Big Play

VIJAY SINGH missed nary a putt and overpowered the TPC of Scottsdale with heat-seeking 340-yard drives, but the decisive moment in his three-stroke win wasn't a shot he hit. That moment came when John Huston suffered one of the cruelest breaks I've ever seen in tournament golf. Having made three straight birdies to trim Singh's lead to two strokes, Huston was on a roll when he reached the 16th hole, a 162-yard par-3. He flushed a nine-iron, and the shot had ace written all over it. Instead, the ball hit the flagstick dead center and ricocheted back off the front of the green, coming to rest at the bottom of a swale about 60 feet from the hole. A stunned Huston could offer only a one-word response: "Wow." If the ball had missed the stick, he wouid've been left with a surefire birdie to cut the lead to one stroke. If the ball had gone in, who knows how the final holes would have played out. This much is certain: At the 17th—a drivable par-4—Huston, who wouid've just completed four consecutive holes under par, surely would have been primed to hit a great tee shot. Instead, after settling for par at 16 and still reeling from his horrible break, he yanked his drive into the pond that fronts the left side of the 17th green, sinking any chance he had of catching Singh.

THE TIP
THE KEY TO GAINING EXTRA YARDS IS A SIMPLE EQUATION: More lag equals more power equals more distance. Lag is the act of keeping the wrists cocked and the clubhead trailing behind the hands during the downswing. To create lag, you must cock the wrists more than 90 degrees during the backswing (the Tour average is 114) and sustain that angle until your hands are over the ball. This is done by swinging primarily with the lower body, not the arms. Here's my favorite drill for creating lag: Put a headcover a foot behind the ball. Take a mid-iron and set up with the club hovering a couple of inches in the air. Take the club back—avoiding the headcover—and cock your wrists, maintaining that 90-plus-degree angle. If you sustain the lag in the downswing, as I do in the YES pictures above, your club won't touch the headcover. In photo 1 of the NO pictures, the wrists are not cocked sufficiently, and by photo 2 the lag has been lost.

OUR TOP TEACHER SAYS...

"It's great to have Robert Gamez, who tied for third in Phoenix, back from the dead. The Tour needs more players with his panache."

"A major club manufacturer tells me that the limit has been reached on increasing distance through technology. From now on, extra yards will have to come from stronger players and better technique."

"Arnold Palmer should quit competing, I hate to see a legend like Arnie tarnish his great career with outings such as last week's Senior Skins, at which he was shut out."

"Rich Beem, who is off to an awful start in 2003, looks like a one-hit wonder. He is lucky that a couple of hot weeks now makes you a multimillionaire."

Keith Lyford, 50, an instructor based in Lenox, Mass., is one of Golf Magazine's Top 100 Teachers.