Viktor Hovland won the Hero World Challenge on Sunday to join tournament host Tiger Woods as the only back-to-back winners.

Thriston Lawrence holds on to win his home South African Open despite a final-round 2-over 74.

Rory McIlroy says Greg Norman's "brainwash" comment led to his decision to "be as much of a pain," to the LIV Golf CEO and commissioner as possible.

Ashleigh Buhai has survived an afternoon of carnage to win the Australian Open and achieve a feat not even Cameron Smith can claim.

Adrian Meronk is the first Polish player to win the Australian Open after romping to a five-stroke victory at Victoria Golf Club.

Viktor Hovland made 10 birdies Saturday to finish at 8-under 64, giving him a three-shot lead as he seeks back-to-back wins at the Hero World Challenge.

Cameron Smith can carry on drinking after his wildly successful 2022 season petered out to an anticlimactic conclusion in Melbourne.

Scottie Scheffler is No. 2 at the Hero World Challenge and No. 2 in the world ranking.

There is a lot of cool gear in the golf equipment world that doesn’t always fit neatly into Most Wanted Tests or Buyer’s Guides. You still want to know how it performs. In our We Tried It series, we put gear to the test and let you know if it works as advertised.

What We Tried

Fairway Jockey—An online option for golfers who want custom-built equipment but like the option to order off-menu.

Product Expert

Chris Nickel. I’m a tinkerer by nature. I like to build things, break them apart and then build them again. Golf clubs, steak fajitas … really anything goes. Beyond that, I have a penchant for lesser-known, and occasionally hard-to-find, equipment brands.

A Word About Fairway Jockey

Golfers have a number of options when it comes to purchasing new equipment. Big-box retailers (Golf Galaxy, PGA TOUR Superstore, DICK’S), local green-grass accounts and DTC (direct-to-consumer) options each have clear benefits with few drawbacks. The primary upside is convenience but the cost for that is often a one-size-fits-most selection of product. Some locations offer fitting services, the quality of which often varies more than the wait time at the local DMV. 

More discerning consumers might work with a local mom and pop fitter or at a brand-sponsored demo day.

Adam Scott hopes class and experience will prevail after snatching a share of the Australian Open halfway lead with a spectacular finish to his course-record-equalling second round.

Sepp Straka managed six birdies at rain-soaked Albany for a 3-under 69 that gave him a share of the Hero World Challenge lead at the Hero World Challenge with defending champion Viktor Hovland, Tom Kim and Collin Morikawa.

Welcome to this year’s Golfer’s Choice Awards.

There’s a quote we refer to often at MyGolfSpy: “Brands are not just what they say they are. Brands are what consumers say they are.”

That’s certainly true in the golf world where companies tell us who they are— or at least who they want us to think they are all of the time.

Does that really matter? What do the golfers who buy their products think? More aptly, of whom do they think?

To find out, we asked golfers to tell us the first brand they think of when they hear some of the golf equipment industry’s most powerful words.

The Best Holiday Gifts of 2022

Now that you’re done eating your fill of Thanksgiving turkey and you are thinking about what to get your family members for Christmas, we’ve got some wonderful ideas—at least for the golf obsessed. We’ve done all the hard work to create a holiday gift guide that makes it easy for you to pick out the best present for any golfer on your list (or yourself!).

Garmin Approach S62 plus CT10 Bundle

Why Buy: 

Not only does the Garmin Approach S62 plus CT10 Bundle include your typical health and fitness tracking, it includes a plethora of golf features such as distance to the pin and automatic club tracking.

PERFECT PRACTICE Putting Mat Bundle

Why Buy:

This bundle has everything to help improve your putting score. The high quality mat is 9’6″ long and includes their putting mirror to aid in head and shoulder alignment.

PAYNTR X 002 LE Spikeless Golf Shoes

Why Buy:

The best of the best Spikeless Golf Shoe for 2022, the PAYNTR X 002 LE features a leather upper that is both supple and waterproof. Don’t worry about traction—it took the top spot in our traction test. Walking 18 holes never felt so good!

TaylorMade Stealth Driver

Why Buy:

This is the eighth in a series of blogs to help you simplify your knowledge of golf and hopefully improve your game. [These tips are distilled from an article published by Luke Kerr-Dineen for a GOLF franchise called “Play Smart”.]

26/ Know Your Cover Number: There are lots of numbers that come into a pro golfer’s consideration whenever they set their sights on the green. But there’s one above all else that reigns supreme: It’s the yardage to the front of the green, which pros call the “cover number.” “The COVER is a number players know they absolutely need to hit their shot,” says GOLF Top 100 Teacher Boyd Summerhays, who teaches Tony Finau. “It’s really important.” When your COVER NUMBER is paired with the distance to the back edge, it illustrates the size of your target zone.

You should know the distance that each of your clubs will cover when you execute a great shot. Unfortunately your perfect shots occur less than 50% of the time. Why not up your club and hit with 80% of your power to ensure that you reach the green or roll out to the center of the green.

27/ Improve Your Green Reading: Is it better to over-read putts or under-read them? Mark Sweeney, the inventor of the groundbreaking green-reading system Aimpoint, found that it is better to err on the side of over-reading putts. Putts rolling downhill keep rolling and take longer to lose their speed. In the example below a putt that has been over-read (above the hole) by 12 inches will trickle down to about six inches above the hole. A putt of the same speed that has been under-read by 12 inches will take more of the slope and keep rolling all the way out to 36 inches.

Golf is a game of perfection, but you will never improve your scores if you don’t apply the basic swing to improve the consistency of your hits. Practice with GOLFSTR+ for all of your swings to limit wrist and elbow bends where you should not be bending. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

 

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When we conduct the MyGolfSpy Most Wanted Driver test each year, the price of the club is not one of the ranking categories. The performance takes the cake and then you can work out whether or not the driver fits your budget. However, we do understand the importance of value in golf equipment. If you have been waiting for one of the top drivers of 2022 to start dropping in price, now is the time.

The Mizuno ST-Z 220 is now 33 percent off. The ST-Z 220 ranked first for overall forgiveness in 2022 and had solid feedback for feel and overall design.

Mizuno ST-Z 220 Features and Benefits

The Mizuno ST-Z 220 features a few new technologies that helped it gain some of its forgiveness. The club features a forged SAT2041 Beta-Ti Face. The high strength and resiliency promote higher ball speed and greater durability of the club head.

In addition, Cortech technology is incorporated into the clubface of the ST-Z 220. Cortech creates different layers of thickness, resulting in more forgiveness low on the face. The low-on-the-face miss is quite common for amateur golfers so companies like Mizuno are always looking for solutions.

With four degrees of loft adjustability, this driver should work for the just about any handicap level. The Z-Axis design uses a combination of carbon composite in different areas on the club head to make it a bit more biased towards a straight flight. This is not a draw-biased driver but instead designed to go straight, which it does.

Successful touring professionals don’t really have to watch their budget when it comes to the equipment and training aids they purchase. But we do. More than 100 tour pros using a tool priced less than $100 certainly deserved a bit of investigation. The DownUnder Board 2.0 training aid claims to teach you what a professional golf swing feels like.

Whether or not you will gain a tour-level golf swing for less than $100 is up for debate but some good concepts in this DownUnder Board 2.0 are worth checking out.

What Is The DownUnder Board 2.0?

At first glance, the DownUnder Board looks like an adjustable tabletop or computer workspace but it’s a golf training aid designed to work on things like stance, posture, transition, impact and even finish. The DownUnder Board 2.0 works with everything from your pitching wedge to the driver. It is used by more than 100 touring professionals including Brendon Todd, Harold Varner II, Robert Allenby, Luke Donald and Christina Kim.

PGA TOUR coach Bradley Hughes designed the concept and that certainly helped him to get some tour presence early on in the process. He still offers videos with each DownUnder Board 2.0 purchase so that you can learn his tricks of the trade.

The board’s purpose is to help golfers learn about ground forces in their swing from setup to backswing, transition and, ultimately, the finish. We know that weight needs to be transferred but where is that weight in your golf swing and how are you directing the forces?

Golf shoes are regularly priced between $150 and $350. If you are on a budget but need a new pair of golf shoes, we have you covered with this list of the five best golf shoes under $100. When the price of golf shoes drops below $100, expect to give up a few features but some of these top choices scored well on our 2022 Most Wanted Spikeless and 2022 Most Wanted Spiked golf shoe tests. Here are three spikeless and two spiked models that will leave you comfortable, stable and with a few more dollars to your name.

Five Best Golf Shoes Under $100

To ensure that we looked at all the best golf shoes in the game, we pulled the results of two MyGolfSpy Most Wanted tests which included 69 pairs of shoes between the spiked and the spikeless models combined. The Skechers Go Golf Max 2 Golf Shoes were the highest-ranked shoe below that $100 mark.

Best Overall: Skechers GO GOLF Max 2 Golf Shoes

Key Features

The Skechers GO GOLF Max 2 golf shoes got a total ranking of 92/100 this year with solid ratings in both comfort and elements. The GO GOLF Max 2 is podiatrist certified for arch support. This is probably how the shoe scores so high in comfort. However, when it comes to stability and traction, the Skechers GO GOLF Max 2 were in the middle of the pack.

One features is removable insoles that reduce shock and make the shoe comfortable. Weight dispersion is also increased with the insole in place. The shoes themselves are considered ultralightweight and this is a spikeless model.

All Skechers GO GOLF Max 2 golf shoes have a one-year waterproof protection warranty. The design is pretty basic but if you care about your feet and want a shoe that doesn’t hurt, the GO GOLF Max 2 has a lot to offer.

 

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