Tour News

Mini-tour blog: Carolina on my mind

Published

12 years ago

May 15, 2012

GolfWRX

By Jordan Holley

GolfWRX Contributor

Jordan Holley, 28, is a mini-tour player pursuing his dream of earning a PGA Tour card. He graduated from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., where he was an NCAA All-American and a member of the Cleveland Golf Academic All-American First Team. He qualified for the U.S. Amateur in 2008, and since turning professional has played on the NGA Hooters and eGolf tours, as well as other minor league tours.

There is nothing quite like coming home. You could be gone for a few weeks or gone for years, but the feeling is the same. Just driving through the state line into North Carolina and seeing familiar ground gives me such a sense of calm. I don’t know about you, but home is where you feel centered and balanced, calm and comfortable.

Getting out of South Florida and back to where people wave when they pass and don’t give you that weird look when you hold the door for them is refreshing to say the least. People tend to use turn signals. When someone honks his or her horn it’s usually a friendly one or two taps and doesn’t sound like someone face planted into the steering wheel. People drive normal cars and you don’t see 16-year-old kids driving $100,000 Mercedes. The only surgeries most people have around here are usually health related. All of these things make me appreciate home.

Well, I’m back and riding some good waves both on and off the golf course. Some great practice at the end of last month coupled with a few sessions with my coach Mike Adams at Medalist Golf Club led me to two top-three finishes including a win in my last two events on the Golfslinger’s Minor League Tour. I have sprinkled in a few really low rounds in between and can really feel the difference between dedicating myself full time versus splitting my time tending bar until the middle of the night!

Here’s where things get interesting — the potential sponsors I met in South Florida (check out my past stories) have contributed to me dumping my 2000 Honda Civic, you know, the one with 175,000 miles, a broken window, no a/c and balding tires? Although we have not struck a long-term deal, they have provided me with a large portion of a payment on a new, larger, safer and definitely cooler (a/c and looks) Mazda 3! I can’t even put into words how thankful I am and obviously made the drive home a little sweeter.

I’ve still been reliving the last eGolf event (click here for Jordan’s last story “Pure Strikes and Shanks”) and have decided that although I didn’t get the job done at St. James I have become a better player because of it. I have learned some technical things as well as truly gained an understanding of just where I need to improve mentally. I have been blessed with a fantastic new home course this week to work out of just outside of Wilmington, NC. It is called Cape Fear National and is one of the best-conditioned, toughest tests of golf within 100 miles or more. My current schedule has two more events on the eGolf Tour in the next two weeks and then back to Florida. I am excited for the challenge of getting myself back into contention and sealing the deal! I can’t thank you all enough for the support!

Click here for more discussion and a chance to interact with Jordan in the “Tour Talk” forum.

You can Jordan on Twitter @J_Holley6under or on www.jordanholleygolf.com.

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Equipment

Spotted: Putter roundup from the 2024 3M Open

Published

2 days 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

4 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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