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A report from NCCGA spring nationals

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This past weekend in West Lafayette, Indiana, at the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex, the National Collegiate College Golf Association (NCCGA) hosted their spring nationals, which is the largest college golf tournament in the country.

The championship featured over 300 players from 39 teams and 22 individuals from a combined 55 schools, representing 29 states. According to Kris Hart, Senior Director of Nexgengolf, “Purdue is a unique and special venue because of the quality of the course, as well as the history; our 2013 (and my first championship) was hosted here.”

Coordinating a championship for over 300 players takes a lot of work and a fantastic staff. To remind readers, unlike NCAA golf, the format in NCCGA is eight count five (eight players per team compete with the low five rounds counting towards a team score). Readers should also know club golf is not intramurals and these student-athletes are pretty darn good. Students like Joey Jordan from Virginia Tech have walked on to their varsity golf team due to their strong club golf performance.

Heading into the tournament, the best-ranked team participating was from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, with a scoring average of 72.9 followed by Arizona State (73.85 average), Florida (74.26 Average), Providence (73.55 average) and Arkansas (75.45 average) rounding out the top 5. Like the NCAA, the tournament also features an individual competition. The top five players in the NCCGA this spring include:

PLAYER NAME TEAM NAME AVG SCORE PER ROUND AVG DIFF PER ROUND 
Brandon Resnick UNLV 67.5 -3.92
Anthony Banks University of Arizona 69 -2.69
Nick Bavaro DePaul University (B) 69.5 -2.48
Timothy Davis The University of Tennessee 69.5 -1.47
Charles Kim University of Arkansas (A) 71.5 -1.03

The action at Nationals did not disappoint as Clemson University came back from a first-round deficit to edge out the University of Notre Dame by four shots (team scores of 750 and 754 respectively). Even with the tough Saturday weather conditions, Andrew Stineman of Notre Dame was still able to fire an impressive two-day score of one under par (68-75 – 143) to take home medalist honors. Payte Owen from the University of Oklahoma made it interesting on day two, but fell short by one, carding an even-par 144.

Prior to Nationals, the parent company of NCCGA, Nextgengolf announced its acquisition by the Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA).

According to Arjun Chowdri from the PGA of America, “Nextgengolf provides authentic experiences that speak to the next generation of golfers.”

This partnership demands attention because it speaks volume about the future of college golf and opportunities for boys and girls to play in college. The NCCGA provides a unique opportunity for players who might otherwise not maturate to varsity college golf to continue playing the game they love. With the PGA and 29,000 golf professionals helping grow college golf, I am eager to watch the next chapter for college golf unfold and am confident it is going to be pretty special.

To learn more about the history of club golf and some further data behind the story, check out my article I wrote back in February 2018 titled, Why you should consider playing club golf in college.

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Brendan Ryan, an entrepreneur and scientist, is a passionate golfer who loves his local muni. Armed with a keen interest in the game, a large network of friends in the industry, Brendan works to find and produce unique content for GolfWRX.

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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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