's Masters win down as a flash in the pan, the Yorkshireman was consistently one of Europe and the world's best players in the year leading up to his Augusta victory.

It hasn't quite happened for Danny in 2017, who has struggled with his swing and a back injury.

Let's hope he can regain his form next year.

The USPGA shown on Sky

The news rocked the golfing world here in the UK and across the pond too, with the PGA of America deciding to end their deal with Sky to attract a larger audience for the year's final major.

The BBC jumped at the chance at short notice but their coverage was heavily criticised and the tournament was behind the red button most of the time due to the World Athletics Championship.

The PGA of America eventually moved the championship to May to become the year's second major, which then prompted the European Tour to move the BMW PGA Championship to September.

What did you expect to happen in 2017 that didn't? Let us know on our social channels

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Whilst participation numbers are not dwindling too much, golf's dress code must be putting off new players taking up the game

Is It Time To Relax Golf's Dress Code?

Whilst golf isn't in dire straights if you look at participation numbers (the number of rounds played in the UK went up by 4% in the second quarter of 2017) and tournament attendance figures, the game and some clubs are clearly struggling.

Laleham Golf Club in Surrey closed its doors in March and Southwood Golf Course looks to be on its way out, and they're just two examples nearby the Golf Monthly office in Farnborough.

Would a more relaxed dress code help these golf clubs out that need a boost? Perhaps it would.

We need to keep the younger generations coming through as well as encourage new players of all different ages and genders.

Some are surely put off by golf's attitude to tell you what you can and can't wear.

I personally love golf's dress code. From everything to the shoes we wear to the trousers, polos and jumpers.

But that's just my view, a passionate golfer of many years. Who am I to judge a complete beginner or casual player for what they're wearing?

Would it bother me if a group of players were, say, wearing trainers? A hoody? God forbid a pair of jeans? Not in the slightest.

Jeans can look smarter than some old pair of golf trousers anyway...who is benefitting from turning golfers away for wearing jeans? Nobody.

And why couldn't someone wearing a football shirt be allowed to play a round of golf?

All four of the above football shirts actually look rather smart don't you think?

Fashion is always moving in golf, with the latest trends like Rickie Fowler's hi-top shoes and jogging bottoms, I feel a more relaxed approach could do the game some real good.

The standard rule is no collarless shirts on the course, but what about Rory McIlroy and a whole host of other Nike players who have been striding down the fairways of some of golf's most exclusive clubs in recent times wearing a collarless shirt?

Would the average player be allowed on at a, say, Riviera or Wentworth without a collar?

Maybe it's time to do away with the collar-only rule.

McIlroy, following on from Tiger, has made the collarless shirt fashionable again on Tour, and golf clubs are letting players on the course wearing these nowadays. They are sold in golf shops after all.

But then what happens if you turn up to a course wearing something similar, but without the Nike tick?

Now obviously a more relaxed dress code isn't going to work at some places, like members-only private clubs, that have a more traditional view on the subject.

But I feel those courses looking to bring in members of the paying public really shouldn't be putting them off by telling them what they can and can't wear.

Perhaps even members clubs could designate a Friday evening to allow golfers to wear whatever they like. They might find that green fee numbers significantly increase as well as takings behind the bar.

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Golf is a sport after all and in a time where gyms are overcrowded, could we see players allowed to wear leggings and gym wear? Gym wear is designed to look sporty after all.

Another bugbear is the footwear. An old crusty pair of golf shoes will be welcomed anywhere, but an elegant pair of running shoes or trainers would be turned away, despite them doing no damage to the golf course.

This is at a time where Rickie Fowler is wearing hi-tops and brands are bringing out golf shoes that look like trainers.

Yes, they may not offer the required grip and therefore would be no good in the rain, but in dry conditions there is nothing wrong with a player wearing trainers, in my opinion.

Another thing that a dress code does is force new players to the game to go out and buy golf-specific clothes.

Now that's fine for keen golfers like us, who enjoy spending the money on and wearing golf apparel, but for beginners it's a different story, they may not be prepared to shell out on new golf-only clothes.

A green fee of £30 is enough already without them having to spend £100+ on shoes, trousers and a polo in the pro shop or down the local American Golf store.

Do you think golf's dress code needs loosening? Or is it fine as it is? Let us know your thoughts on golf's dress code on the Golf Monthly Facebook and Twitter pages.

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Having seen some recent social media comments, I feel it is time to remember just how good Rory McIlroy is after a season plagued by injury

Stop Getting On Rory McIlroy's Back, We're Lucky To Have Him

This week marks Rory McIlroy's 10 year anniversary as a professional and I was shocked by some of the comments I saw regarding the four-time major winner's first 10 years as a pro.

And after he announced that he was playing the British Masters some were critical and downbeat, stating he was only playing because he wasn't playing well.

https://www.facebook.com/GolfMonthlyMagazine/photos/a.212796715407474.54233.193706507316495/1631378230215975/?type=3&theater

Related: Rory McIlroy's Gym Routine...Revealed!

Yes, that is correct - but we have Rory McIlroy playing in the British Masters for the first time since 2008. We should be happy.

It'll do wonders for the TV numbers, social media reach and general media fanfare, and genuine UK golf fans like myself will love seeing him back competing on the European Tour again.

He will then be playing in the Dunhill Links the following week too.

Let's support him as he looks for his first win of 2017, instead of criticise.

Rory McIlroy driver swing slo-mo:

https://www.facebook.com/GolfMonthlyMagazine/videos/vb.193706507316495/1631382910215507/?type=3&theater

Rory, as we've known for some time now, is a one-off and has a god-given talent to play the game we love so fondly.

The 28-year-old can do things in his swing that nobody else can do and nobody can teach.

The former world number one has had a poor year by his high standards, and that can primarily be put down to a rib injury, as well as a whole bag of new clubs, a new caddie and getting married.

Rory began the year with a runner-up finish in South Africa, playing mostly Callaway clubs and a Titleist ball, before the rib injury became too much after an off-season full of rigorous club testing thanks to Nike's departure from the hardware market.

And since then he's been injured nearly every time he's played. Speaking on the NoLayingUp podcast, he explained how he couldn't hit a fade for a period of weeks because he had to manipulate an in-to-out swing path to cope with the problem rib.

Rory McIlroy's coach Michael Bannon on his pupil:

Another factor to his winless season so far is more equipment changing. In May at the Players Championship he announced that he'd signed with TaylorMade, incidentally his rib injury flared up again at Sawgrass, and despite finding a setup he was happy with, he will still be learning things about his new clubs and ball right into next season.

Don't forget that in this 'poor' season he got married to his fiance Erica Stoll and despite his injury struggles and lack of wins, he will not be fussed and is clearly loving life.

That's because he knows that when he can get healthy again, sooner rather than later, things will click.

Don't forget that this is a man who, in late 2014, won the Open, the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and the USPGA Championship in consecutive weeks.

In this poor season of 2017, the four-time major winner has mustered up a top-4 finish at The Open after playing the first six holes in five-over-par, a top-7 at the Masters, a top-5 at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, a top-7 at the WGC-Mexico Championship, a top-4 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and, of course, that runner-up finish in South Africa where he lost out to Graeme Storm in a playoff.

That's still some record for a season in which he's been injured most of the time, been tinkering with equipment, got married and had struggles with his putting.

Oh, and not forgetting his caddie change after the Open, where he parted ways with long-time bagman JP Fitzgerald and hired his best mate Harry Diamond.

Related: Rory McIlroy's 30-minute warm-up for golf

The Ulsterman has won four majors, 22 titles, three Race to Dubai titles, the FedEx Cup and three Ryder Cups.

This stat from the European Tour below is quite astonishing...in 238 starts he's finished inside the top 10 more than 50% of the time.

So what next for Rory?

He will play the British Masters and Dunhill Links before taking six weeks off where he won't even touch a golf club, according to what he told the NoLayingUp podcast.

Related: Rory McIlroy: What's in the bag?

It will all turn around soon enough and come April at the Masters, we hope, he will be fit, healthy and ready to go in a 2018 season where I struggle to see him not capturing his fifth major, at least.

How do you think Rory McIlroy will get on at the British Masters and Dunhill Links Championship? And what does 2018 hold for him? Let us know on our social media channels.

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Don't write off Europe too fast, the 2018 European Ryder Cup team will be incredibly strong

Why The 2018 European Ryder Cup Team Will Be Seriously Strong

The race to qualify for Thomas Bjorn's 2018 European Ryder Cup Team begins this week at the Czech Masters and after having a look at the current European roster, next year's team could be seriously strong.

Looking at 2016's side, USA were rightly the favourites with Darren Clarke taking six rookies out to Hazeltine, however 2018's team for Paris will definitely be strong enough to regain the trophy.

As things stand, there are 10 Europeans in the top 20 of the Official World Golf Ranking - there are just six Americans.

Related: 5 reasons to go to the 2018 Ryder Cup in Paris

In the top 10 we have the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm (who will certainly be making his Ryder Cup debut next year), Sergio Garcia and Henrik Stenson.

Then from 11 - 20, we have Alex Noren (a Ryder Cup rookie who now has nine European Tour titles to his name), Paul Casey, Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Francesco Molinari and Rafa Cabrera Bello.

Yes, Paul Casey is not currently a member of the European Tour however he has said that he will play another Ryder Cup.

If he somehow joins the European Tour next year then he would surely be one of Thomas Bjorn's wildcard picks. I'd truly love Casey to be in that side, but it does seem unlikely.

This time around, Bjorn will have four wildcard picks to add to four European points qualifiers and four World points qualifiers.

From the world points list, we will likely have Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Sergio Garcia and Henrik Stenson, and then from the European list we could have Alex Noren, Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari.

Now obviously not all of those eight players will qualify automatically in order of their August 2017 world ranking, and we should expected that there will be some surprises down the road.

Don't forget 2016 Ryder Cup hero Thomas Pieters either, or Tyrrell Hatton, Matt Fitzpatrick, Chris Wood, Ross Fisher, Martin Kaymer or Bernd Wiesberger.

The list goes on...The likes of Thorbjorn Olesen, Alexander Levy, who of course will want to play in front of his home fans at Le Golf National next year, Shane Lowry, Soren Kjeldsen, Joost Luiten and Jordan Smith all have the ability to win potentially twice before the qualifiers are confirmed after next year's Made in Denmark.

Oh, and what about the Postman Ian Poulter?

Poults is now rejuvenated and climbing back towards the OWGR top 50, currently at #61 having been as low as #204 in March.

The Englishman had a great Open Championship, finished 3rd at the Canadian Open and 22nd at the USPGA Championship.

If he can continue this form then he will surely pick up another W before next September and stake his claim to be in that team.

So, despite the US side having the likes of DJ, Spieth, Fowler, Thomas, Kuchar, Bubba and co, the European side have all the ingredients to win the cup back.

Here's my predicted 12...

Rory McIlroy Jon Rahm Henrik Stenson Sergio Garcia Justin Rose Thomas Pieters Alex Noren Ian Poulter Tommy Fleetwood Francesco Molinari Rafa Cabrera Bello Matt Fitzpatrick

Let us know what your predicted 12 will be and tell us who you think will win next year at Le Golf National!

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