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Tiger Woods Runs Away with WGC Bridgestone Invitational

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Tiger Woods started the day one behind Rory Sabbatini with a field of contenders. By the end of the day, there stood Tiger at the top of the leaderboad turning the rest of the field into also-rans. Tiger Woods played a bogey-free final round and fired a 5-under par 65 to win the WGC Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, OH by eight strokes.

Rory Sabbatini started the day in the lead and in the final paring with Woods, just as he claimed to desire back at the Wachovia. Unfortunately for Rory, the results were the same as the Wachovia. Sabbatini started his day with a birdie at the first, and then played the next seventeen holes five over par to completely fall off the train tracks.

"Well, the whole idea is just — everyone knows how Rory is, and I just go out there and just let my clubs do the talking," said Woods.

As Sabbatini was leaving the ninth green, a fan called out to him, "Hey Rory, still think Tiger is beatable?", referring to the comments that Sabbatini had made previously. This didn’t sit well with Rory, as he pointed out the particular fan and had him escorted off the premises by the police.

"Well, you know, the situation is we’re out here to do our job. Let us do our job." said Sabbatini. "You know, even on 18 there, the guys being very insulting towards Kenny Perry’s first putt. Have a little bit of decorum and a little bit of class out there. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But I guess a few too many beers were talking."

The major difference for Tiger Woods this week was his ability to hit is driver and recover from missed fairways. He finished the week number one in driving distance (335.0 yards), T21 in driving accuracy (54.5%) and number one in green in regulation (72.2%).

" The rough was up high enough where you hit the ball in the rough — one, you couldn’t get to the green, but if you did get a good enough lie to get to the green, there’s no chance of stopping it." said Woods.  "And then with the pin locations, it just made for just a very difficult week, and you just had to keep your patience. It just felt like this event was playing more like a major than anything else. You just had to grind it out. Some years here you just feel like you’ve got to make birdie, three or four per nine, just to keep yourself in the tournament, but this week that wasn’t the case. You just had that feeling that it was set up more like a major championship where just having a lot of pars — pars were probably basically going to win the tournament."

Justin Rose made a nice move on Sunday by shooting 2-under and finishing even and tied with Sabbatini. He was four under through his first eight holes before finally realizing the move Tiger was making.

"I mean, to be honest, I hadn’t looked at a leaderboard all through the front nine. I kind of felt like I was getting myself into the golf tournament, and then I looked at the leaderboard and I think I saw Tiger at 7-under and thought, oh, well, we’re playing for second, and obviously that’s what it turned out to be. It was a bit of a scrap coming in to not sort of drop shots, but conditions got difficult at the end and I knew if I parred in I was going to be in decent shape."

Everything is looking in place for another fine showing by Woods during his attempt to defend his title at the PGA Championship beginning Thursday at Southern Hills.

"The whole idea was obviously to win this event but be playing well going into next week. I feel I made some nice strides this week, and I feel very good going into next week, getting a few days to prepare and getting adjusted, and off we go," said Woods.

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Equipment

Spotted: Tommy Fleetwood’s TaylorMade Spider Tour X Prototype putter

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Tommy Fleetwood has been attached to his Odyssey White Hot Pro #3 putter for years now. However, this week at the Wells Fargo Championship, we did spot him testing a new putter that is very different, yet somewhat similar, to his current gamer.

This new putter is a TaylorMade Spider Tour X head but with a brand new neck we haven’t seen on a Spider before. A flow neck is attached to the Spider head and gives the putter about a 1/2 shaft offset. This style neck will usually increase the toe hang of the putter and we can guess it gets the putter close to his White Hot Pro #3.

Another interesting design is that lack of TaylorMade’s True Path alignment on the top of the putter. Instead of the large white center stripe, Tommy’s Spider just has a very short white site line milled into it. As with his Odyssey, Tommy seems to be a fan of soft inserts and this Spider prototype looks to have the TPU Pure Roll insert with 45° grooves for immediate topspin and less hopping and skidding.

The sole is interesting as well in that the rear weights don’t look to be interchangeable and are recessed deep into the ports. This setup could be used to push the CG forward in the putter for a more blade-like feel during the stroke, like TaylorMade did with the Spider X Proto Scottie Scheffler tested out.

Tommy’s putter is finished off with an older Super Stroke Mid Slim 2.0 grip in blue and white. The Mid Slim was designed to fit in between the Ultra Slim 1.0 and the Slim 3.0 that was a popular grip on tour.

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Rickie Fowler’s new putter: Standard-length Odyssey Jailbird 380 in custom orange

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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a piece our Andrew Tursky originally wrote for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Head over there for the full article. 

…The Jailbird craze hasn’t really slowed down in 2024, either. According to Odyssey rep Joe Toulon, there are about 18-20 Jailbird putter users on the PGA TOUR.

Most recently, Akshay Bhatia won the 2024 Valero Texas Open using a broomstick-style Odyssey Jailbird 380 putter and Webb Simpson is switching into a replica of that putter at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship.

Now, Fowler, who essentially started the whole Jailbird craze, is making a significant change to his putter setup.

Fowler, who has had a couple weeks off since the 2024 RBC Heritage, started experimenting with a new, custom-orange Jailbird 380 head that’s equipped with a standard 35-inch putter build, rather than his previous 38-inch counter-balanced setup.

According to Fowler, while he still likes the look and forgiveness of his Jailbird putter head, he’s looking to re-incorporate more feel into his hands during the putting stroke.

He told GolfWRX.com on Tuesday at the Wells Fargo Championship that the 38-inch counterbalanced setup “served its purpose” by helping him to neutralize his hands during the stroke, but now it’s time to try the standard-length putter with a standard-size SuperStroke Pistol Tour grip to help with his feel and speed control.

Although Fowler was also spotted testing standard-length mallets from L.A.B. Golf and Axis1 on Tuesday, he confirmed that the custom Odyssey Jailbird 380 is the putter he’ll use this week at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship.

Head over to PGATour.com for the full article. 

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Details on Justin Thomas’ driver switch at the Wells Fargo Championship

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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a piece our Andrew Tursky originally wrote for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Head over there for the full article. 

So, with a couple of weeks off following his latest start at the 2024 RBC Heritage, Thomas sought to re-address his driver setup with the remote help of Titleist Tour fitting expert J.J. Van Wezenbeeck. About two weeks ago, Thomas and Van Wezenbeeck reviewed his recent driver stats, and discussed via phone call some possible driver and shaft combinations for him to try.

After receiving Van Wezenbeeck’s personalized shipment of product options while at home, Thomas found significant performance improvements with Titleist’s TSR2 head, equipped with Thomas’ familiar Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 60 TX shaft.

Compared to Thomas’ longtime TSR3 model, the TSR2 has a larger footprint and offers slightly higher spin and launch characteristics.

According to Van Wezenbeeck, Thomas has picked up about 2-3 mph of ball speed, to go along with 1.5 degrees higher launch and more predictable mishits.

“I’d say I’d been driving it fine, not driving it great, so I just wanted to, honestly, just test or try some stuff,” Thomas said on Tuesday in an interview with GolfWRX.com at Quail Hollow Club. “I had used that style of head a couple years ago (Thomas used a TSi2 driver around 2021); I know it’s supposed to have a little more spin. Obviously, yeah, I’d love to hit it further, but if I can get a little more spin and have my mishits be a little more consistent, I felt like obviously that’d be better for my driving…

“This (TSR2) has been great. I’ve really, really driven it well the week I’ve used it. Just hitting it more solid, I don’t know if it’s the look of it or what it is, but just a little bit more consistent with the spin numbers. Less knuckle-ball curves. It has been fast. Maybe just a little faster than what I was using. Maybe it could be something with the bigger head, maybe mentally it looks more forgiving.”

Head over to PGATour.com for the full article. 

 

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