Best Golf Lessons of 2014

Best Golf Lessons of 2014 from Golf Digest.

What happened on the biggest stages in golf this year has more to do with your game than you think.

1. Sometimes you shouldn’t play hurt.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods withdrew from the Honda Classic with a back injury, played four rounds at Doral, then missed four months after back surgery. He came back two months earlier than normal from the procedure and struggled some more at the British and PGA before shutting it down for the year in August. Part of the reason he switched instructors was to find a swing easier on his body.

Bubba Watson

Curving the ball a lot is OK.
Nothing Bubba Watson does on the golf course is conventional, from the pink shafts on his driver to the way he plays 40 yards of curve on tee shots. At the Masters, he saw giant parabolas that nobody else in the field considered, shortening every hole and earning him his second green jacket.

How He Hit That: Bubba’s Curveball

Lexi Thompson

Play the final pairing like match play.
The LPGA’s new next teenaged big thing, Lexi Thompson, was paired in the final round of the Kraft Nabisco with the last teenaged star, Michelle Wie. Nerves would have been natural, but Thompson showed none. While Wie played conservatively, Thompson put the pressure on with booming drivers and a barrage of birdies. She opened a five-shot lead at the turn and coasted to her first major win.

Martin Kaymer

It takes courage to make big swing changes.
Martin Kaymer won the 2010 PGA Championship and moved to No. 1 in the World Rankings shortly after. He completely remade his swing so he could reliably work the ball both ways and struggled three years before changing back to his old action. It was a good decision. Kaymer conquered both the Players Championship and the U.S. Open in 2014.

How He Hit That: Martin Kaymer’s New Old Swing

There are nine more golf lessons that you read about in Golf Digest.