Our favorite Golf Digest portraits of 2018

Plenty of thought goes into the words you read each month in Golf Digest (and online each day at GolfDigest.com). But the same can be said for the photos that accompany each story. A diligent group of photo editors spend countless hours planning photo shoots with our various subject to try and bring their personalities to the page. What you see below are some of the best images we captured in 2018, a showcase of portraits that give character to the characters you’ve read about.

At the start of his comeback in 2018—before anyone knew for sure whether he would finally become a winner again—Tiger Woods posed for our February cover/instruction story and helped explain why he was (rightly) optimistic about the upcoming season.

Claude Harmon III had fun with us for this February photo shoot that accompanied an insightful “My Shot” interview about growing up in a prominent golf family.

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England’s Tommy Fleetwood, our cover subject in April, continued to impress with his play in 2018.

These aren’t some hooligans who hopped the fence to fool around on the golf course. Our April Life story explored the intersection of skating and golf with some of the top X Games athletes in the world. From left: Sean Malto, Eric Koston, Keith Hufnagel and Stephen Malbon.

Set to defend his Open Championship title in July, Jordan Spieth sat down with the magazine to talk about his past successes and his hopes for the future.

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We learned while visiting with actor Jeffrey Wright—Bernard on ‘Westworld’—that he took up golf at age 4 thanks to his uncle and played public courses in Washington, D.C., growing up.

Two-time LPGA winner Danielle Kang isn’t just an artist on the course, but off it as well as she showed us when we visited her for our July issue.

Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, our cover subject in August, is the pride of his home country—and seemingly its best hope to become its first men’s major winner.

In August, we profiled Troy Mullins, a former track athlete turned long-drive star who has an average swing speed of 117 miles per hour. That would rank her in the top 50 on the PGA Tour. Is it any wonder she routinely hits drives in the 320- to 350-yard range?

The son (and grandson) of a PGA professional, Justin Thomas makes it look easy on the golf course. He offered up a few of his family secrets in our September issue.

Jimmie James made pretty much every golfer in the world jealous when he spoke to us in our September issue about achieving his quest to play all 100 of our America’s Greatest Course in one year.

If Jon Rahm has a lot of balls in the air, maintaining membership on the PGA and European Tours and winning all over the world, the 24-year-old Spaniard didn’t appear frazzled when he sat with us for our October cover.

Jason Day made it clear in an interview in our October issue that having turned 30, he’s not playing golf for the money at this point in his career but rather for history. His goal? The modern career Grand Slam.

RELATED: Being Jason Day

Cameron Champ might be the definition of a rookie phenom, winning his first PGA Tour title this fall in his ninth career start (and just his second as a full PGA Tour member). His victory was perfect timing for us, as he was already the subject of our November cover story, in which the 23-year-old told our instruction team how he generates his eye-popping swing speed and distance.

RELATED: Sit in on a lesson with Cameron Champ

Here’s how long-drive champ Maurice Allen, our November “My Shot” subject, described himself once on national TV: “I’m the Rolex-wearin’, diamond-ring wearin’, kiss-stealin’, wheelin’-dealin’, limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’ son of a gun, and I’m havin’ a hard time keepin’ these gators on the ground!” Let’s just say the man has some personality.

Hawaii’s Tadd Fuijkawa spoke with Golf Digest in November about his decision to become the first openly gay professional male golfer and the personal challenge it posed.

Andia Winslow is a celebrated fitness trainer who was the first African-American woman to play Ivy League varsity golf at Yale in 2000. “Golf is the glue that keeps me adventuring,” she told us in our November issue.

Francesco Molinari sat with us for our December cover and discussed the career season he had in 2018, becoming the first Italian to win a major and then the first European to go 5-0 in the Ryder Cup.

In our December interview with Sebastian Maniscalco, we learned the first time the comic played golf with his father-in-law, he nearly decapitated him with an errant tee shot. “We joke about it now,” he says, “but when it first happened, I thought, I’m out of the family.“

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