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Winners roundup: Ko, Langher, BK, Morikawa | Tom Watson bids adieu | Yardage book DQ

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1. Kim falters, Ko wins Evian 
Many a bottle of glacial spring water crafted by nature was consumed in celebration! All joking aside, Evian’s support of women’s golf has been fantastic, and from what I’ve seen on Instagram, the tournament at Evian-les-Bans is a first-rate affair. So, kudos to them, and to Jin Young Ko as well, who locked up her second major of 2019 (and regained the No. 1 spot in the Rolex rankings).
  • AP report…”Jin Young Ko took advantage of a friend’s bad luck to win her second major title of the season on Sunday, and reclaimed No. 1 spot in the women’s world golf rankings.”
  • “Ko fired a 4-under 67 in the rain-swept final round to win the Evian Championship by two shots with a 15-under total of 269.”
  • “Winner of the season’s first major, the ANA Inspiration in April, Ko closed out the victory after playing partner, longtime leader and good friend Hyo Joo Kim lost control of the tournament with a triple bogey at the par-3 14th.”
2. Sick, show up 45 minutes before your tee time, win by 3
AP report on an under-the-weather BK getting the job done…”Brooks Koepka turned his final-round duel with Rory McIlroy into a runaway for his first World Golf Championships title.”
“Koepka had three birdies in a four-hole stretch on the front nine and cruised to a three-stroke victory Sunday in the FedEx St. Jude Invitational.”
3. Bernhard at the Senior British
Golf Digest’s John Strege…”…a month shy of his 62nd birthday, that he again quelled any notion that his better days are numbered by winning the Senior British Open for a record fourth time.”
  • “On a cold, rainy day at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, Langer erased a three-stroke deficit with a front-nine of four-under-par 30, shot a four-under-par 66 and won by two over Paul Broadhurst.”
  • “I love holding this trophy,” Langer said. “It’s a beautiful one. I never got to hold the Open Championship trophy, but this is the next best thing and I’m very blessed to have won four of these now.”
4. Barracuda breakthrough
Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard….”Three weeks after he was beaten at the buzzer by a former college rival, Collin Morikawa broke through for his maiden PGA Tour victory at the Barracuda Championship.”
  • “Morikawa enjoyed a stellar amateur career at Cal, and the 22-year-old has quickly found his footing since turning professional in June. He entered the week with a pair of top-5 finishes, highlighted by a runner-up result at the 3M Open earlier this month when fellow Class of 2019 member Matthew Wolff birdied the 72nd hole to edge him by a shot.”
  • “But Sunday, Morikawa was the man of the moment, shooting a bogey-free 65 that equated to a 14-point effort under the modified Stableford format. That included birdies on four of his last five holes, including each of the last three holes, and Morikawa’s 47-point total left him three clear of runner-up Troy Merritt.”
5. Farewell, Tom
John Feinstein on Tom Watson’s goodbye to links golf in general and the Senior Open Championship in particular…
  • “Tom Watson made his final walk to an 18th green in an Open Championship-this one the Senior British Open-with nine holes to play. That’s because the last round of this Open was played in threesomes, with those near the back of the pack teeing off on the 10th hole. Watson, tied for 55th, was one of those, meaning he finished the championship on the ninth hole.”
  • “But that didn’t really matter. As he walked up the 18th at Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s, his face was filled with the emotion he clearly was feeling. His playing companions both understood what was happening, and they fell back to allow Watson to walk onto the green alone. Watson paused, cap off, turned and bowed to the cheering fans on both sides of the green. Then he blew kisses and clapped for them all, saying a final thank you for 44 years of extraordinary memories, even as they said thank you to him.”

Full piece.

6. A case for Creamer
Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols...”Could Paula Creamer get the nod once more? With seven Solheim Cup appearances, Creamer has made the team every way possible, even getting in as an alternate last time in Des Moines.”
  • “And each time she has risen to the occasion, earning three points in 2017 and two points in 2015 as a captain’s pick, going out in the anchor spot in Germany to bring it home for the Americans in the greatest comeback in Solheim Cup history.”
  • “But it’s not just her ability to put up points. Four years ago it was Creamer who pulled Angela Stanford aside and bolstered her with the confidence needed to take down Suzann Pettersen.”

Full piece.

7. Spieth closing in on answers
Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard…”Spieth’s 2-under 68 was his lowest final round this season and just his third under-par round on a Sunday on the PGA Tour. More importantly it was a sign that he continues to work his way back to winning form.”
  • “I felt like I made more strides this week in my game than I have in any week this year,” he said…“Specifically, Spieth said it was a post-round practice session Friday that helped with a swing that has been off all year…”
  • “My swing started to look on video the same that it has, or at least getting close to where it has been when I’ve been striking the ball extremely well,” Spieth said. “But on course it was still 50 percent of it and on the range it’s still 75 percent of it. If I can get to 120 [percent] on the range and 100 on the golf course, then I’m right back to where the game becomes a bit easier.”
8. Yardage book DQ 
“Congratulating a guy for not robbing a bank” and all, but credit to the journeyman for coming clean regarding arguably the most trivial of rules violations.
  • Golf Digest’s Joel Beall on Mark Wilson’s unfortunate situation…”Wilson self-reported a violation of USGA Rule 4.3 (use of equipment) regarding a green-reading book. Under the latest iteration to the Rules of Golf, these materials are limited in scale for green diagrams to where a grid can be no more precise than 3/8-inch equaling 5 yards of the green. It also restricts the size of the book that contains any green information to the current pocket-sized form of most yardage books (approximately 4 1/4 inches by 7 inches). Earlier this year at the Honda Classic, Alex Cejka became the first victim of the directive, as an old green-reading book violates the new parameters. According to Wilson, a former notepad did him in as well.”
  • “Sad to report but had to disqualify myself this morning for using a non conforming greens book during [Barracuda Championship],” wrote Wilson on Twitter. “Why I didn’t think of it before the tournament started, I have no idea…”
9. Bamberger on Watson’s sendoff
Leave it to one of the best to contextualize one of the best…
  • “…Watson told the Golf Channel reporter Todd Lewis on Saturday that this would be his final Senior Open. He also said that he won’t be playing in any more Senior U.S. Opens, an event he never won. He won one U.S. Open, in 1982, at the Pebble Beach Golf Links. You wouldn’t call Pebble Beach a links golf course in the British sense, but by American standards it’s pretty darn close. Interestingly, the club the USGA Museum curators covet more than any other is the Wilson wedge with which Watson chipped-in on the 71st hole of that Open, in a shot that could have been played at St. Andrews among dozens of other linksland courses.”
  • “Just to keep the theme going for a second, Watson won the Masters twice, long before it had anything like rough, when it was still much closer to the Old Course in spirit. That is, much closer to what Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie envisioned the course to be when they were designing it.”
  • “This is all a round-about way of saying that this farewell from Watson is significant, because here you have a golfer who played a sort of primal golf in ways nobody else ever did, including everybody.”
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Equipment

Did Rory McIlroy inspire Shane Lowry’s putter switch?

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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 timing of Lowry’s putter changeup was curious: Was he just using a Spider putter because he was paired with McIlroy, who’s been using a Spider Tour X head throughout 2024? Was Lowry just being festive because it’s the Zurich Classic, and he wanted to match his teammate? Did McIlroy let Lowry try his putter, and he liked it so much he actually switched into it?

Well, as it turns out, McIlroy’s only influence was inspiring Lowry to make more putts.

When asked if McIlroy had an influence on the putter switch, Lowry had this to say: “No, it’s actually a different putter than what he uses. Maybe there was more pressure there because I needed to hole some more putts if we wanted to win,” he said with a laugh.

To Lowry’s point, McIlroy plays the Tour X model, whereas Lowry switched into the Tour Z model, which has a sleeker shape in comparison, and the two sole weights of the club are more towards the face.

Lowry’s Spider Tour Z has a white True Path Alignment channel on the crown of his putter, which is reminiscent of Lowry’s former 2-ball designs, thus helping to provide a comfort factor despite the departure from his norm. Instead of a double-bend hosel, which Lowry used in his 2-ball putters, his new Spider Tour Z is designed with a short slant neck.

“I’ve been struggling on the greens, and I just needed something with a fresh look,” Lowry told GolfWRX.com on Wednesday at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship. “It has a different neck on it, as well, so it moves a bit differently, but it’s similar. It has a white line on the back of it [like my 2-ball], and it’s a mallet style. So it’s not too drastic of a change.

“I just picked it up on the putting green and I liked the look of it, so I was like, ‘Let’s give it a go.’”

Read the rest of the piece over at PGATour.com.

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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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Equipment

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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