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Flesch Leads by Four at Turning Stone

Steve Flesch shot 66 Saturday for a four shot lead over Carl Pettersson and Charles Warren. Mr. Flesch birdied four of the last five holes on a day when the winds reached 25mph. In a seeming repeat of the Reno Tahoe Open in August, Mr. Flesch is striking his irons crisply and putting quite well. Mr. Warren is again chasing him in an effort to win his first PGA Tour event. With the wind supposed to blow again Sunday, my guess is Mr. Warren will need to wait another day.

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Big leads heading into the final round are nothing new to Steve Flesch this year.

He led by five after 54 holes at Reno-Tahoe in early August.  Yesterday in similarly blowy conditions he birdied four of the last five holes leaving Carl Pettersson and Charles Warren four shots behind.  Mr. Flesch is at 19 under par 197 after a 66, tying the low 54 score in relation to par for the year.  "Believe me, if you’re not hitting well, you don’t want to play in winds because it just magnifies your errors," said Flesch,  "But if you are hitting it solidly, wind can only help you. It can only separate you from everybody else. Today, I was glad that it blew, and I hope it blows tomorrow."

He’ll like the forecast for Sunday, 15mph winds and cooler temps.  Mr. Pettersson was briefly tied for the lead after consecutive birdies on the back nine, but his 66 was only good enough to keep Mr. Flesch’s tail lights in view.  Mr. Warren is in the essentially the same position as he was at the Reno-Tahoe event (do you sense a deja vu theme?) chasing Mr. Flesch while in search of his first Tour victory.  "Every day somebody’s shot 8 under, so I imagine tomorrow is going to be the same. Somebody has to come from behind and post a good number, and if you’re close to the lead, you have to go low." said Warren.  

"I’ll be aggressive when I can," said Flesch, who completed his round with a 20-foot downhill birdie putt. "Depends on the wind, truthfully. The conditions are going to dictate how aggressively we’re going to be able to play. But Carl and Charles can make a ton of birdies."   I feel like I’m writing the same story over again.  Mr. Flesch has proven he’s learned how to win.  He’s had the 54 hole lead seven times before, not winning the first five times while winning the previous two times.  When he hits his irons as crisply as he has this week he’s proven to be hard to catch.  "My iron game has been good, so I don’t expect that to change," said Flesch, who detected a flaw in his swing from a front-page photo in a local newspaper after his second-round 65. "You know, it boils down to putting, hopefully make some birdies early on, relax a little bit."

Wouldn’t it be nice to shoot a 65 with a swing flaw?  I can’t comprehend, but it just affirms that these guys are really good.  My guess, Mr. Flesch will still be the leader at the end of the day.

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  1. Jim

    Sep 25, 2007 at 3:41 pm

    It’s Turning STONE, not Point. FYI.

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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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Equipment

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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