Louis Oosthuizen shows you how to be a better bunker player!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Bunker play is not as complicated as some people think. A few key elements are shared here by fellow countryman Louis Oosthuizen, in conjunction with Golf Digest’s Video Series “Tips from the Tour.” The ball position and clubface angle at address will make all the difference. Check this out!
Louis Oosthuizen offers golf bunker shot tips you can watch and share while on the green.
Join Charl Schwartzel on an awesome helicopter ride in Dubai!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Something that I was not aware of is that Charl Schwartzel, Masters Champion, is also a qualified helicopter pilot! So when he and Louis Oosthuizen were in Dubai for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship on the European Tour, Charl decided that it would be neat to commute to the hotel via a Bell helicopter.
Join Charl & Louis as they give you a birds-eye view of Dubai and the Atlantis, The Palm – the Official Hotel for the DP World Tour Championship. As usual, thanks to the European Tour for sharing this awesome video!
I Love it when People Mistake Arnold Palmer for ‘Tom Collins’!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Time for your daily laugh.
I’ve always loved those man-in-the-street clips by people like Jay Leno. This one involves an intern from Golf Digest and South African Pro golfer, Louis Oosthuizen.
It is all about identifying famous golfers. The one where New Yorkers are shown a picture of Arnold Palmer is hilarious. And Oosthuizen’s behavior reveals once again why he is loved by peers and fans worldwide.
11 of the Prettiest Swings in Golf – #2 is my favorite!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
As a teenager learning the game of golf, I always wanted to have one of the prettiest swings around! I would get home from school and stand in the back yard and swing for hours trying to emulate Gary Player, who was my idol growing up! Those hours of swinging stood me in good stead through the years.
DEREK CLEMENTS of Swing by Swing features golfers considered to have pretty swings. I don’t agree with all of them, but what do you think? Post your comments below!
There are endless arguments and discussions about who possesses the best swing in golf. In truth, it’s all in the eye of the beholder and a gorgeous technique does not guarantee success. But the criteria for making this list is that the swings we feature are all things of beauty (with one exception). You will note that Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Seve Ballesteros do not feature, despite accumulating 53 majors between them, and that is because none of them fit or fitted the criteria – which just goes to show that if you have enough talent, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. ##Fred Couples
The American has an incredibly strong left-hand grip, and he drops the club at the top of his backswing (no, not literally!) So why does he feature in a list of great golf swings? If you have ever seen him hit a golf ball, you know the answer to that question.
Louis Oosthuizen
It defies belief that the South African has yet to add to his solitary major title. When he won The Open at St Andrews in 2010 he was in a league by himself – and it could be argued that his swing has improved since then. A great golf swing is one that ordinary people can aspire to, and there are no kinks to Oosthuizen’s action.
Who is Zack Rasego, and why should you know about him?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
In the days that I played on the South African PGA Tour, we would just pick up a caddie at the course each Monday on arrival.
Caddies did not travel with players as they do now. My best finish in a PGA event was in the Cape Open Tournament and was played at King David Golf Club in Cape Town. I hired a caddie called Banana, and he was the best caddie I ever had. He could read greens like no one else, and he knew how to talk me through tough shots. He was worth 3 or 4 shots each round, and I had a great week.
The point I’m making is that a good caddie is like a secret club in the bag. Get a good one, and your game can go to another level. This happened when Brandon Grace hired Zack Rasego, who had already caddied for Louis Oosthuizen in his British Open victory. You have seen how Brandon has performed in this year’s Majors. Brandon is now a force to be reckoned with, and I predict he will win on the PGA Tour in the next 12 months!
Zack Rasego and Branden Grace have been making some noise on the golf course.
The caddie-golfer combo have won 3 times since December 2014 between the European Tourand Sunshine Tour.
The two had a career, award-winning year together in 2012.
And like his boss, Rasego is from South Africa. Rasego is from Rustenburg, one of the official host cities of the 2010 World Cup.
Here’s what you need to know about Rasego:
1. Rasego Caddies for Brandon Grace
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – JANUARY 13: Branden Grace of South Africa speaks with his caddie Zack Rasego during the second round of the Joburg Open at Royal Johannesburg and Kensington Golf Club on January 13, 2012 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)
As mentioned above, both Rasego and Grace are South African natives.
Grace is from Pretoria, Rasego the North West Province of the country.
Rasego, 51, has been caddying since he was a teenager, getting an early chance at carrying bags for South African legend Gary Player on the European Tour.
80th Anniversary of ‘Shot Heard Around the World.’
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
In 1935, in just the second Masters ever, Gene Sarazen holed a 4-wood from 235 yards for an ‘albatross’ at the par-5 15th hole.
South Africans like myself, and golfers from every other continent outside the USA, refer to a score of 3-under par on a hole as an albatross. Because an eagle is a 2-under par, a ‘double eagle’ would be 4-under par, and Sarazen scored a 2 on the hole, not a hole-in-one.
For an article debunking the ‘double eagle’ term, Read this USA Today story
By whatever name, it’s one of the rarest shots in golf. There have been 3 other albatrosses at Augusta National . . . Bruce Devlin in 1967, Jeff Maggert in 1994, and Louis Oosthuizen in 2012. But Sarazen’s was the first, the most famous, and led to his winning the tournament.
The 1935 field was incredibly strong and included Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, Paul Runyon, and many more legends of the game.
80th Anniversary of ‘Shot Heard Around the World.’
Sarazen put the Masters on the map!
It was called the “shot heard around the world.”
No, not the one at Concord’s Old North Bridge in 1775 that ignited the American Revolutionary War and launched a new country – this one happened in Augusta, Ga., in 1935, some 160 years later.
But to a golfer, this shot was almost as significant, as it vaulted the Masters Tournament into the big time.
This shot wasn’t taken with a musket, but by Gene Sarazen (pictured above receiving the winner’s check from the 1935 Masters) with his 4-wood – it was called a spoon then – from 235 yards on the 15th hole in the fourth round. It flew straight as any shot in Lexington and Concord and found the cup for the rarest one of all – a double eagle – a 2 on a par-5 hole!
By the time Sarazen reached the 1935 Masters, the second one played, he was already an established star.
Born Eugenio Saracini in Harrison, N.Y., in 1902, he later changed his name to Gene Sarazen because he felt it sounded like a golfer’s name, as opposed to his birth name that he thought better suited to an opera singer. Dropping out of school in the sixth grade, Sarazen caddied at the nearby Apawamis Club where he reportedly saw Harold Hilton – the winner of four British Amateurs and two British Opens – win the 1911 U.S. Amateur.
As a 20-year old he won the U.S. Open at Skokie in 1922, shooting a 68 in the final round, the first player to shoot under 70 to win.
He added the PGA Championship at Oakmont later that year. With great bravado he challenged golf’s supreme showman, Walter Hagen, to a 72-hole event for the “world championship,” and won. Repeating his victory in the PGA the next year, Sarazen won numerous tournaments in the ensuing years – his total eventually reaching 39 PGA Tour victories. In 1932, on the strength of his new-fangled invention, the sand wedge, he won the British Open at Sandwich, then the U.S. Open at Fresh Meadow, for a historic double in the world’s two major Open Championships. In 1933 he added a third PGA at Blue Mound in Wisconsin.
The 1935 Masters featured an incredibly strong field of 64. All four of the reigning U.S. national champions were entered – Olin Dutra, Open; Lawson Little, Amateur; Paul Runyon, PGA; and Charlie Yates, Intercollegiate (NCAA). There were also nine former National Open champs, including the sainted Bobby Jones, and two former British Open victors. It was quite a formidable field, fitting for what would ultimately become America’s most cherished golf tournament.
The fourth round started with Craig Wood leading at 209, on the strength of a 4-under 68 the previous day. Olin Dutra was second at 210, Henry Picard third on 211 and Gene Sarazen fourth with 212.
Dutra, with a 42 on the front, shot himself out of the tournament, despite a stellar 32 on the back, ultimately finishing third. Picard, paired with Wood, shot a 38 on the front en route to a 75 and fourth place.
Ultimately, only Sarazen stood to challenge Wood.
With a 39 on the front, Wood missed a 20-inch putt on the 10th for bogey. He then went on one of the great rallies of the tournament, making three birdies in a row – the 13th, 14th and 15th – before bogeying the 16th and, with a final flourish, birdied the 18th, to finish with a 73 and a 282 total.
Sarazen, paired with his pal and rival Walter Hagen, was playing an hour behind Wood. Even par on the ninth tee before making a bad bogey-5 for a 1-over-par 37 on the front, Sarazen was only one behind Wood at that point. On the 14th tee, Sarazen, two behind Wood now, hooked his drive into the rough leaving some 200 yards to the mounded, undulating uphill green. Hearing a distant roar from the area of the 18th green, word quickly reached the duo that Wood had birdied the final hole to extend his lead to three. Now Sarazen needed three birdies over the last five holes to simply tie Wood. Tough? Yes. Doable? Maybe.
O.B. Keeler, reporting in The American Golfer, related the needling byplay between the two friends:
Hagen: “Well Gene, that looks like it’s all over.”
Sarazen: “Oh, I don’t know. They might go in from anywhere.”
It is almost a cliché to say truer words may never have been spoken.
Sarazen proceeded to hit his first great 4-wood of the day as he ripped the ball out of the left rough, reaching the green, but ultimately leaving a putt of some 100 feet. Two putting for a par – the second one of some 6 feet – he came to the fateful 15th hole and his date with golf immortality.
Hitting a fine drive of some 265 yards to the right side of the 15th fairway, Sarazen had a full 4-wood of some 230 yards off a close, wet lie in cold, heavy air to a green fronted by water.
Jones, perhaps realizing the moment, decided to come down from the clubhouse to see if Sarazen could catch Wood, thinking he needed three birdies coming in to force a playoff. He reached Sarazen and Hagen just as a young Byron Nelson, playing the adjacent 17th hole, pushed his drive near where Sarazen’s ball had come to rest.
So, all four of those ultimately on golf’s Mount Olympus – the hallowed Jones, the flamboyant Hagen and the soon-to-be great Nelson, watched as Sarazen’s arrow-like 4-wood hit a foot before the green, “…bounded once – twice – and settled to a smooth roll, while the ripple of sound from the big gallery went sweeping into a crescendo – and then the tornado broke,” according to Keeler.
80th Anniversary of ‘Shot Heard Around the World.’
Eugenio Saracini, now the golfer Gene Sarazen, had made all three birdies with one swing of his now magical 4-wood.
In an almost anti-climatic 36-hole playoff the next day, Sarazen defeated Wood by five strokes, 144 to 149.
No less an authority than Grantland Rice, America’s first great sports writer and a founding member of Augusta National, called it “ … the most thrilling single golf shot ever played.”
Even now, with the passage of 75 Masters Tournaments, one can clearly say without equivocation or hyperbole that Rice’s simple assessment of Sarazen’s shot is as appropriate today as it was in 1935.
It may have been Jones’ reputation for sterling play and sportsmanship that leant credibility and panache to this new tournament, but it was Sarazen who indelibly put the Masters on the map for all time with his “shot heard ‘round the world.”
Does Louis Oosthuizen have the Best Swing in the World?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Check out the great swing of Louis Oosthuizen. Most of his peers regard Louis as having the best swing in the world.
Louis Oosthuizen proudly displays the 2010 Open Championship Trophy.
Check out the great swing of Louis Oosthuizen. Most of his peers regard Louis as having the best swing in the world. Watch Pete Cowan, Louis’ coach, put him through his paces as Golfing World films him with a high-speed camera that films at 6000 frames per second.
