Tour News

Senden wins the Valspar Championship

Published

10 years ago

Mar 16, 2014

John Senden held off a number of players on a wild Sunday at the Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead Course to secure his second victory on the PGA Tour and first since winning the John Deere Classic in 2006.

Senden, 42, is two-time runner up at this tournament, but this year he was able to climb in front down the stretch and displayed some important scrambling abilities, while also receiving a slice of fortune on the way to victory.

Click here to see photos of the clubs Senden had in the bag this week.

On a Sunday where the leaderboard was ever changing, there seemed to be a large amount of birdies and bogeys, as a number of players looked as though they could sneak toward the victory at any given time. The closing three holes, appropriately nicknamed The Snake Pit, acted as a difficult proposition for players as per normal. Yet, it was here that Senden ensured that he would earn his second victory, earning birdies on both No. 16 and No. 17 before making a key par at the difficult 18th.

It was at No. 16 where destiny appeared to be on Senden’s side, as he pitched in for birdie when bogey seemed more likely. Senden propelled himself up the leaderboard with a stunning Saturday bogey-free round of 64, equaling Retief Goosen for the best round of the week. Senden’s Saturday performance was somewhat surprising, as he made the cut at just 1-over par.

In the face of Senden’s impressive closing stretch, American Kevin Na refused to go away, even in the wake of a poor front nine that he played in 3-over. Na found his groove after making the turn, making a birdie on No. 14 before making a clutch birdie on No. 17 to set himself up for a chance to send the tournament to a playoff. Na made a series of skillful up-and-downs to push him toward the top of the leaderboard, but a birdie on the No. 18 was too much to ask and Na made par for a second-place finish.

54-hole leader Robert Garrigus, much like Na, had a front nine to forget. Playing the first nine holes in 5-over, Garrigus faded away early and was never a major factor on Sunday afternoon. Garrigus looked calm and collected throughout the first two-and-a-half rounds, but then made the turn on Saturday and seemingly lost his momentum, failing to make another birdie until No. 14 on Sunday. A rough double bogey on No. 3 set the tone for the rest of his round, as Garrigus finished up with a final-round 75, good enough for a T4 finish at 4-under with Will MacKenzie and Luke Donald, the latter a winner at this tournament two years ago.

Another strong showing came from Scott Langley, the third year pro out of the University of Illinois. Langley, 24, produced some wild scorecards over four days, but made 17 birdies in total on his way to a solo third-place finish at 5-under. This was Langley’s first top-10 of the season, building off of the top-20 finish he earned at the Puerto Rico Open last week.

Senden, who went into this weekend ranked 123rd in the Official World Golf Ranking standings, has not only pushed himself into the top-15 of the FedEx Cup standings, but has now also obtained an invitation to Augusta next month.

A side note from the Valspar Championship is that two-time major champion John Daly shot his worst ever round with a 90 on Friday afternoon, including a 12 on the par-4 16th hole.

The Florida Swing continues next weekend, with the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando.

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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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