The Masters Preview is always one of our favorite issues of the year, but this edition also marks the start of a new era in Golf Digest. For the first time, the best of our content is being made available digitally without an app. This means more stories can be told more richly with enhanced multimedia elements, and it means accessing all of the magazine content a week or more before the issue would land in your mailbox. And this easier, better organized offering is just the start of what we've named Golf Digest+.
As a first example of what you get with Golf Digest+, check out writer David Owen's astonishing research project, "Welcome to Georgia National: An Alternate History of the Home of the Masters." Yes, Georgia National was seriously considered as the name for what the world now knows as Augusta National. This was back in 1930 when founders Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones initially envisioned a club with 1,800 members, tennis, swimming pools, horses, homes lining two or maybe three courses, and a place in the U.S. Open rota. Had the financial collapse of the Great Depression not inexorably altered these plans, illustrator Violet Frances imagined what the property might look like today. Together, Owen and Frances put forth a wild and compelling fantasy for students of golf history.
A notable first-time participant in this year's Masters Tournament will be Australia's Min Woo Lee. His older sister is none other than major champion Min Jee Lee. While an instruction story with the headline "Three Shots You Need To Escape Trouble Around The Green” sounds like something you might have read in Golf Digest in any decade, not until now has advice for your game been so clear and intuitive.
Of course, at the core of Golf Digest+ remains traditionally told stories. Like award-winning writer Chris Jones helping us see what's hiding in plain sight in the morass of the Internet. In the 3,500-word "Bryson DeChambeau Has a Headache," Jones considers the cliff edge on which golf's most polarizing figure now stands through the prism of the social marginalization of his own affected teenage son.
As you already know, golf is so much bigger than just the pro tours and their daily reports of birdies, bogeys and soap operatics. Our great game encompasses all who play and love it, and Golf Digest remains committed to investigating its most important topics and trends. In "The Country Club Arms Race," writer Peter Finch investigates why so many clubs have met the pandemic with massive capital-improvement projects, and what this means for the future of golf, family and club dues.
But as I tried to say earlier, Golf Digest+ is about much more than the current issue. It also includes access to our archive, which will soon be searchable by subject or player, dating back to our founding in 1950 Nowhere else will you be able to find rare photos like these of a young Eldrick Woods growing into Tiger.
As fun as it'll be to dig through the archive at your own direction, with Golf Digest+ you'll also receive regular curated email-newsletters from our top editors so you don’t have to search for what’s really good to read.
So this is the part where we ask for some money. Not much. To join GD+ costs just $2 a month, or $30 annually with a print magazine, too. This supports the continuation of our legacy of producing golf's highest-quality journalism. You know, like in the last issue, when we embedded a crew in the Costa Rican jungle to shadow PGA Tour player Morgan Hoffmann as he battles muscular dystrophy through ancient healing methods.
Without ambitious reporting by professionals, storytelling in golf slowly diminishes. Golf Digest is not the first and will not be the last media company to erect a “paywall.” ESPN, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair are but a few of many titles who've asked their readers for what’s fair in the new economic reality of a connected content world.
The good news is much of what you’ve come to expect from Golf Digest online will stay the same. Non-subscribers can still read three premium Golf Digest articles a month and all of our daily news coverage for free.
But if golf is important in your life—mere thoughts about the game keep you upbeat in the hardest of times-- I don’t think you’ll regret trying Golf Digest+. Whether subscribing turns you into a plus-handicap, well, for that we make no guarantees.