Tour News

Johnson wins the Hyundai TOC

Published

11 years ago

Jan 6, 2014

The Hyundai Tournament of Champions demanded a simple recipe from its champion: stay clean of bogies and go on a birdie run or two. Zach Johnson followed the recipe for most of the four days and moved into the top 10 on the FedEx Cup standings with his one-shot victory at Kapalua.

Johnson made three bogies in his opening 67, then settled down with 15 birdies against just two more bogies during his final 54 holes.

Johnson had to feel a bit frustrated after his third-round 74, in which he made a single birdie.

“I feel like I left quite a bit out there,” he said. “At the same time, I didn’t feel like I played that bad either. Hit some good shots I didn’t get anything out of, didn’t make any putts today and a couple errant drives that cost me on the back nine. Just didn’t get much out of it.”

Whatever work he did on the practice range post-round Sunday and pre-round Monday did the trick, as the Iowa native made four birdies in a five-hole, back-nine stretch to pull away from his pursuers.

Although golfers like Billy Horschel (66 on Monday) and Kevin Streelman (seven birdies in round 4) made early charges up the leader board, it was Jordan Spieth who provided the final threat to Johnson. Not until Spieth’s pitch to the 72nd green failed to fall for eagle could Johnson breathe easy and accept victory congratulations. For Spieth, it was yet another brush with victory for the one-time tour winner. Spieth had averaged five birdies per round for the first three days and had to feel discouraged after making only two birdies through the first 16 holes on Monday. The young Texan found another gear along the finishing stretch, finishing birdie-birdie to overtake Streelman for second place.

Johnson flew under the radar throughout the weekend. Despite holding a three-stroke lead at the tournament’s midway point, Johnson had to cede attention to defending champion Dustin Johnson, Matt Kuchar and wunderkind Spieth. When he retreated a bit during Sunday’s third round, Johnson fell even farther from the spotlight. Would it be Spieth, or Webb Simpson, or perhaps 2013 PGA champion Jason Dufner? Simpson bogeyed two of his first four holes and could make but five birdies the rest of the way, finishing tied for third. Dufner was in the mix until No. 17, when he made double bogey after a visit to the native grasses. Dustin Johnson never found a Monday groove, bogeying his first two holes of the final round and five birdies against three more bogies the rest of the way.

The Tour moves over this week to the island of Oahu for the Sony Open at the Waialae Country Club. The defending champion, Russell Henley, finished 27th this week at Kapalua.

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Equipment

Spotted: Putter roundup from the 2024 3M Open

Published

1 day ago

Jul 25, 2024

Brian Knudson

Every week we spot some really cool and custom putters out on the putting green and in tour players’ bags. This week is no slouch with some really interesting and beautiful putters being tested. Let’s take a look at some of the standouts we found.

Tyler Duncan: Scotty Cameron Phantom T-11.5

The Phantom 11 is a pretty wild putter by Scotty’s standards with a multi-material design that boosts MOI for more forgiveness. Duncan’s T-11.5. takes the stock model and moves the shaft to the center of the putter head. We don’t mean a center shafted version, but the shaft is installed in the center, behind the face as well. We don’t have any official details on this T-11.5 but it looks like that setup should create a putter where the face points towards the hole or target, similar to a L.A.B. putter.

Zac Blair: Scotty Cameron 009.M Cameron & Co. “Longneck”

Blair might be in possession of the largest Scotty collection on tour! It seems like every week he has something new, and flat-out gorgeous, that he is trying out. I have seen a lot of 009.M putters over the years, but never one with a long plumbers neck on it. This 009 is a Masterful that utilizes additional CNC machine work to reduce the amount of hand polishing needed to complete the putter. The long, or tall, neck on the putter usually is used to reduce the amount of toe hang and make the putter more face balanced. The face contains a very shallow milling while the sole features a tour truck, tour only, diamonds, and the rare Circle L stamp. The Circle L was made for Scotty’s close friends who lost matches or games and was meant to poke a little fun at their misfortune.

Paul Barjon: PXG Prototype

There are a lot of putters out there that become so widely used and popular that other manufacturers will borrow some of the design cues. The Spider is one of those putters and it looks like PXG has made a prototype putter for Barjon that has some similar features. This proto has a tapered mallet shape with twin wings that come out from either side of the rear. Twin movable weights sit in each wing on the sole and the sole features a plate that is bolted in place at the corners. The top contains a single siteline and the face uses PXG’s advanced pyramid face structure.

Odyssey Ai-One Cruiser Broomstick #7

More and more long, counterbalanced, and alternative putters seem to be showing up recently. The long, or broomstick, putter is making a comeback and more than a few players have joined Adam Scott in using that style. Odyssey has thrown its hat in the broomstick arena with a new Ai-One Cruiser model. The head shape is the very familiar #7 model, but with the shaft going into the center of the club head. An Ai-One face is there to help keep ball speed consistent on off-center hits and three white lines are on top for framing ball and aligning the putter.

TaylorMade Spider Tour S Broomstick

Another option in the long putter is TaylorMade’s Spider Tour S broomstick that we saw around the putting green. The head looks to be a little larger than the standard Tour S and that makes sense with the broomstick-style putters demanding heads near or over 400g. A TPU Pure Roll insert is installed in the face and the shaft is a more traditional double-bend design, just much longer! There isn’t the True Path alignment on top, just a full darker grey finish with a single siteline. Two moveable weights are out in the wings of the putter to dial in the specific weight a player might want.

Check out the rest of our photos from the 2024 3M Open

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Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2024 3M Open

Published

3 days ago

Jul 23, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

GolfWRX is on site this week at TPC Twin Cities for the 2024 3M Open for the penultimate event of the PGA Tour’s regular season.

The photos are flying in from Blaine, Minnesota. We’ve already assembled general galleries and a fresh Tony Finau WITB.

Check back throughout the week for more photos!

General Albums

WITB Albums

Pullout Albums

Chris Gotterup’s TM P-7CB irons – 2024 3M Open

See what GolfWRXers are saying in the forums.

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Equipment

Collin Morikawa’s pre-Open equipment adjustments

Published

1 week ago

Jul 18, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

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.

Three years later, Morikawa has once again changed his irons to deal with the unique Scottish turf.

Morikawa has been using TaylorMade P730 blade short irons (7-PW), P7MC mid irons (5-6) and a TaylorMade “Proto” 4-iron with a cavity-back construction this year.

However, he switched into a new set of TaylorMade P7CB irons (5-PW) before finishing T4 at last week’s Genesis Scottish Open, to go along with his familiar “Proto” 4-iron. TaylorMade’s P7CB irons are the finalized versions of the “Proto” 4-iron that Morikawa has been using, except they remain unreleased to retail.

According to TaylorMade, Morikawa switched into a full set of the new P7CB irons to aid with turf interaction, just like he did prior to his 2021 Open victory.

Morikawa is honing in on his winning formula overseas.

Morikawa also has switched from his usual TaylorMade Qi10 5-wood to a lower-launching TaylorMade P790 3-iron equipped with a Project X HZRDUS 105 Hybrid shaft. The loft of the club has been bent down to 19 degrees.

TaylorMade says that Morikawa switched into the new driving iron In order to “have an option to hit something lower that will roll out in the fairways.”

Head over to PGATour.com for the full article.

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