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Cabrera takes Greenbrier Classic title

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A Billy Hurley III victory at the Greenbrier Classic on Independence Day weekend would have been a good story. Hurley graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served his country for five years, including a two-year term of active duty in the Persian Gulf.

A George McNeill victory at the Greenbrier Classic would also have been a good story. McNeill is one of those career Tour grinders with a few tournament titles to his credit. He had a five-hole stretch on Day 4 that included four birdies and a hole-in-one. McNeill signed for 61 on Sunday but could only watch as El Pato Albiceleste took control of the fifth playing of the tournament with an eagle of his own.

Angel Cabrera shot a 6-under on Sunday to finish the tournament at 16-under and come away with a two-shot victory against McNeill to win the Greenbrier Classic.

For those of you who don’t know Spanish, El Pato (the duck) is the nickname that Cabrera wears as he does most attitudes: with a slightly curled, slightly suspicious frown. Albiceleste is the powdery, sky blue of the Argentine national soccer team, currently scheduled to play a World Cup semifinal match against the Netherlands this Wednesday. If Cabrera’s performance in West Virginia this weekend is a portent of things to come, Lionel Messi and his futbol teammates must be smiling.

Knowing that McNeill had taken the clubhouse lead with his marvelous 9-under par final round, Cabrera tied the Floridian on No. 11 with a mid-length birdie effort, then took the outright lead on the next hole with another birdie. After the hole-out on No. 13, the lead was up to three, but a two-hole hiccup nearly brought Cabrera back to the field. Errant shots into the green on Nos. 14 and 15 led to consecutive bogies that trimmed the two-time major champion’s lead to a single stroke. With everything to lose, Cabrera played two excellent shots onto the green of the par-five No. 17 hole, then calmly two-putted from 40 feet to increase his lead to two with one hole remaining.

After opening with 68s on Thursday and Friday, Cabrera engaged a faster gear and closed with 64s on Saturday and Sunday. After Saturday’s round, Cabrera discussed a few of the elements that elevated his play~

Putting: “Yes, I was able to get the speed of the greens and that was the big difference.”

An up-and-down on No. 14: “Yes, it was very, very important because I had just bogeyed 13 and to save par there was really very important.”

The chance to hit driver: “It’s a course that allows me to use my driver a lot.  I’m hitting my driver right now very well.”

The parallel narrative of Cabrera and the Argentine national team: “I need to play well and they need the title, so we both have to play well.”

Well, perhaps there’s no extended parallel narrative, but Cabrera certainly played well on the PGA Tour. Beyond McNeill, who jumped up 17 spots with his final round, only Webb Simpson (63) had a lower fourth round than Cabrera. Simpson’s seven-birdie, zero-bogey effort moved him from a top-50 finish to solo third place and certainly freshened his enthusiasm for the upcoming British Open and U.S. PGA Championships.

Among the other third-round leaders, Hurley’s painful, 3-over 73 dropped him to a fourth-place tie. Kevin Chappell, another young stalwart in search of a maiden Tour victory, closed with a 72 and dropped from third to 16th place.

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Ronald Montesano writes for GolfWRX.com from western New York. He dabbles in coaching golf and teaching Spanish, in addition to scribbling columns on all aspects of golf, from apparel to architecture, from equipment to travel. Follow Ronald on Twitter at @buffalogolfer.

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Ronald Montesano

    Jul 7, 2014 at 5:58 pm

    don’t hold back, ever. best way to love the game.

    Thanks, B.

  2. B

    Jul 7, 2014 at 1:19 pm

    Congrats, Señor Cabrera!

    Man does he swing hard! He blasts that thing

  3. Pingback: Cabrera takes Greenbrier Classic title | Spacetimeandi.com

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Equipment

Spotted: Putter roundup from the 2024 3M Open

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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.

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Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2024 3M Open

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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 

See what GolfWRXers are saying in the forums.

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Equipment

Collin Morikawa’s pre-Open equipment adjustments

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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.

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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