Finding Your Missing Piece: How Proper Instruction Transforms Your Golf Swing After 15+ years teaching golfers at every level—from weekend warriors to tour professionals—I’ve noticed something remarkable happens when a player finally understands the “why” behind their swing. They don’t just improve their mechanics. They transform their entire approach to the game. One of my students recently told me something that stays with me: “You just gave me the missing piece to my golf swing.” That simple statement captures what I believe instruction should do. It’s not about overhauling your entire technique or chasing the latest trend. It’s about identifying…

Why Golf’s Greatest Upsets Still Matter: A 35-Year Perspective on Unpredictability After three and a half decades covering professional golf – and yes, I’ve spent more than my fair share of time lugging bags for some of the game’s greats – I’ve learned one immutable truth: golf has a peculiar way of humbling even the most confident prognosticators among us. We saw it again recently when a thoughtful piece circulated highlighting some of golf’s most shocking upsets. Reading through that list, I found myself reflecting not just on what happened in those moments, but what they reveal about the nature…

Ben Hogan PTx Max Hybrid: Larger Head Design Delivers More Consistency Than Advertised Forgiveness Ben Hogan’s reputation has always rested on blade irons for the purist—clubs that demand precision and reward a pure strike. But hybrids tell a different story, and the new PTx Max challenges one of the dominant trends in hybrid design: the race toward smaller, sleeker heads. After spending considerable time with this club on the range and course, I’ve found the larger profile delivers real performance benefits, though not necessarily in the ways Ben Hogan’s marketing department would have you believe. The engineering philosophy here is…

Stop Chasing the Magic Bullet: Duncan McCarthy’s Simple Truth About Getting Better at Golf After 35 years watching golfers of all stripes—from tour pros grinding for majors to weekend warriors grinding through Saturday morning fourballs—I’ve noticed something interesting happens every January. The range fills up with renewed purpose. New drivers arrive. Golf books get dusted off. There’s this palpable sense that this year, finally, we’ll unlock whatever’s been holding us back. Then by March, most of us are playing pretty much the same as we did in December. Mental performance coach Duncan McCarthy, who’s spent 15 years working with tour…

Gotterup’s Breakthrough Masks a Deeper Story: Matsuyama’s Collapse and Golf’s Playoff Roulette There’s a moment in every caddie’s life when you realize that tournaments aren’t won—they’re often lost. Having stood in the bag for Tom Lehman during his own playoff heartbreaks, I recognized something familiar watching Hideki Matsuyama’s final nine holes at TPC Scottsdale on Sunday. It wasn’t Gotterup’s brilliant closing stretch that’ll stick with me. It was Matsuyama’s unraveling, and what it tells us about the fragility of leads in modern professional golf. Let’s be clear: Chris Gotterup earned his Phoenix Open victory. A closing 7-under 64 punctuated by…

Cold Weather Golf: How to Play Smarter When the Temperature Drops When Charley Hull arrived at Lake Nona for the LPGA Tour’s 2026 season opener, she encountered something that catches most Florida golfers off guard: freezing temperatures. In my fifteen years teaching golfers of all levels, I’ve noticed that cold weather challenges aren’t just about discomfort—they fundamentally change how your golf ball behaves, how your body performs, and most importantly, how you need to think about your game. The good news? Understanding these changes gives you a massive advantage over golfers who ignore them. Let me walk you through what’s…

Srixon’s ZXi Expansion: Smart Strategy, But Let’s Talk Real Performance Gains Srixon just announced an expansion of their ZXi lineup, and I’ll be honest—this move makes more business sense than it does technical sense. After spending the better part of two decades testing clubs on launch monitors and fitting everything from recreational golfers to low-handicappers, I’ve learned to separate genuine innovation from strategic product segmentation. The ZXi expansion falls somewhere in between, and that’s worth examining. The core pitch is straightforward: bring the proven ZXi technology to a wider audience at different price points. That’s not inherently a bad thing.…

The Phoenix Open Still Knows How to Deliver—And What Chris Gotterup’s Win Tells Us About Modern Tour Depth I’ve been covering professional golf for 35 years, and I’ve watched the WM Phoenix Open evolve from a quirky desert stop into one of the most reliably dramatic events on the PGA Tour schedule. This year’s edition at TPC Scottsdale didn’t disappoint, though the outcome might have surprised plenty of casual observers who expected Scottie Scheffler or one of the other heavy hitters to claim victory. They didn’t. Instead, Chris Gotterup—a player who doesn’t dominate the conversation around tour dominance—walked away with…

Scottie’s Phoenix Stumble: A Reminder That Even the Best Have Rough Fridays I’ve been covering professional golf for 35 years, and I’ve learned that the most compelling stories aren’t always about the victories. Sometimes they’re about the 73s—particularly when they come from the world’s best player in the middle of an otherwise spectacular run. Scottie Scheffler’s opening round at the 2026 WM Phoenix Open was, by his standards, a disaster. And yet, watching the reaction from certain corners of the golf world, you’d think he’d missed the cut entirely. Let me be clear about something: one bad round doesn’t redefine…

Gotterup’s Hot Hand Reveals a Tour in Flux—And That’s Not Necessarily a Bad Thing In 35 years covering professional golf, I’ve learned that momentum is as real as a Scottsdale sun-baked fairway. Chris Gotterup just proved it spectacularly at TPC Scottsdale, and what strikes me most isn’t just that he won—it’s what his back-to-back victories tell us about the current state of PGA Tour competition. Let me be direct: the tour feels more wide-open than it has in years, and Gotterup’s surge is Exhibit A. When the Hottest Player Beats the Most Reliable Hideki Matsuyama came into Sunday looking like…